Armenia

Armenia is the only country in this set where a foreigner can land with no visa, register a sole proprietorship for AMD 1,000,000, and be on a documented six-year path to a passport. That path was rewritten by law HO-11-N, adopted 20 January 2026 and in force 1 November 2026. The rewrite raised the price, removed the case-by-case discretion that used to sit under it, and put an annual quota behind the cheapest door.

Can you stay in Armenia long term?

Yes, and the ladder is unusually clean. The first 180 days of each year need no permission at all. A one-year temporary residence card follows on a business, employment, study or family ground. Three years of temporary status inside any five years opens permanent residence, which is issued for five years. Three years of permanent residence opens citizenship. Six years end to end, and nothing in the residence chain tests your language, age, income or health insurance. The citizenship test comes at the end, not the start.

The other half of the answer is money. The business ground needs AMD 2,000,000 of company charter capital or AMD 1,000,000 held by a sole trader, which at the Central Bank rate of AMD 363.85 to USD 1 (4 September 2026) is about USD 5,500 and USD 2,750. It is not a fee and it stays yours, but it has to be in an Armenian account when the file is read. Compare that with a Thai elite card at THB 650,000 or a Malaysian second-home deposit, and the entry ticket here is smaller by an order of magnitude.

That is why this country sits at rank 1 with an ease score of 82. The score is not a claim about stability. It is a claim about the ratio of cost to legal certainty: the cheapest capital requirement in the region, a flat 20 percent income tax with a 5 percent turnover option for small businesses, no labour market test, and a statutory clock that a migration officer cannot argue with. Almost nowhere else can a freelancer convert a tourist entry into a permanent status without an employer, a degree or a property purchase.

What the score does not capture is the quota. From 1 November 2026 every temporary and permanent ground except exceptional services sits inside an annual allocation, and no number had been published as of October 2026. A fully eligible applicant can be refused because the year ran out. Timing has become part of eligibility.

Ways to move to Armenia

Use the table by situation, not by price. The business ground is the default because it is the only one a remote worker can open without a local counterparty.

The programmes

Visa-free entry, 180 days per year. Unilateral exemption for 45 nationalities plus bilateral deals covering Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Iran. No funds, no insurance, no onward ticket in practice. The 180 days are a total per calendar year, not per entry, so exiting and re-entering does not reset them. Work for an Armenian employer is not covered.

Temporary residence, business. The de facto remote-work route. One year, renewable only by fresh application. AMD 2,000,000 of company capital or AMD 1,000,000 of sole trader capital or turnover in the 60 days before applying. The status is checked after grant, not assumed: capital withdrawn below the floor, or no tax record of activity within 180 days, revokes it.

Temporary residence, employment, study and family. One-year cards tied to a contract, an enrolment or a family relationship. Employment has no salary floor but from 1 November 2026 requires a work entry visa first if you need a visa at all. The family ground is now spouse, parent and child only, down from any relative.

Permanent residence. Five years, on the same substantive test as the temporary ground, after three years of temporary status within the preceding five. Direct, not a switch. The old route where a business owner could collect the five-year card immediately with no threshold closes on 1 November 2026.

Citizenship. Three years of permanent residence, a 33-question test on the Constitution in Armenian, and a presidential decree. Dual nationality is permitted and Armenia does not notify your other state. Male citizens are subject to conscription, which is the largest hidden cost in the file.

What Armenia is bad at

Scale. The resident foreign population is in the tens of thousands and the labour market is thin, so the employment route exists mainly for IT and for people transferred in. There is no retirement visa: a couple with USD 300,000 cannot buy residence the way they could in the Philippines, and must run a sole proprietorship or live on 180-day rotations. There is no digital nomad visa either, and the country’s actual answer to remote workers is “enter visa free and register a business”, which works because the threshold is trivial, not because the policy was designed for them.

Then there is the reform. It adds a quota with no published number, replaces a discretionary regime that at least let an officer say yes, and raises the temporary residence fee to AMD 155,950 (2026), with EY reporting AMD 150,000 for the same item. The investment ground in Article 29.6 exists in statute but had no Government decree as of October 2026, so it is announced, not open. And the passport is weak, visa-free to roughly 65 destinations, which makes citizenship here a life decision rather than a travel document.

Guides

• Visa-free entry: the 180-day count, who is on the list, and what counts as work
• Temporary residence, business: the capital thresholds, the compliance check and the quota
• Temporary residence, employment, study and family: three grounds, the work entry visa and the narrowed family list
• Permanent residence: three years in five, the interview, and the investment ground that is not open
• Citizenship: the language test, dual nationality, conscription and the faster marriage route

Sources

• Ministry of Foreign Affairs, visa-free list and residency pages, checked 2026-10-22
• Migration and Citizenship Service, residence and citizenship procedures, checked 2026-10-22
• Law on Foreigners (HO-47-N) as amended by HO-11-N, in force 2026-11-01
• EY Armenia, alert on the amendments to the Law on Foreigners, checked 2026-10-22
• Fragomen, summary of the 2026 immigration reforms, checked 2026-10-22

Last updated 2026-10-22.