Spain Digital Nomad Visa income in 2026: why you see two different numbers
Plain Spain editorial team · · 9 min read
Look up the income requirement for Spain's Digital Nomad Visa and you will find two monthly figures a few hundred euros apart, both stated with confidence, both citing the same law. Neither source is making anything up. The gap comes from an arithmetic choice Spain's own texts never make out loud, and once you can see the choice, the disagreement stops being mysterious and starts being something you can plan around.
The requirements as a whole sit on our Digital Nomad Visa page. This post is only about the money: where each figure comes from, which one the office deciding your file works from, what the gap does to a family application, and what to do if you land between the two.
Key takeawaysLink to this section
- The bar is 200% of Spain's minimum wage. The wage itself is published as two numbers, so the bar has two readings.
- The higher reading is €2,849 a month gross for a single applicant. That is the figure this site uses and the one consistent with income being assessed as a gross annual total.
- The lower reading is €2,442 a month, built from the wage's own monthly figure, which Spain pays across fourteen instalments a year rather than twelve.
- Family add-ons inherit the same ambiguity and no official text settles it. Practitioners publish both sets.
- Plan to the higher number. Someone who clears it clears either reading, and nobody has to adjudicate which reading their reviewer holds.
Why do two different income figures circulate for this visa?Link to this section
Because Spain publishes its minimum wage as two numbers, and the visa rule multiplies "the minimum wage" without saying which of the two it means.
The wage for 2026 is fixed by Real Decreto 126/2026. Article 1 sets it at €1,221 a month. Article 3 separately sets an annual floor of €17,094, language which exists so that no way of slicing a salary can push the yearly total below that line. Those two provisions do not describe the same monthly amount, because the monthly figure is paid across fourteen instalments a year: twelve months plus the two extra payments that Spanish contracts normally carry. Spread the annual floor over twelve months instead and you get €1,424.50 a month.
The visa rule is one sentence. The joint instruction issued by the two directorates that run this permit says the main applicant must show "mensualmente el 200% del salario mínimo interprofesional". Monthly, 200% of the minimum wage. Double each reading of the wage and you have the two figures in circulation:
| Reading of the minimum wage | Monthly wage | 200%, the income bar |
|---|---|---|
| Annual floor spread over twelve months | €1,424.50 | €2,849 |
| The wage's own monthly figure, fourteen payments | €1,221 | €2,442 |
That is the entire disagreement: €407 a month, or €4,884 across a year. That is not a huge sum, but it is enough to sit between a salary and a refusal.
If you want the machinery behind both indexes rather than just this year's output, the guide to IPREM and SMI takes them apart and shows why the Non-Lucrative Visa uses a different index entirely.
Which figure does the office deciding your file actually use?Link to this section
The higher one, in practice, and it looks at your year rather than at any single month.
In-Spain applications are decided by the Large Companies and Strategic Sectors Unit, usually written UGE-CE. Its published document checklist states two things that matter here. Amounts are gross, "brutas antes de retenciones", meaning before any withholding. And the evidence asked for is payslips or invoices covering the three months before you apply, plus a bank certificate in your own name that matches them.
What the checklist does not do is spell out the division. The published figure practitioners who file these cases work from, and the figure this site uses, is €2,849 a month, which is a gross annual €34,188 divided by twelve. We have not found an official text that states the division in those words, so treat the higher figure as the settled working practice rather than as a quoted rule. That distinction is worth keeping straight, because it tells you what to do when the numbers are close: you are managing an assessment convention, not reading a statute.
The lower figure has a real argument behind it. The instruction says monthly, and the wage's own monthly figure is the lower number. What the higher figure has going for it is consistency: an annual assessment against a wage whose annual floor is written into the decree lands on that number, and it is what approved files are built on. No published decision explains the choice either way, so anyone who tells you the question is settled is describing how sure they feel.
What does the gap do to a family application?Link to this section
It widens, because the add-ons are percentages of the same contested wage.
The joint instruction sets the household maths: a unit of two people shows at least 75% of the minimum wage for the second person, and 25% for each member after that. Those percentages are not in dispute. The wage they multiply is, so each tier splits in two:
| Household member | Higher reading | Lower reading |
|---|---|---|
| Main applicant | €2,849 | €2,442 |
| First family member | +€1,068.38 | +€915.75 |
| Each additional member | +€356.13 | +€305.25 |
Neither Ley 14/2013 nor the joint instruction says which reading governs the add-ons, and you can find reputable immigration practices publishing each set. A couple planning to the lower pair and a couple planning to the higher pair are budgeting a meaningful distance apart for exactly the same application.
