Vanuatu 2026: the year in figures

In brief: what the figures show

• The programme brings Vanuatu around 11-14 billion vatu a year, about 90-115 million dollars.
• In total, about 17,000 passports have been issued for investment since 2015.
• The annual flow stays within a range of roughly 1,600-2,500 approvals, and 2025 turned out stronger than 2024.
• The loss of visa-free access to the European Union in December 2024 did not cause a collapse in demand.
• The refusal rate is rising: from three tenths of a per cent in 2021 to about two per cent now.
• Since November 2025 Vanuatu has issued a biometric passport valid for 10 years.

What the programme earns the state

This is the only indicator Vanuatu publishes regularly and in a clear form. The country’s Reserve Bank includes revenue from citizenship programmes in its quarterly economic reviews, so the trend can be traced year by year without guesswork.

State revenue from citizenship programmes in billions of vatu. Data up to and including 2025 is from Reserve Bank of Vanuatu reporting. The 2026 figure covers only the first half and is shown with a dashed outline: the year is not over, and the final figure will be higher. For reference, the 13.8 bn vatu in 2024 is about 115 million dollars at the exchange rate of that period.

The peak came in 2024: 13.8 billion vatu, about 115 million dollars. In 2025 revenue fell to about 11.2 billion, down by a fifth. The reason is not a fall in demand: during this period the fee structure changed, and some payments shifted to the next reporting period because of the move to biometrics.

To understand the scale for the country: the costs of the entire Citizenship Commission are set at about 82 million vatu in the 2026 budget. In other words, the body that runs the programme costs the state about half a per cent of what the programme brings in. For Vanuatu this is not a side income but a pillar of the budget, and that is the main argument that the programme will not be closed.

The estimate for your family can be calculated in advance. Calculate the estimate

What this means for you. The programme is one of the pillars of the country’s budget, and Vanuatu has no economic reason to close it. You can decide without regard to rumours of closure.

How many passports have been issued

This is where the official data runs out. The Citizenship Commission published statistics up to and including 2023; after that there is no breakdown. We reconstructed the picture from programme revenue and from our own practice with the programmes.

We keep a year-by-year chart with official and estimated values in the article on how to get Vanuatu citizenship. Below is the same data in table form.

Cumulatively since 2015 this comes to about 17,000 passports. The baseline here is official: Vanuatu’s passport office reported 10,524 passports issued for the period 2015-2021, with annual increments added after that.

An important caveat that is rarely spelled out: past official statistics count applications per person, not per family. So the figure of “1,091 in 2023” means people, not households, and comparing it with agents’ claims about “thousands of families” makes no sense.

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What this means for you. Thousands of people receive the passport every year, and the review process is well established. Agents’ promises about “thousands of families” are worth checking against these figures: official statistics count people, not families.

Refusals: checks are getting stricter

For a long time Vanuatu was criticised for having almost no refusals. There were grounds for this: according to the European Commission, by the end of 2020 the country’s authorities had rejected exactly one application. The picture is different now.

The share of rejected applications out of the total filed. For 2021-2023 it is calculated from official Citizenship Commission statistics: 4 refusals out of 1,072 applications, 5 out of 872 and 22 out of 1,113. For 2024-2026 there is no official data, and a BRIDGES estimate based on our practice with the programme is shown. The absolute numbers are small, but the direction is steady: checks are becoming stricter year by year.

In absolute terms this is still not much: 22 refusals out of 1,113 applications in 2023. But two years earlier there were four and five. A severalfold rise in a short period is not statistical noise but a change of approach.

What changed in practice. Vanuatu’s Financial Intelligence Unit checks the applicant before filing with the Commission, not after. Proof of the origin of funds is requested across the whole chain, not as a single certificate. Repeat queries have appeared about episodes in the background that used to pass without questions. We looked at this mechanism in detail in the article on due diligence for Vanuatu citizenship.

The conclusion for the applicant is simple: filing “the package as is” no longer works. The application needs to be prepared in advance, with problem areas closed with documents before filing. What exactly leads to rejection is covered separately in reasons for refusal of Vanuatu citizenship.

