Spain Non-Lucrative Visa income requirements for 2026: the exact math
Plain Spain editorial team · · 11 min read
Non-Lucrative applications rarely fail because the applicant is poor. They fail because the applicant aimed at the wrong number, counted the wrong people into the household, or proved the right number with paperwork the consulate would not take.
The 2026 requirement is one multiplication and one addition, and the sums take about a minute. Proving them takes months, which is where most of this article goes. The rest of the application, form by form, is set out on the Non-Lucrative Visa page.
Key takeawaysLink to this section
- A single applicant needs €2,400 a month, which is €28,800 across a first authorization of twelve months.
- Each qualifying family member on the application adds €600 a month, or €7,200 a year.
- Not everyone you support is a family member for this purpose. The regulation's list is closed, and a dependent parent is not on it.
- Savings can stand in for monthly income. They are measured against the whole authorization you are asking for, not against one month.
- The funds have to arrive without you working for them. This visa forbids work in Spain, for you and for the family who come with you.
- The bar that binds you is the one in force on the day you file, not the day you started collecting documents.
What income does the Non-Lucrative Visa require in 2026?Link to this section
€2,400 a month for one applicant, and €600 a month more for each family member who comes with you.
Both figures come from article 62.1 of the immigration regulation, Real Decreto 1155/2024, which asks a Non-Lucrative applicant to hold, for their own upkeep during their residence in Spain, a monthly amount in euros equal to "el 400 % del IPREM", 400% of IPREM, and then "el 100 % del IPREM" again for each dependent family member, payable on top of the first amount. The ministry states the same rule in plainer form on its Non-Lucrative residence sheet.
Nothing in either text is expressed in euros. Both are expressed as multiples of an index, which is why two websites can quote the same rule and print different amounts: they are multiplying different years.
Is that figure gross or net?Link to this section
We cannot give you a sourced answer, and anyone who gives you one confidently is guessing. Article 62.1 speaks of an amount the applicant has available each month, and neither its text nor the ministry's residence sheet draws the line between income before tax and income after it. The distinction is stated explicitly in Spanish immigration practice on the Digital Nomad side, where the Large Companies Unit's checklist says the amounts are gross, before withholding. No equivalent sentence exists for this visa in the sources we check.
What follows from that is practical rather than legal. A file built on the after-tax figure clears the bar under either reading. A file built on the gross figure, landing a few percent over the line, is relying on an interpretation nobody official has published. When the gap between the two readings is what decides your application, that is a question for your consulate before you book the appointment, not after.
Where does the number actually come from?Link to this section
From one line in a budget law. IPREM, the public income index Spanish means tests are built on, is set at €600 a month by the ninetieth additional provision of Ley 31/2022, whose consolidated text still reads "El IPREM mensual, 600 euros". Four times that is the applicant's bar. One times it is the family add-on.
| Who | The rule in article 62.1 | A month | Over a twelve-month authorization |
|---|---|---|---|
| You, the applicant | 400% of monthly IPREM | €2,400 | €28,800 |
| Each family member | 100% of monthly IPREM, on top | €600 | €7,200 |
That index has not moved since 2023, because IPREM changes only when a state budget law changes it and the budgets since have been extended rather than replaced. So the 2026 requirement is identical to the 2024 and 2025 requirement, which is unusual enough that people assume a page quoting it is out of date. It is not. How the index works, and what would have to happen for it to move, is covered in our guide to IPREM and the minimum wage.
Article 62.1 fixes the amounts at the point of "solicitud del visado", the visa application itself, so if a budget law raises IPREM between the day you start gathering documents and the day you sit down at the consulate, you are measured against the new figure. Nobody can tell you when the next budget passes. Our own advice to clients whose appointment is months out is to plan above the current bar rather than exactly to it.
Why do published figures for this visa disagree?Link to this section
Three mistakes account for almost all of it, and each produces a number that looks plausible.
The first is quoting the other visa. Spain's Digital Nomad Visa is built on the minimum wage rather than on IPREM, its multiple is different, and its figure moved this year when the minimum wage did. A page that lists both visas and drifts between the two indexes will print a Non-Lucrative bar that belongs to neither.
The second is the annual IPREM. The same budget provision that sets IPREM at €600 a month also publishes an annual value on a fourteen-payment basis, which applies only where some other rule counts an annual amount including Spain's two extra salary payments. Article 62.1 multiplies the monthly figure, not that one. Twelve times the monthly figure is what a year of the requirement comes to, and there is no gentler annual reading available to choose instead.
The third is the renewal figure. A Non-Lucrative renewal is granted for two years and its funds test covers that whole period, so the sum in circulation for renewals is twenty-four months of the monthly bar. Reprinted as a yearly requirement, it doubles the real number, and it is the version that talks people out of a visa they qualify for.
There is also honest lag. A figure published in a year when the budget did change is not wrong about that year, it is simply old, and the pages that never carry a date are impossible to tell apart from the pages that are current. The date at the top of this article is the day someone re-read every source linked in it.
