Spain Digital Nomad Visa: Requirements, Income & How to Apply (2026)

The visa is built for two profiles: salaried remote employees of a non-Spanish company, and freelancers whose clients are mostly outside Spain. Freelancers may earn up to 20% of their income from Spanish clients; beyond that the profile stops looking like remote work and starts looking like a local business. You need either a university degree in a related field or at least three years of professional experience, and the company you work for (or your main clients) must have existed for at least a year.

You must also have worked remotely for at least three months before applying, so this is not a visa you can start on day one of a new contract. Citizens of Spain cannot apply — the visa is for non-nationals relocating in.

The income floor is 200% of Spain's minimum wage (SMI), and it is not a fixed euro figure — it re-pegs every time the government raises the SMI. For 2026 the SMI rose to €1,221 per month across 14 payments under Royal Decree 126/2026, which puts the teleworker threshold at about €2,849 per month (roughly €34,188 a year). If you apply the year after an SMI increase, expect the number to be higher than whatever an older article quotes.

Family raises the bar. Add roughly 75% of the SMI base for a spouse and 25% for each additional dependant, so a couple needs around €3,900 a month between them. You prove the income with payslips, contracts, and bank statements — a single good month is not enough, the consulate wants to see it as a pattern.

You have two doors. Applying at a Spanish consulate in your home country gets you a one-year visa that you convert to a residence card after you arrive. Applying in-country at the Unidad de Grandes Empresas (UGE) — the same unit that handles startups and large employers — gets you a three-year residence permit directly, but you have to already be in Spain on a valid status, often a tourist entry.

The UGE route is popular precisely because it skips the shorter first stage and is known for fast, business-like handling: the legal decision window is 20 working days, and administrative silence after that counts as a yes. The consular route can be slower and varies a lot by city.

Once you spend 183 days in Spain in a calendar year you become a Spanish tax resident and, in principle, owe Spanish tax on your worldwide income. The headline mitigation is the "Beckham Law", a special regime that can cap your rate at 24% on income up to €600,000 for up to six years and largely ignores foreign-source income. It is genuinely valuable — but whether teleworker-visa holders can use it has been argued both ways, and the answer can hinge on how your work is structured. Treat the 24% number as a possibility to confirm with a Spanish tax adviser, not a guarantee.

Spain is one of the more family-friendly programs: a spouse or unmarried partner and dependent children can be included on the same application, either together or by joining you later. Each person you add increases the income you must document — about 75% of the monthly SMI base for the first family member and 25% for each additional one — but they receive the same residence rights and access to the healthcare and school systems.

Against its neighbours, Spain sits in the middle on money and near the top on upside. Portugal's D8 asks for a higher headline income and Greece and Cyprus are broadly similar, while Croatia is cheaper but caps you at one non-renewable year. What Spain offers that most of them don't is scale — a large, connected country with a five-year runway to permanent residence — plus the Beckham option that none of the others match. If you want the residency pathway, Spain and Portugal are the two to weigh against each other.

The two things that sink applications are the criminal-record certificate and the income proof. The certificate must be apostilled and less than 90 days old on the day you file, and people routinely get it too early and have to redo it. On income, consulates want to see the threshold met consistently across several months and dislike lumpy freelance income, so line up contracts and statements that tell a steady story. Health insurance is the other trap: a travel policy won't do — it must be full Spanish coverage with no co-pays. Budget a couple of months for gathering documents before you even book the appointment.