On October 2, 2026, Argentina put a price on its passport. Speaking at the Argentine Embassy in Paris during Argentina Week, Economy Minister Luis Caputo and Chief of Cabinet Diego Santilli announced the terms of the country’s citizenship by investment (CBI) program: a non-refundable contribution of USD 350,000 to the National Treasury, or the purchase of a USD 800,000 government bond created for the program. Applications are expected to open in the fourth quarter of 2026, which started the day before the announcement.
The amounts came in below the USD 500,000 and USD 1 million figures the Financial Times reported in July. They also place Argentina at the top of the contribution-based CBI market, above every Caribbean program and well above the new entrants in the Pacific and West Africa. What the announcement did not include is just as relevant: no decree or resolution in the Boletín Oficial, no government fees, no bond prospectus, no licensed-agent rules and no quota.
TL;DR: Argentina’s CBI is now priced (USD 350,000 contribution or USD 800,000 bond, plus USD 100,000 per spouse or adult child and USD 25,000 per minor), opens for applications in Q4 2026, and is the only active citizenship by investment program in South America. The regulations are still unpublished, the bond terms are reported rather than official, and a June 2026 court ruling over the decree that moved naturalization to Migraciones has not been resolved by the Supreme Court. Serious applicants can start assembling source-of-funds files; nobody can submit anything yet.
What Argentina announced in Paris
The Ministry of Economy’s communiqué, relayed by El Cronista and Bloomberg Línea on the day, sets out two routes for the main applicant and a flat schedule of Treasury contributions for dependents. The government’s own worked example is a family of four at USD 500,000 on the contribution route.
| Who / what | Amount | Detail |
| Main applicant, contribution route | USD 350,000 | Non-refundable contribution to the National Treasury |
| Main applicant, bond route | USD 800,000 | Public bond created for the program; reported as seven years at 0% |
| Spouse | USD 100,000 | Treasury contribution, on either route |
| Child aged 18 to 25 | USD 100,000 | Unmarried and without children of their own |
| Child under 18 | USD 25,000 | Treasury contribution |
| Family of four, contribution route | USD 500,000 | 350K + 100K + 25K + 25K |
| Family of four, bond route | USD 950,000 | 800K bond + 150K in contributions |
| Applications open | Q4 2026 | Portal, fees and agent rules not yet published |
Caputo described the bond as “a zero-rate bond for USD 800,000 specific to this program,” according to Bloomberg Línea, which also reported a seven-year term. IMI Daily, citing members of the advisory consortium, understands the same structure. Until the bond’s regulations are published, treat the term and the coupon as reported figures. The contribution amounts are the government’s own.
Transfers must run through the formal financial system under OECD and FATF standards. Every applicant goes through identity verification, source and traceability of funds, criminal and reputational checks, a jurisdictional risk assessment, immigration history and a financial review, per the communiqué as reported by El Litoral.
What is still missing from the announcement
As of publication, the Boletín Oficial carries no new text from the Ministry of Economy or from the Agencia de Programas de Ciudadanía por Inversión (APCI) regulating the program. That leaves a list of open items that will decide whether the headline price is the real price:
- Government and due diligence fees. Not announced. Comparable programs charge between USD 25,000 and USD 70,000 for a family once processing, due diligence and passport fees are added. SovSpot’s estimate, not a government figure.
- The bond’s legal terms. Transferability, whether it can be sold before maturity, what happens on a sovereign restructuring, and whether “seven years” is final.
- Licensed agents. IMI Daily reports that the government expects to publish its criteria for certifying agents in roughly a month. No firm is authorized to file applications today.
- Quota. The 5,000-slot figure from the cancelled tender documents did not appear in the Paris announcement.
- The application portal and forms. Nothing has been published.
The practical consequence is simple. Any intermediary offering “pre-approval,” “reserved slots” or a “fast track” before the regulations exist is selling something that does not exist.
