If you already have the card, you are not out
You can keep renewing if your card was valid on 3 April 2025, or if you filed before that date.
New files are closed. That part is simple.
The fight is a title. The renewal article is headed as if only property investors qualify. The next sentence, and a Ministry note from 10 June 2025, say every valid original grant can renew - property, funds, deposits, bonds, and the business-project route.
Here is where that heading came from, and why it does not decide your file.
Why some people think only property renews
The closing law is Ley Organica 1/2025. It is a long justice-efficiency statute. One final provision emptied Articles 63 to 67 of Ley 14/2013 - the whole investor chapter - from 3 April 2025.
Those five articles held property at 500,000 euros, funds and deposits at 1,000,000, government bonds at 2,000,000, and the business-project route. They emptied together.
Some summaries cite Ley 7/2025 instead. That number is not the repeal. If a firm uses it, ask them for the BOE page.
The same provision added a renewal article headed "Renovaciones de visados y autorizaciones para inversores por adquisicion de bienes inmuebles." That heading talks about property.
The body does not. One paragraph later it says visas and authorisations for investors, with no modality limit, and sends you back to the rules in force when your original grant was made.
So which of the two transitional articles is yours?
Two transitional articles, and which one is yours
If you filed before the cut-off but had not been granted anything yet, you are still inside the old rules. That is Disposicion transitoria primera: your file is decided under the rules in force on the day you filed, not the day you are granted.
The Ministry adds a gloss for delayed effect. A visa applied for before 3 April 2025 whose effect was postponed is still processed under the general rules. A file lodged 1 April 2025 and granted in May 2025 stays inside. A file lodged 4 April 2025 does not.
If your card was already valid on the cut-off date, you are in the second provision - the one with the misleading heading. Your card keeps its issued term, and any renewal is processed under the rules in force when the original authorisation was granted.
For almost every current holder, that means Article 67 of Ley 14/2013 as rewritten by Ley 28/2022, the version in force immediately before the repeal.
| Your situation | Governing provision | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Filed before 3 April 2025, not yet granted | DT primera | Granted under the rules in force on the filing date |
| Card already valid on 3 April 2025 | DT segunda | Keeps validity for its issued term, renews under Article 67 as it stood at grant |
| Filed on or after 4 April 2025 | Neither | Inadmissible under the investor chapter |
That answers which door you are in. Next is how long it stays open.
What Article 67 actually gives you
If your card was already valid, you renew for five years at a time, with no end date written in the law, as long as you still hold a qualifying investment.
The statute detail: Article 67, in the version the transitional article points back to, sets an initial authorisation of three years, then renewal in successive five-year periods "siempre y cuando se mantengan las condiciones que generaron el derecho" - provided the conditions that generated the right are maintained.
There is no cap on the number of renewals in the article, and no sunset date anywhere in the transitional text.
If you change the form of your investment mid-period, Article 67.3 requires that you still meet one of the original Article 63 cases. Changes in value caused by ordinary market fluctuation are expressly carved out.
That is the clock. Now the day-to-day rules that decide most real files.
What the June 2025 UGE criteria add
The statute is thin. The practical rulebook is a Ministry note from 10 June 2025.
It is the criterios de gestion of the Ministerio de Inclusion, Seguridad Social y Migraciones, issued by the Direccion General de Gestion Migratoria. We fetched the Ministry-headed copy from infoextranjeria.org on 21 August 2026. We could not find the same PDF on inclusion.gob.es on this pass, and we name that as a gap rather than upgrade a hosted scan to a first-party government link.
Four points from that note decide most renewal questions.
- Renewals. All modalities renew if the original grant was valid - "se admiten todas si las autorizaciones iniciales reunian todos los requisitos para ser concedidas."
- Family. A spouse or child holding a family card in force on 3 April 2025 keeps it and renews with the titular. Marriages, births and other later situations ("situaciones sobrevenidas") are inadmissible under the investor chapter and go through the general regime, Real Decreto 1155/2024.
- The right is personal. "Personalisimo": it does not pass by inheritance or donation, inter vivos or otherwise, after 3 April 2025.
