2JUL

Bulgaria nomad floor corrected to 27,533 euro

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10:49UTC

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

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.

Thessaloniki municipality

The 1st Municipal Community froze new AMAD registrations from 1 July to 31 December and will strike off registered flats on sale, gift or inheritance, backed by fines up to EUR 40,000 on repeat offences. The ordinance needed no national vote and took effect within days.

South Korea government

Justice Minister Jung Sung-ho made the F-1-D workation visa permanent on 30 June 2026, extending the maximum stay from two to three years and cutting the income floor for under-35s who settle outside Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi. The redesign channels remote workers into depopulating provinces rather than the capital region.

Podemos / Spanish left

Secretary-general Ione Belarra said on 8 July that Podemos will not back the housing decree if it grants landlords IRPF deductions for cutting rents, the exact concession Junts wants for its seven-seat majority vote. That veto pushed Spain's decree from a July target to an end-August window with no guaranteed majority.

Non-EU nomad community (Georgia reset-base users)

Nomads who reset their Schengen clock via Georgia now watch a narrowing window: ordinary access holds only until the Commission's pre-March-2027 review, and the MIA's 2,000 GEL fine ladder has run since 1 May with no published enforcement data. Many are shifting toward Bulgaria's EUR 27,533-a-year permit instead.