VDSPDonation–VanuatuCitizenshipbyInvestment

Advising UAE residents on second citizenship from our Dubai office.

Overview

Vanuatu grants citizenship for a contribution from USD 130,000 under the Citizenship Act [Cap 112], with no residence requirement. It permits dual citizenship.

It is also the only country in the world to have had its EU visa waiver permanently revoked, and it lost UK visa-free access in 2023. Both were done because of this programme. If travel access is why you are looking at Vanuatu, read the next section before you read the price.

The European Union revoked the visa waiver permanently

What happened to Vanuatu is without precedent.

The sequence, from the EU's own instruments:

1. Partial suspension — Council Decision (EU) 2022/366 of 3 March 2022, in force 4 May 2022, targeting ordinary passports issued from 25 May 2015. In other words, investor citizens.
2. Full suspension — Council Decision (EU) 2022/2198 of 8 November 2022, covering all Vanuatu nationals holding ordinary passports, applying from 4 February 2023.
3. Permanent termination — Regulation (EU) 2025/11 of 19 December 2024 (OJ L, 2025/11, 14.1.2025), in force 3 February 2025. It moves Vanuatu out of Annex II and into Part 1 of Annex I of Regulation (EU) 2018/1806: the list of countries whose nationals require a visa.

Vanuatu is the first and only country ever to have had an EU visa waiver permanently revoked.

The Commission's reasoning, in COM(2024) 366 final, is worth reading before you buy this passport, because it is about the programme rather than about the country: no requirement for a physical interview; no requirement ever to have resided in or even visited Vanuatu; citizenship granted to people under criminal investigation, including people listed on Interpol's databases; applicants who had submitted forged clean criminal records. The Commission also noted that before 2021 investor citizens could change their name in Vanuatu afterwards, and that Vanuatu holds no record of the name changes registered up to 2019.

Vanuatu amended its Citizenship Act in March 2023 to add screening by police, the Financial Intelligence Unit and Immigration. The Commission held it insufficient, because those bodies do not exchange information with the applicant's country of origin or residence. Recital 10 of the 2025 Regulation: most of the concerns persist.

The United Kingdom removed visa-free access in 2023

At 15:00 BST on 19 July 2023, with a four-week transition to 16 August 2023. The stated reason was the citizenship by investment scheme. Vanuatu sits at item 110 on the UK's visa national list today.

So what does the passport actually reach?

Roughly 88 to 90 destinations — the Henley Passport Index puts it at 88 for 2026, ranking around 50th; Arton's Passport Index gives a comparable score. Both list the Schengen states and the UK as visa-required, which is consistent with the law above.

There is no official Vanuatu government count, so any figure is attributed to a named index and year. Figures in the 120–130 range date from before 2022. The loss of 29 Schengen and EU states plus the UK accounts for almost the entire gap.

Australia and New Zealand both require a visa from Vanuatu nationals.

Before anything else: what this means for an Indian passport

India does not allow dual citizenship. Section 9(1) of the Citizenship Act 1955 says that any citizen of India who voluntarily acquires the citizenship of another country shall cease to be a citizen of India.

Acquiring Vanuatu citizenship is voluntary. So your Indian citizenship ends automatically, by operation of law, on the day you acquire it. There is no Indian decision to appeal, no discretion to exercise and no way to defer it. You must surrender your Indian passport and obtain a Surrender Certificate.

You can then apply for Overseas Citizen of India status. The Ministry of External Affairs is explicit that OCI is not to be misconstrued as dual citizenship and confers no political rights. As an OCI you cannot vote, cannot hold constitutional posts, do not have equality in public employment, and cannot acquire agricultural land, farmhouses or plantation property in India.

This is a replacement of your Indian citizenship, not an addition to it. Vanuatu itself permits dual citizenship and requires no renunciation — the restriction is entirely on the Indian side.

What it costs

The Citizenship Office's published schedule, in US dollars:

Item	Amount
Single applicant	USD 130,000
Married couple	USD 150,000
Couple and one child	USD 165,000
Couple and two children	USD 180,000
Each additional applicant	USD 10,000
Financial Intelligence Unit due diligence fee	USD 5,000
Application fee	5,000 Vatu per application

Two notes on that table. The published page is headed only "Category | Currency | Government Mandated Fees" — it does not name a programme. This tier is generally treated as the Development Support Programme, and XIPHIAS treats it the same way. And the Vanuatu government publishes no per-person passport issuance fee.

Agent fees are not published. The Citizenship Office directs agents to adhere to government prescribed pricing, but agent margins are not public. Ask any consultant, including us, to put their own fee in writing separately from the government fee.

The routes

Vanuatu operates four routes.

