Vanuatu Golden Passport

A Vanuatu Second Passport: What the Golden Passport Is, and What It Is Not

"Golden passport" is a market nickname, not a legal term. What Vanuatu grants under the DSP is citizenship, recorded on a citizenship certificate issued by the Commission. The passport is a separate document: once you are a citizen, you apply for it to the passport authority of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Immigration and Passport Services), which issues ordinary Vanuatu passports. The Citizenship Office itself has stated in public that it plays no part in issuing passports.

The price works as a floor, not a tariff. Clause 4 of the 2019 DSP Regulation (Order No. 33, later amended by Order No. 39 of 2020) forbids selling the program below these floors: US$130,000 (one person), US$150,000 (married couple), US$165,000 (couple plus one child), US$180,000 (couple plus two children). The prescribed government fee sits inside that price; for a single applicant it is US$80,000. The FIU due diligence fee of US$5,000 and the VT 5,000 application fee are charged on top.

Be realistic about travel. In Henley's October 2026 index the Vanuatu passport sits 60th, with 85 destinations; other counts reach about 88. A Schengen visa has been compulsory for holders since 4 February 2023, on a permanent footing from 3 February 2025, and Britain put Vanuatu on its visa list on 19 July 2023. The benefits of a Vanuatu passport today lie in a second citizenship that needs no move to the islands, not in European travel.

Limits We Put on the Table Before Any Payment

A good file starts with an honest list of what can stop it. These are the points we raise at the first conversation, before you spend anything:

• Any criminal conviction prevents the Commission from approving the application (clause 6(9) of the Regulation).
• If you come from a country regarded as restricted, approval needs five years spent living away from it plus permanent residence in another state (clause 6(8)). No list of those countries appears in the Regulation, so we look at each case individually.
• A quarter of the prescribed government fee must reach the government before the Commission looks at the file, and a refusal does not bring it back.
• Citizenship does not on its own change the country where you are tax resident, and we do not give tax advice.
• A grant can be taken back for fraud in obtaining it or because the Citizenship Act or the Constitution did not allow it; according to the Citizenship Office, about 30 unlawful grants have already been withdrawn.

This website belongs to an independent team of lawyers and advisers, operated by Collegium of International Lawyers LP. It is not a site of the Vanuatu government, the Citizenship Office or the Citizenship Commission, and we are not a designated agent ourselves. The official source is vancitizenship.gov.vu, which publishes the Designated Agents list, the fees and the Office's notices; a genuine government address always ends in .gov.vu.

If you want to know whether the golden passport works for your family, request the free assessment and describe who would be on the application, their ages, the countries where each adult has lived, any past court case and, broadly, the origin of your funds. You do not need to send documents yet; we answer in writing with the figures for your family and the first records worth ordering.