- Conversions run one way. Property into another qualifying modality is fine at the statutory minimum, and swaps among funds, bonds and shares are fine. A move from any of those back into a new property does not qualify for renewal.
| Situation on 21 August 2026 | Result | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Card valid on 3 Apr 2025, investment unchanged | Renews | DT segunda + Art. 67 + UGE "se admiten todas" |
| Filed before 3 Apr 2025, granted after | Grants, then renews | DT primera + UGE delayed-effect line |
| Filed 4 Apr 2025 or later | Inadmissible | Arts 63 to 67 emptied |
| Family card already in force on 3 Apr 2025 | Renews with titular | UGE "si disponen de residencia en vigor... se mantiene" |
| New spouse or child after 3 Apr 2025 | General regime only | UGE "situaciones sobrevenidas" |
| Heir or donee of the qualifying asset, after 3 Apr 2025 | No card | UGE "personalisimo" |
| Property converted into funds, bonds or shares at the minimum | Renewable | UGE conversions |
| Funds, bonds or shares converted into a new property | Not renewable on that move | UGE conversions |
| Company-to-individual or individual-to-company ownership swap | Not admissible | UGE, legal persons cannot hold a personal authorisation |
| Only an arras or deposit contract, no escritura | Not an investment | UGE "caracter renunciable" |
Expert tip
If a lawyer or a listing quotes Disposicion transitoria segunda's heading to tell you your fund or bond position cannot renew, ask them to keep reading past the title. The operative sentence, and the UGE criteria that gloss it, say otherwise. The heading is a drafting artefact, not a substantive limit.
Common mistake
Treating "renewable for successive five-year periods" as a path to a passport on autopilot. It is not. Spain's 10-year nationality clock and 5-year long-term residence clock are separate instruments under the Codigo Civil and LO 4/2000, and both require effective residence, which the historically low- presence design of the Golden Visa made hard to build. A renewable card is not, by itself, a citizenship timetable.
Can I still renew, and what happens next?
A card in force on 3 April 2025, or granted afterward on a filing made before that date, renews under Article 67 of Ley 14/2013 as it stood at the date of the original grant. That means successive five-year periods, uncapped, for as long as the original conditions hold. The UGE criteria confirm this covers all modalities, not property alone.
Two things people quote at you as law are not in the law at all.
What is not in the statute
The "roughly one visit a year" rule most holders operate on is administrative practice and older guidance. It is not a sentence in the transitional article or in Article 67.
What Article 67 asks for is maintenance of the qualifying investment, with a market-fluctuation carve-out. Not a day count.
We could not re-fetch the earlier Ministry instruction that first set the visit test on this pass, so we flag it rather than dress practice up as statute.
The second gap is evidence. How you prove in 2026 that you still hold the investment - a nota simple, a Bank of Spain certificate, a deposit statement - sits in the older Article 64 documentation and in lawyer practice notes, not in the 2025 law.
Treat that list as secondary until you have confirmed it against your own file.
And if the answer is that Spain no longer fits, there are live routes.
If the fit has changed
Some holders finish this page and conclude the position they hold no longer earns its place, or that a family member now falls outside the investor chapter.
For that fork, our live-visas extra works through the non-lucrative, digital nomad and entrepreneur routes that are open to new applicants. None is a Golden Visa, and all require real presence in Spain.
If the decision is about leaving the Spanish system altogether, the Portugal versus Spain comparison and the Greece versus Spain comparison both start from the same 3 April 2025 closure and set out Plan-B scenarios for the shopper who wanted a zero-stay EU card.
Frequently asked
Is Ley 7/2025 the statute that closed the Golden Visa?
No. That number circulates in secondary summaries and it is not the repeal. Searches of BOE on 21 August 2026 found no repeal of Articles 63 to 67 of Ley 14/2013 attached to a Ley 7/2025. The actual instrument is Ley Organica 1/2025, de 2 de enero, a justice-efficiency organic law that carries the closure in its Disposicion final vigesimoprimera. If a firm quotes Ley 7/2025, ask for the BOE page.
My card says 'por adquisicion de bienes inmuebles' in the transitional heading. Does that mean only property investors can renew?
No. Read past the heading. The body of the same article, one paragraph down, says visas and authorisations for investors with no modality limit, and sends renewals back to the rules in force when the original authorisation was granted. The Ministry's UGE-CE criteria of 10 June 2025 close the gap: se admiten todas si las autorizaciones iniciales reunian todos los requisitos para ser concedidas. Funds, bonds and business-project grants renew on the same terms as property. Uria Menendez called the heading unfortunate drafting.
How long can I keep renewing?