• Development Support Programme (DSP) — the contribution route, and the one the fee table above describes.
• Vanuatu Contribution Programme (VCP) — a second contribution route.
• Capital Investment Immigration Plan (CIIP) — Form D. The published fee is USD 260,000 for the applicant, spouse and one child under 18, USD 19,250 per additional child under 18, and USD 44,250 per dependant aged 18 to 21. Confirm CIIP's status before relying on it: it is still listed as live with designated agents, but a suspension has been reported and no official instrument confirms either position. XIPHIAS confirms its status with the Citizenship Office before any file is opened.
• Real Estate Option Programme (REO) — a property route in a government-approved project, commenced 23 July 2021, with four approved projects on Efate and Espiritu Santo. No minimum investment is published and no REO agents are listed, so XIPHIAS does not market it.

How long it takes — there is no official answer

Vanuatu publishes no processing standard. The Citizenship Office's ten-step process page gives no overall timeframe. The only official durations published are a one-hour language test (which applies to ordinary naturalisation, not to the investment routes) and a three-month window after approval to complete the oath and pay the citizenship fee, extendable by two months.

Figures such as "one to two months" or "30 days" are not a government standard. On request, XIPHIAS gives you the processing range seen on its current files, clearly labelled as its own observation.

An oath is required. The official application-process page says it can only be taken in a Vanuatu court and that applicants abroad must travel to Vanuatu; a separate official notice says video conferencing continues until further notice. Those two official statements conflict, so XIPHIAS does not promise a remote oath: plan for the possibility of travelling to Vanuatu.

There is no residence or physical presence requirement for the investment routes. Statutory residence applies only to ordinary naturalisation: ten years, or two years as the spouse of a citizen.

Who can be included

Confirmed from the official fee schedule, but only for CIIP (Form D): spouse; children under 18; and dependants aged 18 to 21 at a higher fee.

For DSP and VCP the definition of a dependant is set by Order No. 33 of 2019. XIPHIAS confirms the age limits that apply to your children and parents against that Order on each file.

On tax

Vanuatu levies no personal income tax and no corporate income tax — confirmed by the IMF's 2025 Article IV consultation, which also records that the authorities are exploring introducing both over the medium term. VAT is 15%.

Now the part that belongs next to it. Vanuatu is on Annex I of the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes — the tax blacklist — and separately on the EU's list of high-risk third countries with strategic anti-money-laundering deficiencies, where it has sat since 2016. Banks act on those listings, so the no-income-tax position should not be read in isolation.

The IMF also records that citizenship programme revenue is in structural decline: from roughly 14% of GDP in 2020 to about 7% in 2024, projected around 5.4% in 2025, under increased international scrutiny. That is relevant to whether the programme still looks like this in five years.

Where this leaves Vanuatu

Vanuatu is not on the FATF grey list or blacklist as at the June 2026 update. There is no separate passport series for investor citizens — the Commission noted that as a complaint, not a safeguard.

What Vanuatu still offers is simplicity, no residence requirement and no personal or corporate income tax. What it no longer offers is Europe. For most Indian families the trade — surrendering Indian citizenship for a passport that reaches neither the EU nor the UK — is one we advise against unless you have a specific reason for it.

Talk to a Vanuatu citizenship consultant in Dubai

XIPHIAS Immigration has advised families on second citizenship since 2009, and our Dubai team works with UAE residents. We were named Best Immigration Consultant by The Times of India in 2022. Our immigration consultants in Dubai will take you through the legal requirements, costs and timeline for Vanuatu.

• Book a consultation
• Verify an immigration consultant
• Second passport for UAE residents

Sources

• Vanuatu Citizenship Office — types of citizenship
• Vanuatu Citizenship Office — fees and charges
• Vanuatu Citizenship Office — application process
• Vanuatu Citizenship Office — legislative framework
• Vanuatu Citizenship Office — Real Estate Option Program
• Regulation (EU) 2025/11 of 19 December 2024 — Vanuatu moved to Annex I (OJ L, 2025/11, 14.1.2025)
• Council of the EU — Vanuatu: Council ends visa exemption, 12 December 2024
• COM(2024) 366 final — Commission report on the suspension of the visa exemption for nationals of Vanuatu
• UK Government — visa requirement for ni-Vanuatu nationals visiting the UK, 19 July 2023
• UK Immigration Rules Appendix Visitor: Visa national list (Vanuatu, item 110)
• Council of the EU — EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes
• European Commission — high-risk third countries with strategic AML/CFT deficiencies
• IMF Country Report No. 25/277, 2025 Article IV Consultation — Vanuatu
• Citizenship Act 1955, Section 9(1) — Government of India
• Government of India — passport surrender certificate
• Ministry of External Affairs — Overseas Citizenship of India scheme

Verified against government and primary legal sources on 30 September 2026.