How to Get a Second Passport in 2026: Descent, Naturalization, and Investment

Getting a second passport in 2026 comes down to five legitimate routes, and most people qualify for fewer of them than they think. 

In 2024, EU countries granted citizenship to close to 1.2 million residents, an increase of 11.6% over 2023 and 54.5% above the 2014 total (Source: Eurostat, published March 2026). 

Demand is rising, but the supply side is tightening: the EU's last citizenship-by-investment program was struck down in 2025, Italy capped ancestry claims at two generations, and Portugal rewrote its Nationality Law. That combination makes route selection the single highest-leverage decision you'll make. 

Bitizenship works at one end of this map, structuring compliant residency pathways in Portugal and Italy for Bitcoin-aligned investors, and this guide covers the whole map, including the routes that have nothing to do with investment.

Key Takeaways

• Five real paths exist: descent, marriage, naturalization, investment, and exceptional merit.
• A second passport buys optionality and travel access, not an automatic tax exit.
• No EU citizenship-by-investment program exists after the 2025 CJEU ruling.
• Bitizenship offers residency-to-citizenship routes, not Caribbean citizenship by investment.
• Verify agents, thresholds, and generational limits before paying anyone anything.

What A Second Passport Actually Is, And Who Realistically Gets One

A second passport is the travel document that follows a second citizenship. The passport is downstream. What you're really acquiring is a legal bond with a state: the right to enter, live, work, and remain, plus the ability to pass that status to children in most systems.

That distinction matters because three of the five routes below give you citizenship directly, and two of them give you a residence permit first that may mature into citizenship years later. Both are valid. They solve different problems on different timelines.

The people who actually complete the process tend to fall into a few groups:

• Descendants of emigrants from countries that recognize citizenship by bloodline.
• Spouses of foreign nationals who meet residence and cohabitation rules.
• Long-horizon investors willing to hold a qualifying asset for five to ten years.
• Globally mobile founders and executives who need a Plan B jurisdiction quickly.
• Families optimizing for education access, healthcare, and generational optionality.

If you're in none of these groups, the honest answer is that a second passport will cost you either significant time or significant capital, and usually some of both. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. 

For readers considering Portugal specifically, dual citizenship in Portugal covers the mechanics in more detail.

The Five Real Paths To A Second Passport

Every legitimate route to a second nationality fits into one of five categories. Here's who each one is actually for.

Path 1: Citizenship by descent

Citizenship by descent, or jus sanguinis, recognizes a status you arguably already held. You aren't acquiring citizenship so much as proving it. That makes it the cheapest route by a wide margin: your costs are document retrieval, apostilles, translations, and legal fees rather than an investment.

The catch in 2026 is that the door has narrowed. Italy's Law 74/2025, in force since 24 May 2025, introduced a two-generation limit through the new Article 3-bis, and Italy's Constitutional Court upheld the reform in March 2026. Great-grandparent claims that were routinely processed before March 2025 no longer qualify under the standard administrative route.

• Ireland remains generous: a parent or grandparent born in Ireland can support a claim through the Foreign Births Register.
• Italy now generally requires a parent or grandparent line meeting the Article 3-bis conditions.
• Poland, Hungary, and several other systems maintain ancestry routes with their own documentary standards.
• Processing runs from roughly 12 months to several years depending on consulate backlogs.

Best for: anyone with a documented parent or grandparent born abroad. Check this first, before you evaluate any paid route. 

American readers should also see the country-specific breakdown in second passport for Americans.

Path 2: Citizenship by marriage

Marriage rarely grants citizenship on its own. It shortens the naturalization clock. Spain reduces the standard ten-year residence requirement to one year of legal residence for the spouse of a Spanish national under Article 22 of the Civil Code. Ireland requires three years of marriage plus three years of reckonable residence.

Two practical warnings:

• First, most systems require genuine cohabitation evidence, not just a certificate. 
• Second, some countries attach renunciation conditions: Spain requires renunciation of prior nationality at the oath stage for most non-Ibero-American nationals, though enforcement varies at the other end.