The transitional law does not write an end date. Article 67 of Ley 14/2013, as it stood after Ley 28/2022 and as the transitional article sends you back to, gives an initial authorisation of three years and then successive five-year renewals, uncapped in number, for as long as you keep meeting the original qualifying conditions. There is no 2028, no 2030 and no last-renewal clause in the statute. Do not let anyone sell you a countdown that is not written anywhere.
Can I convert my investment and keep renewing?
Sometimes, and the direction matters. The UGE criteria allow conversion between non-property investment types, and from real estate into another qualifying type at the statutory minimum, for example flat into a 1,000,000 euro fund position. They do not allow the reverse: funds, bonds or shares into a new property does not qualify for renewal. That asymmetry is a straight read of the housing politics behind the repeal, not a drafting accident.
My spouse and I married after 3 April 2025. Can they get a family card on my investor authorisation?
No. The UGE criteria are explicit that family situations arising after 3 April 2025, including marriages and births, are inadmisible under the investor chapter and must go through the general immigration regime, Real Decreto 1155/2024. A spouse or child who already held a family card in force on 3 April 2025 keeps it and renews alongside the titular. The cut-off is the date the family relationship existed, not the date you file the renewal.
I inherited the property that funded a relative's Golden Visa. Do I inherit the card too?
No. The UGE criteria describe the residence right as personalisimo, not transferable, and specifically exclude transmissions by herencia o donacion, or inter vivos generally, that occurred after 3 April 2025 as a basis for the investment. You inherit the asset under ordinary succession law. You do not inherit a queue position in the investor chapter.
Does the one-visit-a-year rule still apply to renewals?
Practically, holders have operated on roughly one visit a year for years, but that figure is administrative practice, not a sentence in Disposicion transitoria segunda or in Article 67. What Article 67 actually requires is that the qualifying investment conditions be maintained, with an exception for ordinary market fluctuation in value. We could not re-fetch the specific pre-repeal UGE instruction that first set the visit test on this pass, so we are naming that as a gap rather than dressing practice up as statute.
Named gaps
- The UGE criterios de gestion of 10 June 2025 were fetched from infoextranjeria.org with Ministry letterhead. No matching URL on inclusion.gob.es or the UGE site itself was found on this pass.
- No published series of post-repeal investor renewals granted or refused exists. The UGE line "se admiten todas" is conditioned on the original grant being valid, and how often files fail that test is unpublished.
- The specific pre-repeal UGE instruction that first set the roughly one-visit-a-year practice was not re-fetched on this pass. The visit rule is real practice, not a sentence in DT segunda or Article 67, and should not be upgraded to statute.
- How to evidence continued maintenance of the investment in 2026, nota simple against Bank of Spain certificate against deposit statement, is not written in LO 1/2025 and is not restated here.
- No live first-person 2026 forum thread of a holder saying "I renewed after 3 April 2025" or "UGE refused my renewal" was found on Reddit, Hacker News or Expat.com on this pass. The Expat.com holder voice available is from before the closure, anticipating it, not describing a 2026 renewal.
Sources
- Ley Organica 1/2025, de 2 de enero, BOE num. 3, 3 January 2025, referencia BOE-A-2025-76, pages 796 to 1067. boe.es/eli/es/lo/2025/01/02/1
- Ley Organica 1/2025, consolidated text. boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2025-76
- Ley 14/2013, consolidated snapshot before repeal, 22 December 2022 version, Articles 63 to 67. boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2013-10074&p=20221222
- Ministerio de Inclusion, Seguridad Social y Migraciones, criterios de gestion, derogacion figura "inversores" Ley 14/2013, 10 June 2025, Ministry-headed copy. infoextranjeria.org
- Plataforma ONE, "La supresion del visado de inversores en Espana y sus implicaciones," 26 December 2025. one.gob.es
- Uria Menendez, "Criterios aplicables en Espana a la renovacion de la Golden Visa," 8 January 2026. uria.com
- Expat.com, "Golden visa Spain," first-person holder and shopper posts from before the closure. expat.com
- Our own Spain country dossier, which this extra sits under.
- Methodology: every page above opened, or attempted and recorded as blocked, on 21 August 2026.
Not legal advice. Readings here reflect Ley Organica 1/2025 and the UGE-CE criterios de gestion of 10 June 2025 as available on 21 August 2026. Confirm your own file date and grant conditions with UGE and a Spanish immigration lawyer before making a decision that depends on them.