Austria Citizenship by Investment Does Not Exist

Austria has no citizenship by investment program. There is no application route, no published price, no processing time and no investment schedule, because no such scheme exists in Austrian law. A quoted figure for an Austrian passport is a figure with no legal source behind it.

Two separate things do exist, and they are routinely confused with each other and with a program that is not there. The first is a constitutional provision allowing the Federal Government to confirm that a grant of citizenship serves the special interest of the Republic. The second is a quota-limited residence permit for people who can support themselves without working. Neither is bought, and only the first touches citizenship at all.

The constitutional route: section 10(6) of the Citizenship Act

Section 10(6) of the Staatsbürgerschaftsgesetz 1985 is a constitutional provision. Its text, retrieved from the Austrian federal legal information system (RIS) on 23 August 2026, reads:

Die Voraussetzungen des Abs. 1 Z 1 und 7 sowie des Abs. 3 entfallen, wenn die Bundesregierung bestätigt, daß die Verleihung der Staatsbürgerschaft wegen der vom Fremden bereits erbrachten und von ihm noch zu erwartenden außerordentlichen Leistungen im besonderen Interesse der Republik liegt.

Three of the ordinary conditions fall away if the Federal Government confirms that the grant lies in the special interest of the Republic on account of extraordinary achievements the applicant has already rendered and is still expected to render. The three set aside are the ten-year residence requirement in section 10(1)(1), the secured-livelihood requirement in section 10(1)(7), and the rule in section 10(3) barring a grant to a person who omits the steps available and reasonable to him for leaving his existing nationality.

Everything else in section 10 continues to apply. The provision shortens no queue and sells no place in one. It removes a residence clock and puts a merit test in its place.

Who decides

The Federal Government decides, as a body. Not a ministry, not a province, not an agency. Under the regulation governing the procedure, retrieved from RIS on 23 August 2026 in the version then in force, the application goes to the provincial government, which forwards the administrative file to the Federal Minister of the Interior. The Minister prepares the recommendation after taking positions from the ministries with subject-matter competence. The Federal Government then rules, and the regulation requires it to take these decisions regularly and at least once in each calendar half-year.

What counts as extraordinary achievement

The Council of Ministers fixed the assessment criteria in its session of 25 February 2014, and the Federal Ministry of the Interior publishes them. The threshold statement is one sentence: Außerordentliche Leistungen sind nur solche, die aktuell weit über dem Durchschnitt im jeweiligen Bereich liegen. Extraordinary achievements are only those that currently lie far above the average in the field concerned.

The criteria are grouped into four fields of activity, published as examples rather than as a closed list: scientific, economic, sporting and artistic achievement. The economic criteria are the ones a prospective investor should read in full, because that is where the misunderstanding lives:

• ownership of a company, or a senior function carrying decisive influence in one, with board membership on its own expressly not sufficient
• high economic performance of that company
• creation and securing of jobs in the Austrian labor market to a relevant extent, particularly in economically weak regions of Austria
• significant investments or completed projects of the company in Austria, in particular investments already made, followed immediately by the words bloße Geldflüsse sind nicht ausreichend, mere flows of money are not sufficient
• the company’s standing abroad
• promotion of Austria’s bilateral and multilateral external relations in the economic sector

The same document states that a person is never naturalised honorarily, and that the award of decorations alone does not establish a special interest of the Republic. The criteria need not be met cumulatively; the Federal Government weighs them in the round for the individual case.

How many people receive it

Statistik Austria published the 2025 figures on 18 February 2026. Austrian citizenship was granted to 25,095 people that year. Of those, 1,262 grants (5.0 per cent) were discretionary under section 10, and 1,185 of that 1,262 rested on the ordinary ground of at least ten years of residence under section 10(1). Statistik Austria publishes no separate line for section 10(6), so the annual number for that provision alone is not on the public record. What the published breakdown does show is the size of the space that every non-residence discretionary ground shares between them, and it is very small.

The residence route, which is not citizenship

The permit marketed online as an Austrian golden visa is the Niederlassungsbewilligung ausgenommen Erwerbstätigkeit, the settlement permit excluding gainful employment. It is aimed at third-country nationals who want to settle in Austria without working there. The figures below are published on Austria’s official migration portal and are stated there for 2026.