How much does each family member add?Link to this section
€600 a month each, flat, with no discount for the second or third person. A couple therefore needs €3,000 a month between them, and two parents with two children need €4,200.
| Household | Monthly income | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Just you | €2,400 | €28,800 |
| You + 1 family member | €3,000 | €36,000 |
| You + 2 family members | €3,600 | €43,200 |
| You + 3 family members | €4,200 | €50,400 |
The add-on is only payable for a person the regulation itself counts as family, and for the Non-Lucrative Visa that list is closed. Article 61.3 of RD 1155/2024 defines the term for this authorization as:
- your spouse, registered partner, or a stable partner you can prove, which the article accepts on evidence of at least one continuous year of living together as a couple, unless you have children in common;
- your unmarried minor children, or those of your spouse or partner, who have not formed a household of their own;
- adult children of yours or your partner's who have a disability requiring support, or who cannot objectively provide for their own needs because of their state of health.
A parent you support is absent from that list. Dependent ascendants appear in Spanish immigration law on the Digital Nomad side, under article 62.4 of Ley 14/2013, and not here. People find this out late, after the household has already been planned around bringing them. If the two routes are still open to you, the row-by-row comparison shows where else they diverge.
Can I use savings instead of monthly income?Link to this section
Yes, and the rule for converting one into the other is article 62.2: the global sum of means has to represent the monthly amount "en relación con el tiempo de vigencia de la autorización solicitada", in relation to the period of the authorization being applied for.
A first Non-Lucrative authorization runs twelve months. So an applicant showing savings alone is showing €28,800, and a couple is showing €36,000, sitting in an account and evidenced.
One month's balance is not the same evidence as an income. Article 62.2 asks for a global sum of means, and the consulate is reading for whether that sum is really there and really yours, which is a different question from whether a number appeared in an account once. A deposit that lands a fortnight before the certificate is issued, with nothing behind it, raises the question the file exists to answer. Statements that run back far enough to show where the money came from answer it in advance, and if the source is a sale or an inheritance, the document proving that belongs in the file next to the balance.
Most files are neither pure income nor pure savings. A pension that covers most of the monthly figure, topped up from savings, is normal and the regulation accommodates it: article 62.2 speaks of the global sum of means, not of a single source. What it does not accommodate is arithmetic the reader has to do for you. If your case is a combination, the file should say in one line what the total is and which document proves each part of it.
What counts as passive income?Link to this section
Money that arrives whether or not you work for it. That is the whole test, and it is stricter than it sounds.
Article 61.1 of RD 1155/2024 places the holder and the accompanying family in Spain "sin realizar actividades laborales o profesionales", without carrying out employment or professional activity. A remote job for a company on the other side of the world is still work, and the ban reaches the family too, so a couple where one partner intends to keep working is not a Non-Lucrative household. The consulate sheets restate the same test on the money itself. The Casablanca requirements sheet asks that the funds not depend on carrying out any work or professional activity, that they be lawfully obtained, and that tax has been declared on them in the country of origin.
What the official texts do not contain is a list of approved income types. There is no provision anywhere in the regulation that names pensions, rents or dividends as acceptable and something else as unacceptable. There is a test, and a document list for proving whatever you have. Treat any site that publishes a definitive list of qualifying income sources as summarising, not quoting.
Foreign currency is not a problem in itself. Article 62.1 asks for the monthly amount in euros "o su equivalente legal en moneda extranjera", or its legal equivalent in foreign currency, so income paid in dollars, rand or yen counts at its euro value. In our experience the exposure is not the rule but the timing: a household sitting two or three percent over the bar can drop under it on an exchange-rate move between the day the bank certificate is issued and the day the file is read.
What do consulates actually check?Link to this section
Two things, in this order: that the number clears the bar, and that the documents prove the number without anyone having to take your word for it.
The ministry's residence sheet says proof may come by "cualquier medio de prueba", any means of proof, and gives examples including property titles, certified cheques, and credit cards accompanied by a bank certification. In the files we prepare, the documents that do the work are a bank certificate stating the balance and the account holder, statements covering enough months to show the income is periodic rather than a one-off deposit, and the award or entitlement letter behind whatever pays you.
Timing matters more than most applicants expect. The regulation sets no maximum age for a bank certificate, and the consulate sheets we read set none either, unlike the criminal-record and medical certificates, which do carry published freshness windows. That is less of a relief than it sounds. A balance certificate issued five months before the appointment invites the obvious question about what the account has done since. We date the financial evidence as close to the filing as the bank will allow, and we keep the statements running up to it.
Beyond that, the sheets differ, and you have to read your own consulate's. New York, for example, publishes no visa-fee amount at all and requires an FBI-issued criminal record certificate no more than six months old, while Casablanca allows three months for the same class of document and asks for proof of accommodation in Spain. Both are applying the same regulation. Neither publishes anything resembling an approval rate, and nobody who quotes you one can source it. What is documented is the refusal itself and what follows it, which we cover in why these applications get denied.
If you want the figure for your own household rather than a worked example, our eligibility check asks six questions and returns it, with no email address required. If you would rather see the whole application in order first, the step-by-step walkthrough covers the forms, the sequence and the appointment.
The arithmetic is the easy half. A pension well above 400% of IPREM still gets refused if it is evidenced in a way the consulate will not accept, and clearing the bar by a hair with an account in a foreign currency is a decision to be at the mercy of an exchange rate for the length of the process.