Best for: people already in a cross-border relationship. Not a strategy anyone should plan around.

Path 3: Naturalization after residency

This is the largest category worldwide and the one that produced most of those 1.2 million EU citizenships in 2024. You obtain a residence permit through work, study, retirement, family, or investment, hold it lawfully for a set number of years, then apply to naturalize.

Investment-based residency, often called residency by investment or RBI, sits inside this category. You buy residency, not citizenship. Citizenship becomes a separate application governed by separate law.

• Portugal's Golden Visa route requires 14 days of stay every two years, with permanent residency eligibility after five years of legal residence.
• Portugal's 2026 Nationality Law extended naturalization to seven years for EU and CPLP nationals and ten years for everyone else, with the clock starting from issuance of the first residence card.
• Italy's Investor Visa, established under Article 26-bis of Legislative Decree 286/1998, has no minimum stay requirement to maintain the permit, but naturalization requires ten years of genuine legal residence at 183 or more days per year.
• Language and integration testing applies almost everywhere: A2 Portuguese in Portugal, B1 Italian in Italy.

Best for: investors and families with a five to twelve year horizon who want a real European foothold rather than a fast document. 

The full breakdown of what changed sits in Portugal's 2026 Nationality Law.

Path 4: Citizenship by investment

Citizenship by investment, or CBI, confers citizenship directly in exchange for a qualifying contribution, without a multi-year residence period. Since 1 July 2024, the five Eastern Caribbean programs operate under a Memorandum of Agreement setting a region-wide minimum of US 200,000 dollars.

The important structural fact: no EU citizenship-by-investment program exists in 2026. On 29 April 2025 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in Case C-181/23 that Malta's investor naturalization scheme breached EU law by treating citizenship as a commercial transaction. Malta discontinued it.

• Typical processing runs four to twelve months.
• Passports are non-EU, so there's no automatic right to live and work across the 27 member states.
• Mobility can move: the UK removed visa-free access for Dominica, and the EU has signalled further scrutiny.

Best for: applicants who need a second travel document quickly and don't require EU rights. Cost comparisons across programs are covered in cheapest citizenship by investment.

Path 5: Exceptional merit or exceptional services

Most countries reserve a discretionary route for people who deliver exceptional value: scientists, athletes, artists, entrepreneurs, and major philanthropists. Malta introduced a merit-based framework under Act XXI of 2025 following the CJEU ruling, assessed case by case by an independent Evaluation Board with final ministerial discretion, with no published investment threshold, a language requirement, and a minimum residency period.

Best for: a genuinely small group. There is no fixed price, no published timeline, and no guaranteed outcome. Treat any marketing that implies otherwise as a warning sign.

Time, Cost, Passport Strength, And Presence: The Five Paths Side By Side

The trade-offs become obvious once you line the routes up against the same four variables. Costs below exclude government fees, legal fees, and family add-ons, which vary widely.

The naturalization row is the only one where the presence requirement changes depending on what you're optimizing for. Portugal's Golden Visa lets you maintain a permit on 14 days every two years, which is genuinely light. Italy's Investor Visa asks for nothing at all to keep the permit alive. But Italian citizenship requires a decade of real, full-time tax residence. Those are two different products wearing similar labels.

The CBI row looks fast because it is fast, but speed and passport strength trade against each other. A Caribbean passport in six months does not give you the right to live in Berlin. An EU passport in eight years does. Neither is better in the abstract. 

For the fuller market picture, see the 2026 residency trends analysis.

What A Second Passport Does Not Do

This is where expectations most often break, and it's worth being blunt.

A second passport does not end US tax obligations. The United States taxes its citizens on worldwide income regardless of where they live. Acquiring another nationality changes nothing about that. 

Only formal renunciation of US citizenship ends the obligation, and renunciation carries its own consequences, including a potential exit tax for covered expatriates. That is a decision for a qualified cross-border tax advisor, not a mobility firm.

