Visas & immigration: Italy
Italy offers a genuinely wide menu of legal pathways — from a retiree’s passive-income visa to a wealthy new resident’s flat tax to a strict annual quota for non-EU workers — and 2025–26 rewrote several of them.
If you have passive income, the Elective Residency Visa is the classic non-work route (€32,000/year single, €38,000 for a couple); if you’re a remote employee, the 2024-launched Digital Nomad visa needs roughly €28,000–30,000; if you’re wealthy, the flat-tax regime jumped to €300,000/year in 2026; and if you want to work locally as a non-EU national without a special visa, you’re competing for one of only 164,850 Decreto Flussi slots in 2026.
Elective Residency Visa: for those who won’t work in Italy
Aimed at retirees and financially independent people, the Elective Residency Visa requires proof of stable, passive income from outside Italy — pensions, dividends, rental income, annuities — of at least €32,000/year for a single applicant or €38,000/year for a married couple, plus roughly €6,200 per additional dependent. Crucially, holders are not permitted to work in Italy, employed or self-employed. You apply at the Italian consulate covering your current residence, and typically also need to show a long-term lease or property purchase and health insurance before the visa is granted.
Digital Nomad Visa: the newer remote-work route
Introduced in April 2024, Italy’s Digital Nomad/Remote Worker visa targets highly skilled remote employees and freelancers working for non-Italian clients. It requires roughly €28,000–30,000 in annual income (set at three times the healthcare-exemption threshold), at least six months of prior remote-work experience, a university degree or five years of equivalent professional experience, health insurance with at least €30,000 of coverage, and proof of accommodation in Italy. Unlike the Elective Residency Visa, this one lets you keep working — just not for an Italian employer.
Two flat-tax regimes, aimed at very different residents
Italy runs two separate flat-tax incentives to attract new tax residents, and both changed materially heading into 2026:
7% flat tax — foreign pensioners
Move your tax residency to a town under 20,000 people in Sicily, Calabria, Sardinia, Campania, Basilicata, Abruzzo, Molise, or Puglia (regions hit by 2009/2016 earthquakes get an expanded population ceiling), and all your foreign-sourced pension and investment income is taxed at a flat 7% instead of Italy’s ordinary progressive rates, for up to 10 years. A 2026 expansion added dozens of newly eligible municipalities.
€300,000 flat tax — high-net-worth residents
New tax residents (who weren’t Italian tax residents for at least 9 of the previous 10 years) can elect to pay a flat annual charge on all foreign-source income instead of ordinary tax. The 2026 budget law raised this from €200,000 to €300,000/year, plus €50,000 per additional family member (up from €25,000), for up to 15 years. Anyone enrolled before 1 January 2026 keeps the old, lower rate.
Decreto Flussi: the annual quota for non-EU workers
Non-EU nationals who want an ordinary Italian work permit (not one of the routes above) depend on the Decreto Flussi, an annual government decree fixing how many non-EU workers can enter for employment. Under the new 2026–2028 multi-year plan, roughly 500,000 permits are allotted across three years, with 164,850 available in 2026 alone — split between seasonal work (agriculture, tourism), non-seasonal employment (including quotas reserved for specific "priority" and "cooperation" partner countries), roughly 13,600–14,200 slots for domestic caregivers (badanti), and about 500 for self-employment. Applications open in short, chaotic click-day windows where the quota for popular categories can be exhausted within minutes of opening — employers typically need to have the paperwork pre-filed and ready to submit the instant the portal opens.
| Category | 2026 allocation |
|---|---|
| Seasonal — agriculture | Up to ~47,000 |
| Seasonal — tourism & hospitality | ~13,000–15,000 |
| Non-seasonal — priority-country quota | ~25,000 |
| Domestic caregivers (badanti) | ~13,600–14,200 |
| Self-employment | ~500 |
EU/EEA citizens, students, and jure sanguinis
EU/EEA and Swiss citizens need no visa at all — just register at the comune (iscrizione anagrafica) if staying beyond 90 days. Non-EU students need a national (type D) study visa, proof of enrollment, financial means of roughly €6,000/year, and insurance, then convert it to a study permesso on arrival. And anyone with an Italian parent or grandparent should look at jure sanguinis citizenship by descent — see the Bureaucracy section for how sharply Law 74/2025 narrowed that route.
Decreto Flussi click-days are notorious for crashing the government portal and for quotas in popular categories (especially caregivers and priority-country seasonal work) vanishing in under 60 seconds. If you’re relying on this route, work with an employer or agency that has done it before.
Sources & how current this is
Italian immigration and tax rules moved unusually fast in 2025–26 — the flat-tax regime jumped from €200,000 to €300,000 on 1 January 2026, jure sanguinis was rewritten by decree in March 2025, and the June 2025 citizenship referendum failed on turnout. Confirm live figures with a consulate, questura, or commercialista before relying on them.