A Chronology of the Citizenship-by-Investment Market

I have put together a chronology by year: what happened, when and with what consequences. It is a reference piece, convenient to come back to.

In short

• The modern market dates from 2013-2014.
• The number of programmes peaked in 2019.
• Since 2020 four programmes have stopped accepting applications.
• Minimum thresholds rose one and a half to two times over ten years.
• Applicant checks tightened after every major investigation.

The chronology by year

A Bridges Global count from the programmes' official sources. State programmes granting citizenship for an investment and accepting applications from foreign applicants were counted. Residence and repatriation programmes were not.

What the chronology shows

First. Programmes close not suddenly but after a long public history: first criticism, then an investigation, then a decision. Years usually pass between the first and the last.

Second. Each closure raised the thresholds of those that remained. After Cyprus and Moldova left, the Caribbean segment agreed a minimum of USD 200,000.

Third. The tightening of checks came in waves and always followed outside attention rather than preceding it.

Bridges Global estimate: in the coming years we expect not new closures but a continuation of the same line — higher thresholds, stricter checks, longer case preparation. More detail is in the outlook for Vanuatu's programme.

Four lessons from twelve years

First: a closure is always visible in advance. No programme disappeared in a week. Cyprus was preceded by an investigation and a public scandal, Malta by years of proceedings and a court case. An attentive observer has years to decide.

Second: a neighbour's closure makes your programme more expensive. Demand is redistributed to those that remain, and they raise their thresholds. So it was after 2020 and after 2025.

Third: tightening follows attention. Programmes do not tighten their checks of their own accord; they respond to outside criticism. So the louder the segment is discussed, the stricter the checks will be a year or eighteen months later.

Fourth: what has been granted is not taken back. None of the four closures was accompanied by mass revocation of passports previously obtained. What stopped was the acceptance of new applications.

What this means for a decision today

The chronology shows a steady pattern: conditions of entry worsen over time rather than improve. In twelve years there has not been a single case of a programme lowering its threshold or softening its requirements on applicants.

The practical conclusion: if you need a second citizenship, waiting works against you. The calculation of the cost of waiting is in why I advise against waiting.