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Bulgaria nomad floor corrected to 27,533 euro

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12:31UTC

Multiple immigration-law sources confirm Bulgaria's digital-nomad permit income floor is 27,533 euro a year, not the 31,000 figure carried in earlier coverage, making it the EU's lowest-friction entry.

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Key takeaway

Bulgaria's nomad income floor is 27,533 euro, not 31,000, leaving it the EU's lowest-friction Schengen entry.

Multiple immigration-law sources, including Fragomen, confirm Bulgaria's digital-nomad residence permit income floor is 27,533 euro a year, equal to 50 times the monthly minimum wage, not the 31,000 euro figure carried in earlier coverage when the permit launched . ¹ The correction lowers the EU entry bar: at 27,533 euro, Bulgaria's permit is cheaper than Greece's equivalent and Portugal's practical pathway, making it the lowest-friction door into the Schengen area for nomads. Pegging the floor to the minimum wage means it will escalate annually with wage growth, mirroring the auto-escalation built into Colombia's Type V Visa in a different jurisdiction.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Bulgaria launched a digital nomad residence permit in December 2025 for people who work remotely and earn their income from outside Bulgaria. Early reports said the annual income requirement was 31,000 euro. Multiple immigration law sources have now confirmed the correct figure is 27,533 euro per year, which is 3,467 euro lower than widely reported. At 27,533 euro per year (about 2,294 euro per month), Bulgaria's permit is now the cheapest way for a non-EU citizen to obtain a residence permit inside the Schengen Area (the group of European countries with no internal border controls). Greece's equivalent permit costs 42,000 euro per year; Portugal's long-stay routes have become more complicated after the May 2026 nationality law changes. Bulgaria also joined the euro currency in January 2026, so there is no longer any currency conversion uncertainty in the application process.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Multiple immigration-information sources initially reported Bulgaria's December 2025 nomad permit income floor as 31,000 euro, including early coverage at launch.

The correction to 27,533 euro follows the same pattern as frequent errors in Greece's digital nomad visa coverage: Greece's 3,500 euro per month floor (42,000 euro per year) was initially misreported as applying to gross income in some jurisdictions, when it applies to net. In both cases, practitioner verification of the official gazette text produced a lower real bar than the headline figure that circulated.

Counter-parallel: Indonesia's E33G floor raise to $60,000 per year was accurately reported at launch from the official Directorate General of Immigration gazette. The Bulgaria and Greece correction pattern reflects coverage of smaller EU member-state permits through secondary sources rather than direct gazette verification, a systematic gap in digital nomad visa reporting that disadvantages applicants who plan based on early coverage.

At 27,533 euro per year, Bulgaria's nomad permit income floor is set at 50 times the monthly minimum wage (Bulgarian minimum wage in 2026: approximately 550 euro per month). This 50x multiple is structurally high relative to domestic wages but relatively modest in absolute terms for the Western European nomad market: it equates to roughly 2,294 euro per month gross.

Compared with the alternatives for Schengen access without EU citizenship: Greece requires 3,500 euro per month net (42,000 euro per year); Portugal's D8 requires roughly four times the Portuguese minimum wage (lower than Bulgaria in absolute terms, but with a slower citizenship horizon after the May 2026 promulgation).

Bulgaria's 27,533 euro now sits as the lowest-friction Schengen permit in absolute income terms for non-EU nationals. Bulgaria joined the eurozone on 1 January 2026, meaning income floors and fees are now quoted and enforced in euros rather than lev, removing the exchange-rate uncertainty that affected applicants at the December 2025 launch.

Sources:Fragomen

Mentions:Greece →Fragomen →Indonesia →Portugal →Type V →Colombia →Bulgaria →

First Reported In

Update #5 · Thailand halves visa-free entry

Fragomen· 29 May 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

Bulgaria nomad floor corrected to 27,533 euro

The correction lowers the EU entry bar below Greece and Portugal, and the floor's peg to the minimum wage means it escalates annually rather than holding fixed.

Led to

Europe automates its 90-day nomad clock

Bulgaria's confirmed EUR 27,533/year permit becomes the practical Schengen-reset alternative as an economic consequence of EES closing tourist-day arbitrage.

Occurred 9 Apr 2026

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Different Perspectives

Thailand's cabinet

Thailand's cabinet restructured entry terms into three tiers on 16 July, attributing India's promotion from visa-on-arrival to full exemption to trade and investment factors rather than tourist numbers. It kept the 500,000-baht Destination Thailand Visa untouched, running two parallel tracks for volume tourism and priced long-stay residency.

STEK (Association of Cyprus Tourist Enterprises)

STEK asked Cyprus's government on 15 July for an annual short-let rental cap, inspections, fines and a compulsory overnight levy, framing the ask as following models other European countries have adopted. The package would also close the cost gap between licensed hotels and largely unregulated short-lets, protecting STEK's own members' market share.

Canarias Se Agota

Canarias Se Agota, the platform behind the April 2024 overtourism protests, argues the 8 July law's bed-per-resident thresholds measure accommodation capacity, not the housing prices, water use and congestion that put islanders on the streets. It wants resident-facing metrics written into the excelencia duties before Adeje and Arona are formally classified.

Remote workers and long-stay visitors

Thailand's 16 July restructuring leaves the 500,000-baht Destination Thailand Visa as the only untouched long-stay route once the 60-day exemption disappears. Long-stay visitors now sort by ability to pay rather than by passport, the same effect a bed-threshold law or a short-let cap has on where they can actually live.

Mobile nomad cohort

Long-stay remote workers face a diverging map this fortnight: Korea widens its door, Greece and Spain narrow theirs by locality and contract type, and Portugal's citizenship timeline still hinges on a regulation not yet published. None of the four moves resolves the temporada loophole nomads have used to sidestep rent caps.

Portugal government / AIMA

Assistant secretary of state Rui Armindo Freitas said on 1 July that AIMA has cut its inherited caseload of roughly one million to 30,000 complex cases, with no visa-type breakdown or new deadline given. The nationality regulation implementing Lei Organica 1/2026 remains unpublished ahead of its mid-August drafting deadline.