Golden Visa dependent child ages by country
Every Golden Visa brochure shows a happy family of four on the cover, and every one of those brochures is quiet about the fact that at least one of the faces in that photo has a use-by date. Nobody prints "your 19-year-old drops off this file at 21" on the glossy handout. It is buried in the statute, or the regulation, or a footnote on the ministry's own guidance page, and it is different in every jurisdiction we cover. That is the actual question a family with a teenager asks us, over and over: not "is the programme good", but "does my kid make the cut, and for how long".
This page answers that one question, across seven programmes, using nothing but what is already published on our own live country family pages as of 21 August 2026. It is not a rebuild of those pages. If you want the full family-reunification mechanics for a given country, the depth is there, in the country cluster. This page exists because the family cluster answers "what are the rules for Greece", and a parent with a 19-year-old is asking "which programme takes my kid, and does it still take them at 24". Different question, different page.
Child age limits: Greece, Portugal, Malta, Italy, UAE, US, Spain
These are the numbers as published on the live GVI family pages on 21 August 2026. We have not rounded anything, invented a Caribbean age that was never opened for this brief, or guessed at a UAE cut-off that the source itself says has moved. Where a page hedges, the table hedges with it.
| Programme | Child on the file | Re-tested? | After they drop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Greece | Under 21 automatic. 21 to 24 if dependent and in full-time study. | After 24, or on marriage or financial independence, they need their own residence route. | Own route. |
| Portugal | Under 18 automatic. 18 to 26 if single, financially dependent, full-time study. | Yes, at every renewal. | Can fall off the file. |
| Malta MPRP | Under 18 waived under (b). Unmarried child 18 to just under 29, principally dependent, category (c), €7,500 admin. | Dependency can lapse on marriage or independence. | Own route. Not a citizenship clock. |
| Italy | Minors under 18. Adult children if genuinely dependent. | Reassessed at renewal. | Own route. Family reunification is a separate, slower queue. |
| UAE | Sons to around 25 (confirm current cut-off with ICP). Unmarried daughters any age. | Confirm with ICP. The published cut-off has shifted. | Own route. |
| USA EB-5 | Unmarried children under 21. | A child who turns 21 mid-process can age out. CSPA may freeze age using pending-petition time. | 21+ or married: own immigration route. Parents are not derivatives. |
| Spain | Closed 3 Apr 2025. A child already holding a family card on that date renews with the titular. A birth or child added after 3 Apr 2025 is inadmissible under the investor chapter. | n/a for new files | General regime, not Golden Visa. |
Why Golden Visa child age limits do not compare
The instinct is to line the seven rows up and read them as one scale, 18 to 29, pick the biggest number, done. That instinct is wrong twice over. First, the numbers are not measuring the same thing. Greece's 21 to 24 window and Malta's 18 to just-under-29 window both require ongoing dependency, but Greece adds a study requirement inside that window and Malta's category (c) does not read the same way on the published schedule. Portugal's 26 looks generous next to Greece's 24, until you notice Portugal re-tests the whole bundle, single, dependent, studying, at every single renewal, while Greece's test only actually bites once the child passes 21. A wider number is not automatically a safer number.
Second, "on the file" and "on a path to citizenship" are two different claims, and Malta is the cleanest place to see the gap. The MPRP dependant provision, category (c), unmarried child 18 up to just under 29, principally dependent, carries a separate €7,500 administrative fee. That buys continued presence on a residence file. It does not buy a passport, and it is not wired to Malta's naturalisation timeline at all. A family that reads "29" and assumes that means "citizenship by 29" has confused a residence ceiling with an outcome. The two are not the same document, and they are not decided by the same ministry.
Third, two of these rows are not fixed numbers at all, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The UAE row says "around 25" because that is what the live UAE family page says, with an explicit note that the published cut-off has shifted and should be confirmed with ICP, the federal identity and citizenship authority. Sharpening "around 25" into a clean "25" for a tidier table would be inventing precision we do not have. The EB-5 row is a statute number, under 21, but it comes with CSPA, the Child Status Protection Act, which can freeze a child's calculated age using time a petition spent pending, in some circumstances pulling a 21-year-old back under the line on paper even though their birth certificate says otherwise. Whether that freeze applies to a specific file is arithmetic that belongs with USCIS guidance and immigration counsel, not with a generic age table.
Spain: the closed door, not a paperwork delay
Spain deserves its own paragraph because it breaks the pattern the other six rows share. The other six are all about whether a given child, on an open programme, still clears an age or dependency test. Spain is not open. The investor Golden Visa route closed to new applicants on 3 April 2025, under LO 1/2025 and the subsequent guidance from the Unidad de Grandes Empresas dated 10 June 2025. A child who already held a family card in force on that date can keep renewing alongside the principal applicant, because that card predates the closure. A child born after 3 April 2025, or a child a family tries to add to an existing file after that date, is inadmissible under the investor chapter. Not slow. Not deprioritised. Inadmissible. The only door left open is Spain's general immigration regime, which is a different legal framework with its own separate rules, not a slower lane of the same Golden Visa. If your plan assumed you could add a newborn to an old Spanish investor card in 2026, that plan needs to change now, not at renewal.
Golden Visa child age windows compared
Check if your child is still on the Golden Visa file
The table above is the reference. The tool below applies it to one specific child: age, study status, marital status, dependency, whether they are already on a live file, and for Spain, whether their card predates the 3 April 2025 closure. It will not tell you whether an application will be approved. It will tell you which published age and dependency rule your facts land inside, so you walk into a renewal or a filing knowing which test you actually have to pass.
Is this child still on the file?
