How to apply for Spain's Digital Nomad Visa: employee and freelancer routes, step by step

Two people can hold the same Spanish teleworker permit and have filed two completely different applications. One went to a consulate before leaving home and came back with a one-year visa. The other flew in on a tourist stay, filed online from a flat in Valencia, and got a three-year residence authorisation. Same law, different door.

The requirements themselves live on our Digital Nomad Visa page. What follows is the doing, in the order you do it, with the door marked at each step.

Key takeawaysLink to this section#

• There are two doors: the consulate visa, filed where you live, and the residence authorisation, filed electronically from inside Spain with the UGE-CE. They give you different lengths of permission.
• The income bar is 200% of Spain's minimum wage, and it is measured gross, before any withholding.
• The two documents that sink most files are about the company, not about you: proof it has traded for at least a year, and proof your relationship with it is at least three months old.
• Social security is a fork with three accepted answers, and you have to pick one before you file, not after you land.
• Your criminal-record certificate covers the countries you have lived in for the last two years, and you sign a separate declaration covering five.

Am I on the employee route or the freelancer route?Link to this section#

You are on the employee route if a company abroad pays you as staff, and on the freelancer route if you invoice clients as a self-employed professional. The forms and the income bar are identical, and so are the criminal-record rules. What differs is what the company has to sign, how you prove the work, and which social-security answer is open to you.

An employee needs a letter from the employer authorising remote work from Spain. Spain's Large Companies Unit (UGE-CE) sets out what that letter has to contain: your role profile, 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. A generic "we are happy for you to work from anywhere" email does not do it. The letter has to read like it was written for this application, because it was.

A freelancer proves the same relationship with services contracts instead of an employment contract. The joint instruction issued by the two directorates that run this permit handles the employed and the self-employed variants separately, and the self-employed one expects contracts with the companies you actually invoice.

Some people are both: a salaried job plus two or three invoicing clients. In our experience that is where files stall, because every relationship you name has to carry its own evidence, and it is tempting to name a client whose paperwork you cannot produce.

Do I earn enough, and what counts as income?Link to this section#

The bar for the main applicant is 200% of the Spanish minimum wage, which for 2026 works out at €2,849 a month gross, or €34,188 a year. Family members on the same application add a further 75% of the minimum wage for the first and 25% for each one after.

Digital Nomad Visa income requirement by household size, 2026

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

The minimum wage itself is set each year by royal decree. For 2026 it is Real Decreto 126/2026, which fixes an annual floor of €17,094, in force to the end of the year. The monthly figure above is that annual floor divided by twelve, which is how the UGE reads it in practice: it assesses gross annual income. If the arithmetic behind these numbers is what you are here for, the guide to IPREM and SMI takes both indexes apart.

There is a genuine ambiguity in the family add-ons. Neither the statute nor the joint instruction says whether "the minimum wage" for the 75% and 25% tiers means the fourteen-payment monthly figure or the annual figure divided by twelve, and practitioners publish both. This site uses the higher reading, because an applicant who clears it clears either. The two numbers are set side by side on the pillar page.

The evidence is narrower than people expect. The UGE checklist asks for payslips or invoices covering the three months before you apply, plus a bank certificate in your own name that matches them. A screenshot of a banking app is not a bank certificate. If your income falls short of the bar, bank certificates showing savings or liquid funds can cover the difference, but they have to cover it for the whole length of the authorisation you are asking for, not for a month or two.

If you want to see where your household lands before reading further, check your eligibility in about a minute. It asks for no email address, and it prints the rule behind whatever answer it gives you.

What proves my remote work is real?Link to this section#

Two documents do most of the work, and neither of them is about you.

The first is proof that the company has had real, continuing activity for at least a year. In practice that is an official certificate from the mercantile registry where the company is incorporated, or the closest local equivalent. A company incorporated last quarter cannot produce one, and no amount of income makes up for it.

The words "or equivalent" carry a lot of weight for applicants whose countries keep nothing that looks like a Spanish mercantile registry. Plenty of jurisdictions register companies with a state authority, a chamber of commerce or a tax office instead. Ask the company for whatever that authority issues, and expect to say in the covering letter which body issued it and why it is the equivalent. Leaving a reviewer to work that out on their own is how a file comes back with questions.