• Quota. The number issued each year is limited, so an application competes for a quota place.
• Secured livelihood. Regular monthly income measured against the 2026 reference rates of the General Social Insurance Act (ASVG): EUR 2,616.78 for a single person, EUR 4,128.24 for spouses or registered partners, and EUR 403.76 for each additional child. Qualifying income includes domestic and foreign pensions, business profits earned abroad, and returns on assets, savings or shareholdings.
• German. Proof of German at level A1 of the Common European Framework of Reference at the first application.
• Health insurance covering all risks and providing benefits in Austria.
• Accommodation. A legal entitlement to accommodation regarded as locally customary, evidenced by a lease or by ownership.
• Where it is filed. The first application goes to the competent Austrian representation abroad. Defined categories may file inside Austria after lawful entry.

This permit confers residence. It confers no citizenship and it is not a stage in a citizenship-by-investment process, because there is no such process for it to be a stage in. On the ordinary track, section 10(1)(1) of the Citizenship Act requires at least ten years of lawful and uninterrupted residence in federal territory, of which at least five as a settled resident, before a discretionary naturalisation application can be made at all.

What this is not

Each version of the confusion costs a different amount of time, so each is worth naming.

• It is not a program. A program has an owner, a form, a fee and a decision standard published in advance. Section 10(6) has a decision-maker and a criteria catalog, and nothing else on that list.
• There is no price, because nothing is being sold. The Ministry’s own economic criteria rule payment out as the qualifying act in a single clause: mere flows of money are not sufficient.
• The forty-thousand-euro figure that circulates in marketing material matches no Austrian requirement. The financial test on the settlement permit is a monthly income test measured against social-insurance reference rates that are restated each year. It is not a capital sum and it is not a payment to the state.
• It is not fast. Section 10(6) removes the ten-year clock and replaces it with a merit assessment taken by the Federal Government as a body, at least once every six months.
• Honours do not qualify. The published criteria say so directly, and they also exclude the honorary grant as a category of its own.

The conditions that actually decide a file

Section 10(1) sets conditions that section 10(6) leaves untouched. They stay live in every case:

• a final custodial sentence imposed by a domestic or foreign court for one or more intentional offenses, on the conditions set out in section 10(1)(2)
• a final custodial sentence imposed by a domestic court for a fiscal offense, section 10(1)(3)
• criminal proceedings pending before a domestic court on suspicion of an intentional offense or a fiscal offense punishable by imprisonment, section 10(1)(4)
• substantial impairment of the international relations of the Republic of Austria through the grant, section 10(1)(5)
• past conduct that fails to give assurance of a positive attitude to the Republic, or that presents a danger to public peace, order and security, or that endangers the other public interests named in Article 8(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights, section 10(1)(6)
• relations with foreign states such that the grant would damage the interests of the Republic, section 10(1)(8)

On the merit test itself, the two published disqualifiers are worth knowing before a case is built: a board seat without decisive influence, and decorations without the underlying achievement.

Where independent counsel is useful, and where it is not

No firm can place a client into a program that does not exist, and a firm offering to do so is telling you something about itself. Serka acts as independent counsel on the file, never as an agent: we read the actual position against the criteria the Federal Government applies, and we say plainly whether the achievements on the table sit far above the average in their field. Where they do not, we say that as well, and early. We are not an agent, representative or licensed intermediary of any Austrian authority, and Austrian law appoints none for this provision.

Where the realistic route is residence rather than citizenship, the file becomes a quota application carrying an income test, a language certificate, an insurance policy and an accommodation entitlement, filed at a consulate. That is a document-discipline problem, and it is one we run.

Sources

Every figure and quotation on this page was taken from the Austrian state’s own publications and retrieved on 23 August 2026.

Related pages

• Citizenship by investment: the global overview
• Greece: the Golden Visa is a residence permit, not citizenship

Serka Law Firm advises internationally on investment migration files, wherever the file is. If you hold an Austrian position or a promise about one, send us the facts and the source of the promise, on WhatsApp at +90 530 127 59 35 or at info@serkalaw.com; the criteria above are what it is measured against.

Global Citizenship by Investment and Golden Visa Lawyer