Who applies

The breakdown by applicants’ citizenship is published not by Vanuatu but by the European Commission, in the materials it used to justify cancelling visa-free travel. For 2023 the picture is as follows.

For the earlier period, 2015-2021, the distribution is similar: China by a wide margin, followed by Nigeria, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Russia and Lebanon. In other words, the main demand comes from countries where the passport solves a mobility and back-up plan task, not tourist travel.

For an applicant from Russia, the second-largest source country, this means two things. First, they are not unusual for the Commission: such applications pass regularly and the process is well established. Second, it is precisely for this category that the source-of-funds check is most thorough. What this changes in practice is described in the article on Vanuatu citizenship for Russian citizens.

I read the Vanuatu figures not as a popularity ranking but as an indicator of stability. The programme brings the country more than a hundred million dollars a year at a management cost of half a per cent of that amount; things like that do not get closed. The second thing the data shows is that the market has matured. Refusals used to be four per thousand applications and are now two per hundred, and that is right: the stricter the entry, the more the passport is worth on exit. To those choosing the programme now I say directly: a two-to-three-month timeline is real, zero taxes are real, a biometric passport for ten years is real. And for European goals, Vanuatu works as a gateway to residence programmes: with this passport Greek residence through property is obtained, and we have taken clients along this route more than once.

Sergey EvdokimovManaging Partner, BRIDGES

What this means for you. Russia is the second country by number of applications, so the commission knows Russian documents well. If you apply from Russia, prepare for a detailed source-of-funds check: for this category it is the most thorough.

What changed over the past year

Three changes visible in the data and in our work.

• Biometrics. Since November 2025 a biometric passport valid for 10 years has been issued. Giving biometric data is mandatory for all applicants regardless of age, and it can be given in Port Vila, Dubai, Hong Kong, Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
• Timing. The realistic processing time now is two to three months from filing to passport with a complete set of documents. Promises of “a month, turnkey” have nothing to do with 2026 practice.
• Checks. The Financial Intelligence Unit looks at the application before the Commission, and a weak spot in the source of funds stops the application right there.

We keep the full list of changes with dates in a separate article: what has changed in the Vanuatu citizenship programme by 2026.

What it means for investors

The data adds up to four practical conclusions.

• The programme is stable. The state’s revenue is measured in hundreds of millions of dollars, administrative costs in single millions. Vanuatu has no economic reason to wind the programme down.
• The window of strictness has already opened. Each year the checks are tougher than the year before. An application that passes today may require twice as much proof in a year.
• Speed remains the main advantage. Two to three months is faster than any Caribbean programme and incomparably faster than European routes.
• Europe is handled through residence. With a Vanuatu passport you can apply for European residence programmes, above all Greece’s property route and Hungarian options.

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Forecast for the coming years

What we expect, based on the trends in the data and our practice.

• The annual flow will remain in the range of 1,500-2,500 approvals. The data does not suggest sharp jumps in either direction.
• The refusal rate will rise to three or four per cent. This is a consequence of biometrics and a full source-of-funds check, not a change of policy.
• The cost of entry will rise. The contribution and fees have been raised several times in recent years, and there are no grounds for a reverse movement.
• Document requirements will become more detailed, and preparing the application will take longer than the review itself.

The practical meaning of the forecast: the earlier a properly prepared application is filed, the cheaper and faster it goes through. In recent years the terms of this programme have only tightened, and there is no reason now to wait for them to ease.

How we calculated

Programme revenue is taken from the Reserve Bank of Vanuatu’s quarterly economic reviews for 2021-2025, and the Citizenship Commission’s costs from Vanuatu’s 2026 budget. The number of passports issued for 2015-2021 is from the Vanuatu passport office report, and approvals and refusals for 2021-2023 from the Citizenship Commission’s annual reports. The distribution of applicants by country is from European Commission materials for 2023. The figures for 2024-2026 are a BRIDGES estimate based on programme revenue and our practice; on the charts they are shown with a dashed outline.