Latvia Residence Permit by Company Investment: 2026

Published: 2026-07-22 · Updated: 2026-07-25 · CORVUS Attorneys-at-Law

The least-known route to EU residence by investment is also among the cheapest on the continent: EUR 100,000 into the share capital of a Latvian company. No property purchase, no fund subscription, no EUR 100,000 in non-returnable contributions of the Maltese kind — a shareholding in a real company, a flat EUR 10,000 state fee, and a temporary residence permit for up to five years covering your spouse and children under 18.

Investors researching Latvia usually arrive through the EUR 250,000 property headline and discover the share-capital route as a footnote. In our practice at CORVUS — an attorney-at-law office in Riga — it's anything but: the route stands on its own merits, and in one specific scenario, the off-plan purchase, it becomes the load-bearing structure of the whole plan. This article explains how it works, what the authority scrutinises, and where the honest risks sit.

The Mechanics: EUR 100,000, One Fee, Five Years

The qualifying act is an investment of EUR 100,000 into the share capital of a Latvian company — you become a shareholder, registered as such, and that shareholding is the legal basis of your permit. When the TRP is granted, you pay EUR 10,000 into the state budget; at each five-yearly renewal, EUR 5,000. Processing fees are the standard per-person amounts — EUR 160 review at standard speed, EUR 45 per card — and the financial-means figure you must show is the gentlest of the programme: around EUR 780 per month for the main applicant in 2026, against roughly EUR 2,340 on the property route.

Everything else about the permit matches the golden visa's general terms: one short visit per year, no residence obligation, no language exam, Schengen at 90 days per 180, family included. On pure arithmetic, this is the lowest mainstream entry to EU residence by investment in 2026 — we've run the honest comparison in the cheapest golden visa in Europe, burn rates and caveats included.

One structural nuance deserves its own paragraph: which variant of the route applies follows the company's size, not the amount you choose. The EUR 100,000 figure governs investments into companies above the small-business thresholds — more than 50 employees and turnover or balance beyond EUR 10 million, on their own or together with subsidiaries. For companies below those thresholds the statute runs a separate small-company variant: entry from EUR 50,000, an annual company-tax condition attached to the permit's validity, and a cap of ten foreign investors per company — dissected in the EUR 50,000 small-company guide. If your target company is small, that guide's conditions are part of your arithmetic even at a EUR 100,000 contribution.

What OCMA Actually Checks

A EUR 100,000 shareholding attracts more substantive questions than a EUR 250,000 apartment, for an obvious reason: an apartment is self-evidently real, while a company must be shown to be. Plan for two layers of scrutiny.

The company questionnaire. Investors and spouses complete detailed questionnaires about the company invested in — its activities, office, employees, management, partners and projects, the amount invested and the expected return — plus personal questions such as how you chose the investment and whether you plan to live in Latvia. Answers must be consistent with the application file. The volume looks daunting; it's standard procedure, it comes with firm deadlines, and in our practice we prepare and review every response before anything is sent, because we know from experience which formulations the authorities expect.

The proof of investment. For share-capital cases the authority requires a document issued directly by the bank confirming the investment — an ordinary account statement is often not accepted. This detail derails do-it-yourself applications with some regularity. We arrange the correct bank confirmation and file it with an explanatory cover letter as a matter of standard workflow.

Source of funds runs underneath both layers: bank statements for the last 12 months (investor and spouse), documents tracing where the EUR 100,000 came from. None of this is hostile — it's the compliance climate of every EU investment programme in 2026 — but it rewards files assembled by someone who has assembled many.

The Off-Plan Bridge: Where This Route Does Its Best Work

Here's the scenario where the share-capital route stops being an alternative and becomes the answer. You're buying a new-build apartment — say at a major Riga development — and the property route can't start until the building is completed and registered in the Land Book. That could mean a year or more without status.

The bridge: invest EUR 100,000 into the share capital of the developer's holding company now, and obtain the five-year TRP on that basis immediately. When your apartment is handed over and ownership registered, you switch the permit's basis from the shareholding to the real estate — and the share investment is typically returned to you under the programme documentation. Residence continues without interruption, the family's status stops depending on a construction schedule, and the developer's programme paperwork is built for exactly this manoeuvre. This is how residence works for buyers at Riga Waterfront, where we act as official cooperation partner and have taken investor cases through the authorities from invitation to positive decision.

Transitions in the other directions are equally structurable — share capital to a different qualifying basis, or maintaining the shareholding indefinitely — but every transition is planned against the annual registration calendar, at which you confirm the investment is in place. Withdraw the capital without a qualifying replacement and the permit's basis falls away; this is the route's one hard rule, and it never surprises a client who was told about it on day one.

The Honest Risks, Stated Plainly

A shareholding is not a deposit. Your EUR 100,000 sits in a real company and shares its fortunes — in developer-programme structures the documentation is designed around the residence timeline and the return of the investment, but in any other company you're assessing a business like any investor would. We are attorneys, not investment advisors: we verify that the investment carries a permit and that the paperwork protects you; whether the company is a good home for your money is a judgment we'll help you frame but won't make for you.

Eligibility has the same hard edge as the rest of the programme: the route is closed to citizens of Russia and Belarus under current law, with dual citizens assessed under their other passport — their open Latvian route is the EU Blue Card. And the legislative backdrop deserves its sentence: as of July 2026 the route is fully in force, and notably even the draft new Immigration Law — adopted by Parliament, returned by the President, not in force — preserved the share-capital route. Of everything on Latvia's investment menu, this is the option the legislator has been least inclined to touch.

Weighing the Two Routes?

Whether EUR 100,000 in share capital or EUR 250,000 in property fits your situation depends on your liquidity, your appetite for holding an apartment, and — for off-plan buyers — your construction timeline. We'll map both routes onto your numbers and tell you plainly which one the file supports.

Contact CORVUS for an assessment of your situation →

This article is general information, not legal advice. State fees and reference amounts are set by law and reviewed annually; figures are current as of July 2026 and may change. Contact us for advice on your specific situation.

Author: Valērija Barišņikova — sworn attorney (Latvia), CORVUS Attorneys-at-Law (ZAB Corvus Vanags Legal SIA). Reviewed by Andrejs Voroncovs — sworn attorney (Latvia), founder of CORVUS Attorneys-at-Law. Mag. iur. with distinction, University of Latvia; member of the Latvian Bar Association and of its commission for tax and financial matters. Profile → The firm has handled migration cases since 2004 — hundreds of cases for clients from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Egypt, the UAE, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the USA and Canada. Member of the Russell Bedford international network.