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SovSpot maintains an Argentina CBI waiting list. Members receive every official update, the checklist as soon as the regulations are out, and a heads-up when the portal opens. No commitment, and we work with a local immigration attorney for anyone who wants a call.
How Argentina got here: 17 months from decree to price tag
The program has had a long and irregular road since the Milei government first opened the door in 2025. The key dates:
- May 29, 2025. DNU 366/2025 rewrites the immigration law, moves naturalization from federal judges to the Dirección Nacional de Migraciones (DNM) and creates citizenship through a “relevant investment.”
- July 31, 2025. Decree 524/2025 creates the Agencia de Programas de Ciudadanía por Inversión inside the Ministry of Economy.
- December 2025 to January 2026. The Ministry runs an international tender to hire one firm to design and operate the program. Six firms bid; four are disqualified on administrative grounds. The two finalists, Henley & Partners and the Consorcio AAPA, are separated by a large gap in price.
- March 2026. The labor reform (Ley 27.802, art. 194) amends the income tax law so that citizenship obtained through the program does not, by itself, make the holder an Argentine tax resident.
- April 14, 2026. Resolution 522/2026 cancels the tender. SovSpot covered the tender cancellation and the bidders’ scores at the time.
- April 28, 2026. Decree 285/2026 names Aixa Granara executive director of the agency, ad honorem.
- May 15, 2026. The agency signs a non-onerous technical collaboration agreement with AMIGO Ltd (Argentina Mobility for Investment and Global Opportunity), a consortium of Latitude Group, AIM Global, Apex Capital Partners, Arton Capital and Passport Legacy, to advise on program architecture, thresholds and market positioning.
- June 30, 2026. The Cámara Nacional Electoral declares the naturalization provisions of DNU 366/2025 null, with effect beyond the individual case. The government appeals to the Supreme Court.
- October 2, 2026. Pricing announced in Paris.
Where Argentina sits against the other CBI programs
At USD 350,000 for a single applicant, Argentina is the most expensive contribution-based passport on the market. The five Eastern Caribbean programs cluster between USD 200,000 and USD 250,000 after their 2024 regional agreement on minimum pricing. Egypt sits at USD 250,000. Vanuatu is at USD 130,000, and the two newest programs, Nauru and São Tomé and Príncipe, start at USD 90,000. Turkey has no contribution route at all; its USD 400,000 real estate option is an investment that can be sold after three years.
Price alone does not explain the positioning. Three things do.
First, the passport. The Henley Passport Index gives Argentine citizens visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to more than 165 destinations, including the Schengen Area and the United Kingdom. Caputo’s own figure in Paris was “more than 140 countries.” Either way, it outranks every Caribbean document, and it is the strongest passport available through a CBI program today. The United States is not on the list. Argentina applied to rejoin the Visa Waiver Program in July 2025, a process officials put at two to three years, so a B visa is still required for now.
Second, Mercosur. An Argentine citizen has residency rights across the full and associate member states under the Mercosur Residency Agreement, which covers most of South America. For an investor who wants a base in the region rather than a travel document, this is the part no Caribbean passport can offer. Some member states, Argentina among them, apply a waiting period of several years before naturalized citizens of other members can use the agreement, so the benefit is real but not immediate for a new citizen.
Third, the EU timeline for the competition. On June 25, 2026, the European Commission wrote to Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia asking them to wind down their programs by June 1, 2028, with interim screening conditions due by September 2026. The letter, signed by Commissioner Magnus Brunner, ties continued Schengen access to compliance. Argentina is a G20 economy and a growing energy supplier to Europe. That does not make it immune to the same pressure, and the Commission’s position on citizenship by investment has hardened every year since the Malta ruling of April 2025. It does mean the political calculation in Brussels is different.
The family math: USD 500,000 or USD 950,000
Dependents pay the same Treasury contribution on both routes. A spouse is USD 100,000. A child between 18 and 25, unmarried and without children of their own, is USD 100,000. A child under 18 is USD 25,000. The government’s example family (main applicant, spouse, two minors) comes to USD 500,000 on the contribution route.