Under 21 is automatic on the Greek family file, no study test applied at this age.
Frequently asked
If I file tomorrow with a 20-year-old, which EU file still takes them?
Greece, Portugal and Malta MPRP will all still take them, and so will Italy if the dependency is genuine, but on different terms. Greece keeps a child on the file automatically under 21, and 21 to 24 if the child is still dependent and in full-time study. Portugal's window is wider on paper, 18 to 26, but only if the child is single, financially dependent and in full-time study, and Portugal re-tests that dependency at every renewal, not once. Malta MPRP takes an unmarried, principally dependent child up to just under 29 under category (c), on top of a separate €7,500 administrative fee, but that is a residence file, not a shortcut to a passport. Italy will take a dependent adult child, but the age is not printed as a number on the live family page, it is assessed as genuine dependency, and family reunification for adult children runs as a separate, slower queue than the main file. A 20-year-old clears the door on all four. Which one keeps them past 24 depends on study status, marital status and how the file is renewed, not on the age alone.
Portugal says 26. Does that mean they stay until citizenship?
No. The 26 is an upper age boundary for a dependent child to be on the residence file, not a promise that the child rides the file through to naturalisation. Portugal re-tests the dependency at every renewal: single, financially dependent, full-time study. A child who marries, finishes their studies and gets a job, or simply turns 27, falls off the residence file and needs their own route from that point. The 10-year citizenship clock that runs on the principal applicant's card is a separate question from whether a given child is still an eligible dependant in a given renewal year. Do not read '26' as a guarantee. Read it as the outer edge of a test the family has to keep passing.
Does Malta's €7,500 buy them a passport?
No. The €7,500 is an administrative fee attached to adding an unmarried, principally dependent child aged 18 up to just under 29 under category (c) of the Malta Permanent Residence Programme. MPRP is a residence programme, not a citizenship-by-investment route, so that fee buys continued presence on a residence file, contingent on the dependency lasting, not a passport and not a fixed date for one. If citizenship is the actual goal, the MPRP dependant clock and any Maltese naturalisation clock are two different things and should not be conflated because a fee schedule and a residence age limit happen to sit on the same page. Our fee schedule breaks the admin costs down programme-wide, but it is a fee list, not a citizenship timeline.
Can CSPA save an EB-5 child who is 20 years 11 months?
Sometimes, and it depends on pending-petition time, not on the calendar age alone. EB-5's baseline rule is that an unmarried child stays a derivative only while under 21. The Child Status Protection Act can freeze the calculated age using the time a petition was pending, which can pull an applicant's calculated CSPA age back under 21 even if their birth-certificate age has passed it. Whether that arithmetic saves a specific 20 years 11 months child depends on exactly which petition was pending, for how long, and when the child took action to seek permanent residence after a visa became available. That calculation belongs with immigration counsel and USCIS's own CSPA guidance, not with a generic table. A child who turns 21 mid-process without a CSPA freeze available does age out, full stop, and becomes their own applicant rather than a derivative on a parent's file.
Spain closed. My child was born in 2026. Can they join my old card?
No. Spain's Golden Visa was closed to new applicants on 3 April 2025. A child who already held a family card on that date can renew alongside the titular holder, because that card already existed under the old regime. A child born, or otherwise added, after 3 April 2025 is inadmissible under the investor chapter, full stop, regardless of how solid the principal applicant's own file is. The only route left for a post-closure addition is Spain's general immigration regime, which is not the Golden Visa and carries its own separate rules. If your family's plan depended on adding children to a Spanish investor file after April 2025, that plan does not exist any more. Our Spain renewal page covers what does still work for cards that were already in force.
UAE sons at 25. Is that statute or ICP practice?
Treat it as ICP practice, not a number we would put in a statute box. The live UAE family page states sons are covered to around 25, and flags that the published cut-off has shifted, with the standing instruction to confirm the current cut-off directly with ICP, the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security. Unmarried daughters are covered without the same age ceiling. We are not going to sharpen 'around 25' into an exact age we have not verified against a current, dated ICP source, because that is exactly the kind of invented precision that gets a family's paperwork rejected on a technicality. If a son's exact age is the hinge of your filing decision, get the current cut-off from ICP in writing before you file, not from a table on this page or anyone else's.
What we did not open for this brief
- UAE sons' cut-off: the live UAE family page says "around 25" and "confirm with ICP". We are not picking a number the source itself will not commit to.
- Italy's adult-child age is not a printed year on the live family page. We have kept it as "genuinely dependent" rather than inventing a birthday the statute does not give.
- Caribbean child ages were not opened for this brief. We are not inventing them here. If fees are what you need, our Caribbean household fees page covers that ground, but it does not cover child age limits.
- No first-person 2026 Reddit thread of a child dropped at renewal was opened for this page, and we are not quoting one that does not exist.
Sources
- The live GVI family pages for Greece, Portugal, Malta, Italy, UAE and USA, opened 21 August 2026, and the Malta fee schedule.
- USCIS, Child Status Protection Act. uscis.gov
- USCIS, EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program. uscis.gov
- Malta First Schedule and S.L. 217.26, as used on our fee schedule.
- Spain LO 1/2025 and the Unidad de Grandes Empresas guidance of 10 June 2025, as used on our Spain renewal page.
- Methodology: every page above opened, or its stated caveat carried through unchanged, on 21 August 2026.
Not legal advice. Ages and dependency tests reflect the published GVI family pages as available on 21 August 2026. UAE and EB-5 both depend on facts, an ICP practice cut-off and a CSPA petition history, that change file by file. Confirm your child's specific position with the relevant authority or immigration counsel before filing, renewing, or relying on any age in this table.