Panama Residency Visas: Routes and Requirements

The cheapest property-based route to Panamanian residency is B/.200,000, through Friendly Nations. The programme often called Panama's golden visa, Qualified Investor, sits at B/.300,000. They are two separate programmes with two separate thresholds, and they are easy to mix up.

This guide sets out the three routes a foreign buyer or retiree actually uses, what each requires, and which one fits. Every figure comes from the Servicio Nacional de Migración requirement sheets or the decree behind them, with the date we checked it.

Key takeaways

• Friendly Nations sets its property threshold at B/.200,000, and the purchase can be bank-financed. Servicio Nacional de Migración, PPT-PE requirement sheet, checked August 2026.
• Qualified Investor sets its property threshold at B/.300,000, free of liens. Decreto Ejecutivo 193 of 15 October 2024, Article 3.1.
• Pensionado needs no property at all. A lifetime pension of B/.1,000 per month qualifies, plus B/.250 per dependent. Servicio Nacional de Migración, PRP-JP sheet, Article 200.
• Friendly Nations is provisional for two years first. It grants a two-year provisional permit, and permanence is a second application. Migración, PPT-PE / PPP-PE sheets.
• Balboas are pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, so every figure here is also the dollar figure.

The three routes, by minimum

Pensionado sits at zero because it is not an investment programme. It asks for income, not capital.

Pensionado: the retiree route

Panama's Jubilado Pensionado permit, PRP-JP, is open to a foreign national receiving a pension from a foreign government, an international organisation, or a private company.

Article 200 sets the test plainly: the monthly pension cannot be less than B/.1,000 and must be granted for life. That second word does the work. A drawdown from a retirement account is not a pension for this purpose. Migración wants a lifetime entitlement, certified.

Add B/.250 per month for each dependent, which can be evidenced by additional pension income or a local bank reference.

What you file:

• Notarised power of attorney and application. The power must name the applicant's parents, which surprises people every time.
• Three photographs, a certified copy of the passport, a police record certificate, a health certificate, and the sworn declaration of personal background.
• Certification of retired or pensioned status showing the lifetime pension of at least B/.1,000 per month, or the equivalent in another currency.
• A Registro Público certificate for property, if applicable. Property is not required for this route.

If the pension comes from a private company rather than a government, you also need a letter from the pension administrator, trust, mutual fund, insurer or bank certifying that it administers the funds.

Who it suits. A retiree with a defined-benefit pension or social security, who does not want to move capital into Panama to qualify. It is the cheapest route by a wide margin, and for most retirees it is the right one.

Who it does not. Anyone whose retirement income is a portfolio drawdown rather than a lifetime pension. That is a growing share of retirees, and the requirement excludes them regardless of net worth.

Friendly Nations: the B/.200,000 route

Formally, permanent residence for nationals of specific countries maintaining friendly, professional, economic and investment relations with Panama. The sheet codes it PPT-PE while provisional and PPP-PE once permanent, under Decreto Ejecutivo 226 of 20 July 2021.

Two things about it are worth getting straight before you plan around it.

It is provisional first. Article 3 grants a two-year provisional permit. Permanence is a separate application at the end, filed with the same documents minus the police record and the cheque. If you have read that this route is immediate permanent residency, that account has skipped a step that takes two years. We have deliberately left processing times off this page: the requirement sheets do not state them, and we would rather leave a gap than quote a figure we cannot source.

It requires an economic tie, and there are three ways to have one:

Two government cheques go with the application: B/.250 to the Tesoro Nacional and B/.800 to the Servicio Nacional de Migración.

The financing point is the one that matters. The Friendly Nations property route does not require the property to be unencumbered, and the requirement sheet says the acquisition may be financed through a local bank. The Qualified Investor route at B/.300,000 requires the property to be libre de gravámenes, free of liens. So the cheaper programme is also the more flexible one on financing, which is worth knowing if you were planning to borrow.

Who it suits. Nationals of a qualifying country buying property in the B/.200,000 to B/.300,000 band, or anyone taking a job with a Panamanian employer.

Who it does not. Anyone whose nationality is not on the list, which is the first thing to check and the one thing no amount of money changes. The list of qualifying countries changes by decree, and we have not yet published our own copy traced to the Gaceta Oficial, so have your attorney confirm your nationality against the current decree before you spend anything.

Qualified Investor: the B/.300,000 route

Covered in full in our buying guide, including the widely reported increase to B/.500,000 that does not actually appear in the decree. In short: B/.300,000 in property free of liens, B/.500,000 in securities held five years, or a B/.750,000 fixed deposit held five years. Decreto Ejecutivo 193 of 15 October 2024, Article 3.

The property route additionally requires a Registro Público title certification and an ANATI valuation, which is a useful filter whether or not you want the visa. A property that cannot produce both has a problem you want to know about.

Choosing the route that fits you

If you want the property, buy the property. If you only want the visa, price the deposit too. Both Friendly Nations and Qualified Investor offer a fixed-deposit route, at B/.200,000 and B/.750,000 respectively. A deposit is liquid, with no maintenance, no HOA, no tenant and no resale risk, so it is the fairer comparison for anyone whose only reason to buy is the permit. Where a home in Panama is something you actually want, the property route earns its keep twice, and that is the case we help most readers work through.

Check your nationality before you size your budget. If your country is on the Friendly Nations list, B/.200,000 gets you there and bank financing is allowed, so stretching to B/.300,000 for Qualified Investor may be buying you nothing extra.

Plan for two applications on Friendly Nations, not one. The two-year provisional permit is the first half. Budget the second.

Check that your retirement income is a pension, not a drawdown. If it is withdrawals from an investment account rather than a lifetime entitlement, Pensionado will not accept it, and that is much cheaper to learn before legal fees than after.

Your next step

Which route fits you usually comes down to three things: your nationality, whether your retirement income is a lifetime pension, and whether you want a home in Panama or only a permit. Tell us those, plus your budget and roughly when you want to be living here, and we will come back with the route that fits and, if property is part of it, the places and price bands that clear the threshold you need. That is what the form below is for, and it costs nothing to ask.

Frequently asked questions