The second is proof that your relationship with that company started at least three months before you file. For an employee that is the employment contract with its start date; for a freelancer, the services contract with each company named. Three months means three months of relationship, not three months of invoices you sent last week for older work.

A freelancer's contracts are worth a second look before they go in the file. A signed services contract with a start date, a scope and a rate is evidence. A chain of emails agreeing to a project is not, however real the work was. Where a long-standing client has never signed anything, the fix is to sign one now that records when the relationship actually began, and to put the invoice history behind it.

On top of those you assemble:

• The application form. Formulario MIT for the UGE authorisation; the national visa form for the consulate route.
• A copy of your passport, every page of it. For the consulate route it needs at least a year of validity, two blank pages, and to have been issued within the last ten years.
• The fee. Modelo 790 código 038 with proof of payment for the UGE authorisation. The consular visa fee is separate and varies by consulate and nationality, so read your own consulate's sheet rather than a forum post.
• Qualifications: a copy of a degree from a recognised university, vocational training or business school related to the role, or proof of at least three years of professional experience in comparable functions. If your profession is regulated in Spain, you either homologate the qualification or sign a notarised declaration that you will not practise it in Spain.
• A CV. The UGE accepts a simple translation for this one.

Every foreign public document in the file needs to be apostilled or legalised, and translated into Spanish by a translator authorised by Spain's foreign ministry. That is a calendar of its own, and it is the part people start too late.

What do I do about social security?Link to this section#

You have to show which social-security system will cover you from the day you start working in Spain, and there are three accepted answers. Pick yours before you file.

The first answer is a certificate of coverage. If a bilateral or multilateral agreement links your country's system to Spain's, your home authority can issue a certificate of applicable legislation that keeps you in your own system. It has to cover remote work performed from Spain expressly. A receipt proving you applied for one is not accepted in its place, which is worth knowing early, because these certificates are not always quick. The wording matters as much as the certificate: an authority that issues its standard posted-worker document without naming remote work from Spain has given you a piece of paper that may not answer the question being asked. Tell them what it is for when you apply.

The second is registration by your employer. For employees whose country has no such agreement, the file shows that the foreign employer is registered with Spanish Social Security, or has requested registration if you are applying for a visa from abroad, together with a commitment to register you in the general scheme before you start work. This is the answer that depends on somebody else's finance department, so raise it with them in the first conversation, not the last.

The third is registering yourself. Freelancers commit to joining RETA, Spain's social-security scheme for the self-employed, before starting activity.

Whether a certificate of coverage is even available to you depends on your country, so here is what we have checked, with the date on each row.

Health insurance follows from the same fork. You need public or private cover from an insurer authorised to operate in Spain, active for the whole authorisation, and travel insurance does not qualify. But you do not need a separate policy if you will be registered with Spanish Social Security, or if you hold a coordination certificate that already entitles you to healthcare.

Do I apply at a consulate, or from inside Spain?Link to this section#

If you are legally in Spain, and an ordinary tourist stay counts, you can file the residence authorisation electronically with the UGE-CE. If you are not in Spain, you apply for the teleworker visa at the consulate for the district where you live.

Which door is better depends on where you are standing. The in-Spain route grants three years in one decision, resolves faster on paper, and turns silence in your favour. The consular route grants a year, and then asks you to do a second application from inside Spain before that year is out. Against that, the in-Spain route is only open to someone whose presence in Spain is already lawful, which means arranging somewhere to live and a way to assemble a Spanish-language file before anyone has approved anything.

Filing from inside Spain has one property worth understanding: Ley 14/2013 art. 76.1 extends the legality of your current stay until the application is resolved, so a tourist stay that would otherwise run out does not leave you irregular while you wait.

That article also sets the UGE's clock at twenty days from electronic filing, and says that if the file is not resolved in time the authorisation is understood to be granted. Spanish administrative deadlines are counted in working days unless a norm says otherwise, so read it as roughly twenty working days, with approval by silence at the end of it.

