Vanuatu grants citizenship to investors under four separate schemes run by the Citizenship Office and Commission, and the Commission’s own published fee table starts at USD 130,000 for a single applicant plus a USD 5,000 Financial Intelligence Unit due diligence fee. The Capital Investment Immigration Plan is priced separately at USD 260,000. Before any of that matters, one fact decides whether this passport suits your purpose: the European Union moved Vanuatu out of its visa-exempt list and into the list of countries whose nationals need a visa, and that is still where Vanuatu sits today.
This page sets out what the Vanuatu Citizenship Office publishes about its own programs, and what the European Union’s own regulation says about Vanuatu passports. Every figure below was taken from the issuing authority on 23 August 2026, and the fee table and the application steps were read again on 30 September 2026. Where an authority publishes nothing, we say so rather than filling the gap.
The current EU visa position, from the EU’s own regulation
Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 is the instrument that lists which third countries’ nationals need a visa for short stays in the Schengen area and which do not. In its consolidated version of 30 December 2025, Vanuatu appears in Annex I, Part 1, the list of countries whose nationals must hold a visa. Vanuatu does not appear in Annex II at all.
Two steps produced that. Council Decision (EU) 2022/2198 suspended the short-stay visa waiver agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Vanuatu “in whole as regards nationals of Vanuatu, as from 4 February 2023”. Regulation (EU) 2025/11 of 19 December 2024, published in the Official Journal on 14 January 2025, then inserted Vanuatu into Annex I, Part 1, moving it permanently onto the visa-required list. The reasons the EU institutions recorded concern Vanuatu’s investor citizenship schemes: the volume of passports issued, the rejection rate, the absence of a physical presence or residence requirement, and the level of information exchange with applicants’ countries of origin.
We have not found any later EU act restoring the exemption, and Vanuatu’s own Citizenship Office publishes nothing on the subject. If a buyer’s reason for holding a second passport is European travel, that is the fact to weigh first.
What the programs are
The Citizenship Act [Cap 112] came into force in 1980 and has been amended several times, most recently in 2021. The Citizenship Office lists eight categories of citizenship, four of which are investment routes:
- Capital Investment Immigration Plan (CIIP), applied for on Form D. The government contracted Vanuatu Registry Services, based in Hong Kong, as the main agent for this plan.
- Honorary Citizenship under the Vanuatu Development Support Program (DSP), which the Office ties to section 20 of the Citizenship Act. The Citizenship (Development Support Program) Regulations Order No. 33 of 2019 sits under it.
- Vanuatu Contribution Program (VCP).
- Real Estate Option Program (REO), which began on 23 July 2021 and requires the purchase of property inside a Vanuatu Government Approved Project. Naika Holdings Limited is the exclusive master agent worldwide. Four approved projects are named: Pacific Springs at Rentabao on Efate, Narpow Point Coral Bay and the FPF Rainbow City Project, both at Narpow Point on Efate, and Milai on Espiritu Santo.
The amendments to the Act also mean Vanuatu recognises dual citizenship.
The published cost
The Citizenship Office publishes one fee table covering the application fee and the citizenship certificate fee. It does not break the table down by program, and it carves out Form D separately.
| Category | Government mandated fee |
|---|---|
| FIU due diligence fee | USD 5,000 |
| Single applicant | USD 130,000 |
| Married couple | USD 150,000 |
| Married couple and one child | USD 165,000 |
| Married couple and two children | USD 180,000 |
| Additional applicant | USD 10,000 |
The application fee, for everything except Form D, is 5,000 Vatu per application, payable when the application is lodged, and it applies to every applicant regardless of age. The citizenship fee is paid only after the Commission has approved the application.
Form D, the Capital Investment Immigration Plan, is priced on its own terms. The application fee is USD 250 per application. The citizenship fee is USD 260,000, and that figure covers the applicant, a spouse and one child under 18. Each further child under 18 costs USD 19,250. A dependant aged 18 to 21 may be included at USD 44,250 per person.
The Office does not publish a minimum holding period for property bought under the Real Estate Option, and it does not publish a residence requirement for any of the investment routes. What it does publish is the purchase requirement itself: the property must sit inside an approved project.
The step nobody markets: the oath, in Vanuatu
The Citizenship Office publishes its application process as ten steps. Steps nine and ten are the ones that catch investors out.
Step nine is the oath. The Office states that it can only be completed in a Vanuatu court, and that applicants who live in a foreign country must travel to Vanuatu to complete it. Step ten is payment of the citizenship fee, which is what releases the printing of the citizenship certificate. The Office applies a deadline to both: three months from the Commission’s approval. A further two months can be requested in writing from the Secretary General, but the request must be made before the original three months expire. If the deadline passes, the approval expires and a fresh application is required.
The one written test in the process, the Bislama test on the general knowledge of Vanuatu, applies only to Forms A and B, which are naturalisation and marriage. Investors do not sit it.
Timing
The Citizenship Office publishes no end-to-end processing time, and we will not invent one. What it does publish is the sequence and two hard dates inside it. An application is examined by the responsible officers, checked by a compliance officer, assessed by the Internal Screening Committee, and then decided by the Citizenship Commission. One week after the Commission meets, the Secretary General’s office issues a letter with the decision. From that approval, the three-month clock on the oath and the fee starts running.