On the bond route the same family pays USD 950,000, because the bond covers only the main applicant and the dependents’ contributions are added on top. Argentina is the only program in the comparison where the family price is roughly double the Caribbean figure.
Against that, the Caribbean programs are on a two-year clock in Brussels and the Argentine passport carries materially more mobility. Whether that spread is worth USD 250,000 to USD 270,000 per family depends on what the buyer wants the passport for. A pure travel document is cheaper elsewhere. A South American base with EU and UK access is only available here.
The bond route costs more than it looks
The bond option reads as the cheaper choice because the capital comes back. It only works that way if the bond pays interest, and the reported structure is a zero-coupon instrument bought at face value: hand over USD 800,000 today, receive USD 800,000 at maturity, and nothing in between.
The real cost is the return the money would have earned elsewhere. The table below discounts the USD 800,000 repayment back to today at three rates: 5% and 7% as a band for USD inflation and risk-free returns, and 10% as the long-run S&P 500 figure.
| Bond maturity | At 5% a year | At 7% a year | At 10% a year |
| 5 years | USD 173,000 | USD 230,000 | USD 303,000 |
| 7 years (reported term) | USD 231,000 | USD 302,000 | USD 389,000 |
| 10 years | USD 309,000 | USD 393,000 | USD 492,000 |
| Break-even with the contribution | 11.8 years | 8.5 years | 6.0 years |
On a seven-year bond, the opportunity cost lands between USD 231,000 and USD 302,000 if the yardstick is inflation, which is below the USD 350,000 contribution. Measured against equity returns it comes to about USD 389,000, which is above it. At ten years the bond loses on every measure except the lowest discount rate. The longer the maturity, the better the contribution looks.
Those figures leave out the risks that are specific to Argentina, and they are the part most marketing will skip:
- Sovereign default. Argentina has restructured or defaulted on its foreign debt nine times, most recently in 2020. A haircut in year six of a seven-year bond applies to the full USD 800,000. Argentine sovereign bonds normally pay 8% to 10% to compensate for this; the program bond pays nothing.
- The political cycle. President Milei’s current term ends on December 10, 2027. A seven-year bond bought in early 2027 matures in 2034, under at least one administration that has not been elected yet.
- Liquidity. Nothing has been said about whether the bond can be sold or transferred before maturity. If it cannot, the USD 800,000 is off the balance sheet for the whole term.
- Fees. Both routes will carry government and due diligence fees that have not been announced.
The contribution route has one argument the arithmetic does not capture. Once the USD 350,000 is paid, the applicant’s exposure to Argentina ends. The bond keeps it open for seven years.
Who processes the file, and the court case hanging over it
The Agencia de Programas de Ciudadanía por Inversión receives and evaluates each application with input from the state intelligence secretariat (SIDE), the financial intelligence unit (UIF) and the Security and Interior ministries. The agency then sends a recommendation to the Dirección Nacional de Migraciones, which approves or rejects. AMIGO Ltd advises on structure and positioning; under its agreement with the agency, every decision on eligibility, due diligence and the grant of citizenship stays with the Argentine state.
The weak point is the last step. DNM only has the power to grant citizenship because DNU 366/2025 took that power away from the federal courts. On June 30, 2026, the Cámara Nacional Electoral ruled that transfer unconstitutional, on the grounds that citizenship is tied to political rights and cannot be rewritten by emergency decree (Article 99, section 3 of the Constitution), and ordered the ruling communicated to every federal court with electoral jurisdiction. The government filed an extraordinary appeal to the Supreme Court in July. Until the Court rules, the legal basis for Migraciones to issue a CBI passport is contested.