Take a couple with no children. On the higher reading they show €3,917.38 a month, which is a gross annual €47,008.50 between them. On the lower reading the same couple shows €3,357.75 a month. Two households with identical paperwork, and one of them is budgeting several thousand euros a year more than the other because no text says which pair of numbers governs.
This site prepares files against the higher figures throughout, so the household table below is the one our eligibility check and our pillar pages agree on:
| Household | Monthly income | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Just you | €2,849 | €34,188 |
| You + 1 family member | €3,917.38 | €47,008.56 |
| You + 2 family members | €4,273.51 | €51,282.12 |
| You + 3 family members | €4,629.64 | €55,555.68 |
One thing that is settled is who may be on the application. Ley 14/2013, article 62.4, names the spouse or a partner in an analogous relationship, children who are minors or who depend on you economically and have not formed a household of their own, and dependent ascendants. A dependent parent is on that list for this visa. Do not carry that assumption across to the Non-Lucrative Visa, where the equivalent list is a different one and stops short of parents.
Why do I also see a third, lower figure?Link to this section
Because a lot of pages are still quoting last year's minimum wage.
The wage is reset by royal decree, and the 2026 decree raised it by a little over three per cent. Every income figure derived from the wage moved with it, upward, on the first of January. Pages written for 2025 and never revisited still show the old pair, and they look authoritative because they were correct when they were published. If a page quotes a figure without naming the decree behind it, you have no way of telling which year it belongs to, which is reason enough to ignore the number.
Any figure for this visa should be traceable to a specific royal decree by number and year, and checking that takes seconds. If the page does not name one, or names a decree from a previous year, it is describing a bar that no longer exists. That is also why the figures on this site render from a single dated configuration rather than being typed into the prose: when the decree changes, one line changes and every page follows.
What if my income lands between the two numbers?Link to this section
Then you are not automatically out, but you are relying on something other than salary, and it needs to be documented before you file rather than argued afterwards.
The UGE checklist allows bank certificates showing savings or liquid funds to cover a shortfall. The condition attached is the part people miss: the funds have to cover the difference for the whole period of the authorisation you are asking for, not for a month or a quarter. On the in-Spain route the initial authorisation runs up to three years, so a shortfall of a few hundred euros a month is a four-figure sum multiplied by thirty-six. Work that out on paper before deciding the gap is small.
Three other things commonly move a borderline file in the wrong direction.
The first is confusing gross with net. The bar is measured before withholding, so anyone calculating from take-home pay arrives at a number that understates what they actually earn. Read it off the gross line of the payslip, or off the face value of the invoice.
The second is inconsistency across the evidence window. That window is the three months before you apply, and a bank certificate has to match the payslips or invoices. An income that averages above the bar but arrives in irregular lumps is harder to present than the same annual total paid in twelve even instalments. If you can time your filing to sit after three clean months, do that.
That window bites differently depending on how you are paid. A salaried employee usually has three payslips of the same size and a bank account showing three matching deposits, and the evidence assembles itself. A freelancer invoicing several clients has to show that the invoices, the bank certificate and the contracts describe the same relationships, and a strong quarter that follows two weak ones is not the same story as a steady year. Where the three months undersell what you actually earn, the savings route above is what covers the difference, and it works far better when you plan for it than when you reach for it late.
The third is a letter written in the wrong currency. The letter authorising remote work from Spain has to state the salary in euros, along with your role, your main functions, an express statement that the job can be done by telematic means and the terms of the remote arrangement. A letter that quotes only your home currency sends the reviewer looking for a conversion you did not supply.
So which number should I plan against?Link to this section
The higher one, with room above it.
That is not caution for its own sake. It is the only choice that removes the question from your file: an applicant who clears €2,849 a month gross clears both readings, and nobody has to decide which reading applies to them. An applicant who clears only the lower figure has staked the application on an interpretation that no official source has ever confirmed in writing, and will find out which reading their reviewer holds at the worst possible moment.
Leave a margin on top as well. The minimum wage is reset by royal decree most years and rose for 2026, which means the bar rises with it. A file assembled over several months against a wage figure that changes on the first of January is a file that can meet the requirement when you start gathering documents and miss it by the time you submit. Check the current decree at the point you file, not at the point you begin.
Run your own household through the eligibility check. It asks six questions, wants no email address, and prints the rule behind whatever answer it gives you. If the outcome is a yes, the step-by-step application guide covers what happens between the income evidence and the residence card. And the two figures are set side by side, in the shortest form, on the pillar page itself.