The consular clock works differently, and it gets misquoted constantly. Ley 14/2013 art. 75.5 says visa applications are to be resolved and notified within ten working days. That is a deadline the consulate owes you, and it is not a forecast of when your visa turns up. The same article removes it where the applicant falls under the prior consultation of art. 22 of the Visa Code, in which case the Visa Code's own period governs instead. And Spain's own consulate pages, such as the one for Bogotá, state the period alongside the caveat that it can be extended when additional documents or an interview are requested. What none of them says is what happens if the consulate runs past the ten days. Art. 76.1 puts approval by silence into the in-Spain route in plain words; art. 75 contains no equivalent sentence, so do not count on silence deciding a consular file either way.

Two more limits sit on that number. It starts the day after you file, so it says nothing at all about how long you wait for the appointment beforehand, which is where most of the real waiting lives. And not every consulate publishes it: the Santiago de Chile teleworker sheet gives the UGE's twenty days and no consular deadline at all. The number belongs to the law and to the ministry pages that carry it, not to whichever consulate you happen to be booked at. If you want the whole calendar rather than this one stage, our timeline guide lays out every window with our own estimates marked as estimates.

What actually happens on filing day?Link to this section#

On the UGE route, filing day is a browser tab. You submit the Formulario MIT electronically with the file attached, including the paid 790/038 receipt, and the twenty-day clock starts from that submission. Nobody looks you in the eye, which means the file has to explain itself.

On the consulate route, filing day is an appointment you booked weeks or months earlier, and you appear in person. Bring the originals of everything you are submitting as copies, and bring your own copy of the checklist your consulate publishes, because consulates add local requirements: extra photographs, additional identity copies, proof of residence in the consular district.

Both routes want the criminal-record file assembled the same way. You provide certificates from the countries you have lived in during the last two years, apostilled or legalised and translated, and you sign a responsible declaration stating you have no criminal record over the last five years. On the consulate route this applies from age 18. If you already hold a Spanish residence or stay authorisation of more than six months, the certificate is not required.

Nothing in the joint instruction or the UGE checklist sets a maximum age for that certificate on the in-Spain route. Our own guidance, from doing this repeatedly, is to have certificates issued within 90 days of filing, which satisfies every consulate we have checked and leaves you room if the file slips by a few weeks.

If either office comes back asking for something more, answer it quickly and completely. That request is what the extension in the ministry's own wording refers to, and a half answer buys a second request rather than a decision. Keep the whole file, in the version you submitted, somewhere you can reach it from a phone.

Family members join by filing their own identity documents, apostilled relationship certificates such as a marriage or birth certificate, and proof of dependence for adult children or ascendants, on top of the household income shown in the table above.

What happens after they say yes?Link to this section#

On the consulate route the consulate issues a teleworker visa valid for a maximum of one year, and that visa is by itself enough to live in Spain and work remotely. The law says so directly: art. 75.4 states the visa authorises residence without your having to obtain a foreigner identity card. You have one month from being notified of a favourable decision to collect the visa, and a file left uncollected is closed as withdrawn.

Then, in the sixty calendar days before that visa expires, you apply from inside Spain for the three-year residence authorisation. People forget this step, and forgetting it turns a straightforward upgrade into a much harder problem.

On the UGE route the unit grants the residence authorisation directly, for up to three years, renewable in two-year periods. Because it runs longer than six months, you apply in person for the TIE, the foreigner identity card, once it is granted.

What this guide will not tell youLink to this section#

Two questions come up in almost every first email, and neither of them has an answer we can source.

The first is whether your spouse or partner can work. The law lets a spouse, an unmarried partner, dependent children and dependent ascendants apply with you, jointly or later, and it sets out what they must prove. It does not say whether their authorisation permits them to work. We read the consolidated statute, the joint instruction, the UGE checklist and the UGE's own public page looking for it, and all four are silent. Until an official source says it in words, we say nothing, and if this decides your move, it is the first thing to ask about.

The second is how much of a freelancer's work may be for companies based in Spain. A percentage circulates widely. It is not in the sources this site verifies against, so you will not find it printed here. Ask before you build a client list around it.