Two readings are possible. The government has launched the program as though the decree stands, and DNM has started issuing ordinary naturalizations under the new procedure. A Supreme Court ruling against the decree would not necessarily kill the program, since Congress could legislate the route, but it would delay it. An applicant filing in Q4 2026 is filing into that uncertainty.
Who the program is built for
The CBI is the only path to an Argentine passport for someone who does not intend to live in Argentina. Every other route runs through residency: two years of continuous legal residence before a naturalization application, and Migraciones has been reading “continuous” strictly since the 2025 decree. For a founder or investor who travels constantly, that is a hard constraint. SovSpot’s Argentina residency playbook covers the rentista and investor routes, and the work-based options, for people who are willing to live there.
For someone who does plan to live in Argentina, the arithmetic favors residency. Two years of residence plus a naturalization application costs a fraction of USD 350,000, and the tax position is identical: after Ley 27.802, citizenship through the program does not create tax residency, and ordinary residents become tax resident only through permanent residence or twelve months in the country.
Applicants who fit the first group can use the gap before the regulations productively. The source-of-funds file is the slowest part of any CBI application and it is independent of the Argentine rules: bank statements, corporate documents, tax returns and a clear narrative of how the capital was earned. That work can begin now.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Argentina citizenship by investment cost?
For the main applicant, either a non-refundable contribution of USD 350,000 to the National Treasury or the purchase of a USD 800,000 government bond created for the program. A spouse or an unmarried child aged 18 to 25 adds USD 100,000 each; a child under 18 adds USD 25,000. Government and due diligence fees have not been announced.
When can applications be submitted?
The government says the program will be ready to receive applications in the fourth quarter of 2026. As of October 2, 2026, no regulations, forms or portal have been published, and no agents have been licensed.
Is the USD 800,000 bond refundable?
The capital is repaid at maturity. The reported structure is a seven-year bond paying no interest, which means the real cost is the return given up over the term, roughly USD 230,000 to USD 390,000 in today’s dollars depending on the discount rate used. The bond’s terms are not yet official.
Does Argentine citizenship through the program make me a tax resident?
No. Ley 27.802 (March 2026) amended the income tax law so that citizenship obtained through the investment program does not create tax residency by itself. Tax residency follows the ordinary rules for foreign nationals: permanent residence or twelve months of presence in the country.
What does the Argentine passport give a holder?
Visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to more than 165 destinations per the Henley Passport Index, including the Schengen Area and the United Kingdom, and residency rights across Mercosur member states. It does not include visa-free travel to the United States.
Is the program legally secure?
Not yet. The decree that moved naturalization from the federal courts to Migraciones (DNU 366/2025) was declared null by the Cámara Nacional Electoral on June 30, 2026, and the government’s appeal is pending before the Supreme Court. The CBI procedure ends with a Migraciones decision, so the outcome of that case bears on the program.
Argentina has priced its passport above every contribution program on the market and attached a bond option whose real cost, on the reported terms, is close to the contribution it is meant to undercut. What it is selling is the strongest passport available through investment, a residency footprint across South America and a tax position that does not follow the passport. Whether the market pays USD 350,000 for that will be decided after the regulations are published, not before.
Sources
- Ministry of Economy communiqué, October 2, 2026, as reported by El Cronista, Bloomberg Línea and El Litoral
- Euronews, October 2, 2026, on the Paris event and the seven-year bond term
- IMI Daily, October 2, 2026, on the bond structure and the timing of agent certification criteria
- Latitude Group press release, October 2, 2026, on the AMIGO Ltd consortium and its May 15, 2026 agreement with the agency
- Decreto 285/2026, Boletín Oficial, April 28, 2026 (appointment of the agency’s executive director)
- Infobae, June 30, 2026, on the Cámara Nacional Electoral ruling
- VisasNews on the European Commission’s June 25, 2026 letter to the five Eastern Caribbean states
- Global Citizen Solutions, program pricing for Nauru, São Tomé and Príncipe and the Caribbean (September 2026); Henley & Partners for passport access figures
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