Spain's Digital Nomad Visa: requirements for employees and freelancers in 2026

It is for people who already earn their money outside Spain and can carry on earning it from a Spanish address. Spain calls them international teleworkers. Two shapes qualify: you are employed by a company abroad that agrees you can do the job remotely, or you are self-employed with clients abroad.

Anyone outside the EU, the EEA and Switzerland can apply, and applicants come from everywhere: Manila, Toronto, Lagos, Buenos Aires, Seoul. Citizens of an EU or EEA country and of Switzerland need no visa. Nationality decides which criminal-record certificate you produce and whether a certificate of coverage exists for you. It does not decide whether you qualify.

If your money arrives without you working for it, this is the wrong visa and the Non-Lucrative one is the right one. The two compared, row by row, or six questions that tell you which fits.

Both qualify. What changes is the evidence you file, and the requirements underneath are the same three: the relationship is at least three months old, the company on the other side of it has been trading for at least a year, and you can show you are qualified to do the work.

If you are employed

• An employment contract, and proof the relationship has run for at least three months before you apply.
• A letter from the employer authorizing remote work from Spain: your role, your main functions, an express statement that the job can be done by telematic means, your salary in euros, and the terms of the remote arrangement.

If you are self-employed

• Service contracts with your clients abroad, again running at least three months before the application.
• Terms that say where the work is done and what you are paid for it.

Either way

• Proof the employer or main client has had real, continued activity for at least a year: a mercantile-registry certificate or its local equivalent.
• A degree from a recognized university, a vocational or business-school qualification related to the role, or at least three years of professional experience doing similar work. Regulated professions need homologation, or a notarized declaration that you will not practise the profession in Spain.

The list comes from the joint instruction on international teleworkers and the Large Companies Unit’s own document checklist.

For 2026, a single applicant shows €2,849 a month, gross, before deductions. That is 200% of the Spanish minimum wage.

The minimum wage is the whole mechanism. For 2026 it is set at €1,221 a month across fourteen payments, with an annual floor of €17,094 (Real Decreto 126/2026, arts. 1 and 3). The unit that decides these applications reads income as gross annual, so the working monthly figure is that annual floor divided by twelve, doubled.

You prove it with payslips or invoices for the three months before you apply, plus a bank certificate in your name that matches them. Where the income falls short, bank certificates showing savings can cover the difference for the whole period the authorization is asked for (UGE checklist). A signed contract or a firm offer is admissible too.

Because the minimum wage has two honest monthly readings, and different sites picked different ones. Spain sets the wage per month across fourteen payments a year, and it also sets an annual floor.

• Take the annual floor, divide by twelve, double it: €2,849 a month. This is the figure the Large Companies Unit works from, because it evaluates gross annual income.
• Take the fourteen-payment monthly wage and double that instead: €2,442 a month.

We prepare files against the higher figure. Someone who clears it clears either reading. Run your own household size against it.

Where the two readings come from, what they do to the family add-ons, and what to do if your income lands between them: the two income numbers, taken apart.

One of two ways. Either you produce a certificate of coverage from a country that has a social-security agreement with Spain, which keeps you in your home system, or somebody registers you with the Spanish one.

The certificate is the one your own social-security agency issues to say which country’s legislation applies to you, and it has to say in words that it covers remote work performed from Spain. A receipt proving you have applied for one is not accepted. Whether you can get one at all depends on your country: the Seguridad Social publishes the list of bilateral agreements, and the table below reads from it.

Where no agreement covers you, the alternative depends on how you earn:

• Employed: your foreign employer registers with Spanish Social Security, or shows it has asked to, and commits to putting you on the books in the general regime before you start working.
• Self-employed: you commit to registering with RETA, the self-employed regime, before you start.

In our experience this is the requirement that decides most employee cases, because it asks something of the employer rather than of you. If yours will not register, tell us the situation and we will tell you honestly whether there is a route.

Health insurance follows from the same answer: private cover from an insurer authorized in Spain is required, unless you will be covered by Spanish Social Security or hold a coordination entitlement that covers healthcare.

Yes, and it is the faster of the two ways in. Anyone legally present in Spain, a tourist stay included, can apply electronically to the UGE-CE, the unit for large companies and strategic groups. The authorization is granted directly for up to three years and renewed in two-year periods, and filing keeps your current stay legal until the file is resolved (Ley 14/2013, arts. 74 quinquies and 76).

From abroad, you apply at the Spanish consulate with jurisdiction over the place you legally live. That grants a teleworker visa valid for up to one year, which is by itself enough to live in Spain and work remotely. In the sixty days before it expires you apply in Spain for the three-year authorization (art. 74 quater).

One consequence people miss: the visa itself needs no residence card, but an authorization running longer than six months does, so the in-Spain route ends at a police station with a TIE appointment (arts. 75.4 and 76.2).

A spouse or partner, dependent children and dependent ascendants can apply with you or join later, and each one raises the income you have to show. The first family member adds €1,068.38 a month, and every member after that adds €356.13 a month.

Those are the conservative figures. The instruction sets the add-ons at 75% and 25% of the minimum wage without saying which monthly reading of it applies, so a lower pair is also in circulation, built on the fourteen-payment figure. No official text resolves it. We use the higher pair for the same reason we use the higher main figure: it satisfies both readings.

One question we will not answer from the statute: whether a spouse’s authorization lets them work. Ley 14/2013 lets the family apply and sets what they must prove, and then says nothing about work rights. Neither does the joint instruction, nor the unit’s own checklist. Until an official source says it in words, we do not. Ask us and we will tell you what is settled and what is not.

Filed from inside Spain, the authorization has a decision period of about twenty working days, and silence at the end of it means granted. The period is in the statute: Ley 14/2013 art. 76.1 gives twenty days from the electronic filing and says an unresolved application is understood to be approved. The statute says days rather than working days; Ley 39/2015 art. 30.2 is why everyone counts them as working days.

The consular route has a deadline too, and its shape matters more than its length. The law gives the consulate ten working days from the day after you file to resolve and notify the visa (Ley 14/2013 art. 75.5). It carries two escapes written into the same texts: it does not bind where your application falls under the prior consultation of art. 22 of the Visa Code, in which case the Code’s own period applies, and the Ministry’s own consulate pages add that the period may be extended when they ask for more documents or call you for an interview.

Read that as a deadline the consulate owes you, not as a forecast of how long your application takes. The clock starts the day after filing, so it says nothing about the wait for an appointment, which is where most of the real waiting lives, and not every consulate publishes the figure.

Our own estimates for the parts we control: two to six weeks to gather documents, one to two weeks for sworn translations. We sequence the stages so nothing expires while something else is being translated.

Three packages for the Digital Nomad Visa, and the price on the page is our whole fee.

• Document Review, €299. You prepare, we make sure it's right.
• Complete, €1,249. We prepare everything. You keep working.
• Settled, €1,899. Everything in Complete, plus your first weeks in Spain.

Third-party costs are not ours and we never mark them up: sworn translations, the consular visa fee, the authorization fee on form 790-038, apostille or legalisation charges, and health insurance where you need it. They depend on your country and on how many documents you carry, so we quote them for your situation before you pay us anything. Everything each package includes is on the pricing page.