Honorary citizenship under the Development Support Program follows a different chain. A designated agent puts the name to a Technical Working Group, which runs intelligence checks through the Financial Intelligence Unit. The Group then submits the name to the Citizenship Commission for due diligence, the Commission submits it to the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister advises the President, who confers the citizenship.
What sinks a file
Three things show up in the Office’s own publications.
Due diligence. The Financial Intelligence Unit runs the due diligence for the DSP, the CIIP and the VCP, and has published a revised process for it. The USD 5,000 fee is separate from the citizenship fee and is spent whether or not the application succeeds.
Revocation after the fact. The Commission states that it has revoked close to thirty citizenships granted contrary to the Citizenship Act and the national Constitution, and that further revocations are under suspicion. A grant is not the end of the exposure.
The agent. Applications reach the Commission through designated agents, and the Office publishes both a register of them, carrying 61 entries when we checked it on 23 August 2026, and a separate list of canceled agents. The Office also warns in terms that only domains ending in .gov.vu are official Vanuatu government sites, which tells you how much impersonation surrounds this program.
Where Vanuatu is strong, and where it is not
Vanuatu’s advantage is the shape of the process rather than the price. There is no language test for investors, no residence requirement published, and the decision chain is short. Dual citizenship is recognized. For a buyer whose objective is a second nationality held for its own sake, the file is unusually simple.
The weaknesses are equally concrete. The European Union has legislated Vanuatu onto the visa-required list, and no restoration has been published. The Office states in writing that an applicant living abroad must travel to Vanuatu to swear the oath, so the process is not remote from end to end. The Office publishes no processing-time commitment. And the Commission’s own revocation record shows that a granted certificate can be revisited.
Against the Caribbean programs, the comparison is straightforward on the point most buyers care about. Antigua and Barbuda remains in Annex II of the same EU regulation, the visa-exempt list, and its published minimum contribution to the National Development Fund is USD 230,000. Vanuatu’s published single-applicant figure is the lower of the two, though the two are charged on different bases, one as a contribution and one as a citizenship fee, so they are not a like-for-like price. The choice between them is usually decided by what the passport is for rather than by what it costs.
Vanuatu and Türkiye: what each price buys
Vanuatu carries the lowest published price among the programs on our country comparison and Türkiye one of the higher ones, so the useful comparison is not the price but what each price buys. The Vanuatu column is the Citizenship Office’s own fee table and process; the Türkiye column is the Turkish regulation.
| Point of comparison | Vanuatu | Türkiye |
|---|---|---|
| What the investment buys | Honorary citizenship on the Development Support Program, conferred by the President; other routes decided by the Citizenship Commission | Full Turkish citizenship, by Presidential decision (Article 12(b), Law No. 5901) |
| Published price | USD 130,000 single applicant, USD 150,000 married couple, USD 180,000 couple and two children, plus a USD 5,000 due diligence fee; USD 260,000 on the Capital Investment Immigration Plan | USD 400,000 in real estate; USD 500,000 on any of the five capital routes; or 50 jobs |
| What the money becomes | A citizenship fee paid to the government | An asset the investor keeps: real estate, a lira deposit, state debt, fund units, a pension or a business |
| Holding period | None published | Three years on property, deposit, debt, fund units and pension; nothing on fixed capital or jobs |
| Family | Priced by head on the fee table, USD 10,000 for each additional applicant | Spouse, plus children who are minors or dependants, covered by the one investment |
| Travel to the country | The oath in a Vanuatu court, in person, within three months of approval | One short biometric visit |
| Schengen short stays | Visa required since the EU moved Vanuatu to Annex I of Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 | A visa is needed as well; the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes the rule destination by destination |
On European travel the two passports are level: both need a Schengen visa. The difference is what the money becomes, a fee in Vanuatu and an asset the investor owns in Türkiye, and what the grant is, honorary citizenship on Vanuatu’s lowest route and full citizenship on every Turkish route. The Turkish routes, with their documents, are on our Turkish citizenship by investment page.
How Serka works on a Vanuatu file
Vanuatu applications must be lodged through a designated agent appointed by the Commission. Serka is not one, and does not present itself as one. We act as independent counsel: we read the source of funds file the way the Financial Intelligence Unit will read it, we check the identity and standing of the agent a client is being routed through against the Office’s own register and its canceled list, we build the document set to the checklist attached to the form rather than to an agent’s summary of it, and we tell a client plainly when the program does not do what he has been told it does.
That last point is the reason this page exists. A buyer who needs European access is being sold the wrong passport, and no fee structure fixes that.
Before any agent is paid, put three questions to us: whether Vanuatu does what you need a second nationality for, whether the agent you are being routed through stands on the Office’s register or on its cancelled list, and whether Türkiye’s routes carry the same money further. Give us the passport you hold, the countries you need to enter and the agent’s name. Serka Law Firm’s addresses are info@serkalaw.com and WhatsApp +90 530 127 59 35. The other programs are compared on our citizenship by investment country comparison.
Every figure and status on this page was taken on 23 August 2026 from the Vanuatu Citizenship Office and Commission and from EUR-Lex, the European Union’s official law database; the fee table and the application steps were read again on 30 September 2026.