Golden Visa Index

Introduction

The La Vida Golden Visa Index is a leading indicator of global demand for investment migration. It measures demand through actual search behaviour far in advance of completed investments and applications. It is based to 100 in 2016 and nine years later in 2025 it stood at 728.5. A compound average growth rate of 24.7% a year leading to a more than seven fold increase in the index throughout this period.

Investment migration has long lead times. Published statistics on investment volumes and government approvals often run years behind the point at which a family first forms the intention to proceed. The index addresses that gap, giving visibility on the demand that will convert into completed applications and investment often several years later.

Market Share and Authority

The index is built from more than 100 million actual searches on Google since 2016, covering over 400,000 key search terms across the industry. Google reports an advertiser’s impressions and its share of the impressions available; dividing one by the other gives the size of the whole market for that term. La Vida has advertised continuously on these terms since before 2016 at a share large enough for Google to report to us, that market data throughout. According to Google’s own competitive metrics, within these 100+ million searches La Vida appeared more times than the next three largest advertisers combined and appeared consistently every day, throughout the period. It places La Vida in a unique position for visibility on this data set and makes a consistent ten-year series possible.

Golden Visa Naming

The index takes its name from the industry’s most-used search term, golden visa, a term adopted by mainstream media to describe residency or citizenship acquired through investment, merit or donation. The index itself covers every search term however it is described with the data revealing more than 400,000 separate search terms used throughout this period.

Detail Behind the Numbers

The structure of the data allows examination in extensive detail. By search term, country of origin, demographic, device and country program, for every single day throughout. Our proprietary models, built on this data and enhanced with the critical analysis of AI, let us assess the market across several dimensions including supply (by program) and demand (by country and demographic). We use that analysis commercially, and share and publish part of it here. It allows us to provide commentary and analysis of the key drivers and market forces behind the index and the insight to predict key shifts that are driving the investment migration market in the period ahead.

Investment Migration Market Growth

Demand for golden visas has grown substantially over the past decade. From a base of 100 in 2016, the index reached 728.5 in 2025. A more than seven-fold increase in global demand. Growth has come from both sides of the market: wider awareness of residency and citizenship by investment in countries that had barely engaged with it a decade ago, and a steadily larger number of programs from more countries.

Covid-19, and the lockdowns and travel restrictions that followed, produced a clear surge visible in the data in 2021 and 2022. A second key driver has been the United States. In 2016 America was a minor contributor to global search; today it is the largest single market. American demand roughly quadrupled after the November 2024 election and peaked in Q3 2025.

Through search data La Vida identified the potential for such a surge within 48 hours of the election result and published a state-by-state analysis of where the demand was coming from. Demand from the US has since fallen back from that peak. A fact that will reflect in the 2026 index.

Index Limitations, and the effect of AI

No measure of this kind is complete. Google accounts for around 91% of global search (StatCounter, 2026), the remainder is not measured in the index. It covers English-language search only, and some markets (e.g. China) are largely out of reach through Google. These limits are set out in full in our index methodology. What offsets the missing pieces is scale and consistency: more than 100 million searches over ten years, measured the same way throughout.

One influence we have not published within the data is that of AI. Search behaviour is beginning to move toward AI assistants, and our team is busy working on measuring its effect. We are not publishing an adjustment just yet as the search industry itself has no agreed method for measuring it. As of August 2026 there is no accredited standard for AI query volume, and published estimates vary depending on definition. Until that settles, the index remains consistent on the basis on which it has always been measured. The consequence is that it will increasingly understate true demand as search shifts toward AI. We hope to publish estimates of the effect of AI in future releases.