It also does not do the following:

• It does not automatically create tax residency anywhere. Tax residency follows days, ties, and domicile rules, not passports.
• It does not erase reporting obligations under FATCA or the Common Reporting Standard.
• It does not guarantee visa-free entry forever. Access lists change, and they've changed against Caribbean holders recently.
• It does not shield assets. Structuring does that, and it's a separate exercise.
• It does not require you to relocate, though some routes make relocation the point.

What it does do is real: legal residence rights in another jurisdiction, family inclusion, access to public healthcare and education systems, a functioning Plan B if conditions at home change, and an asset your children inherit. 

If you want the residency benefits without moving, EU residency without relocating explains how the low-presence programs are built.

How To Choose The Right Path For Your Situation

Work through the routes in order of cost, not in order of appeal. Most people skip straight to the paid options and discover a qualifying grandparent two years later.

1. Check descent first. It's the cheapest and often the strongest outcome. Pull birth, marriage, and naturalization records for your parents and grandparents before you do anything else.
2. Check marriage eligibility if it applies. Then set it aside if it doesn't.
3. Define your actual objective. Travel access, EU work rights, tax planning, family security, and citizenship speed are five different goals, and they point to different programs.
4. Set your presence tolerance honestly. If you can't spend 183 days a year in a country, that country's naturalization route is not a citizenship plan for you.
5. Only then compare investment routes on threshold, holding period, and exit terms.

"Most people save for a second home. The smartest ones save for a second passport. One gives you a better view. The other gives you and every generation after you options no amount of money can buy later." Alessandro Palombo, Co-Founder, Bitizenship

Palombo tracks these rule changes weekly in The Ale's Letter, which is worth following if your decision is going to play out over months rather than weeks.

Where speed dominates every other consideration, the direct-citizenship programs covered in fastest citizenship by investment are the honest answer, and they're not what Bitizenship offers.

Common Scams And Red Flags In The Second Passport Market

The market attracts fraud because the product is high-value, cross-border, and unfamiliar to most buyers. These are the patterns worth recognizing.

1. Instant EU passport 

There is no lawful way to buy EU citizenship in 2026. The CJEU closed the last program on 29 April 2025. Any offer of an EU passport for a fixed sum with no residence period is either a misrepresentation of a residency program or a fraud.

2. Fake diplomatic passports

Diplomatic passports are issued by states to accredited officials for official travel. They are not for sale, they confer no immigration status, and using one obtained through a broker exposes the holder to criminal liability.

3. Unlicensed agents

Caribbean applications can only be filed through licensed Authorised Agents. ECCIRA is empowered to fine non-compliant agents up to US$250,000 and revoke their licenses. Ask for the license number and verify it with the relevant Citizenship by Investment Unit.

4. Discounting below the regional floor

The five OECS signatories have stated that pricing any CBI option below US$200,000 is illegal. A quoted price under that threshold signals a deal that will not close.

5. Guaranteed outcomes

No firm can guarantee approval, citizenship, or a processing time. Programs that quote guarantees are describing something they don't control.

6. Ancestry claims that ignore 2025 and 2026 law changes

Providers still marketing unlimited-generation Italian descent claims are working from a framework that ended in May 2025.

Also watch for pressure to wire funds before a formal agreement, escrow arrangements with no independent trustee, and marketing that blurs residency and citizenship. Broad "easy citizenship" roundups can be a useful starting point, and countries with easy citizenship is worth reading alongside primary government sources rather than instead of them.

What To Prepare Before You Start Any Paid Route

Source of funds is the step that decides your timeline. Every EU program and every Caribbean program applies anti-money-laundering standards, and reviewers want documented lawful origin, not a balance screenshot.

For traditional wealth this is well-trodden: employment contracts, company financials, property sale deeds, probate records. For Bitcoin and digital-asset wealth it takes considerably more work.

• Complete exchange transaction histories exported in full, not screenshots.
• Blockchain-verified wallet records, ideally supported by a professional chain-analysis report.
• The original fiat origin: how you acquired the money that bought the asset.
• Evidence that gains were reported and taxed in your current jurisdiction.
• Off-ramp documentation linking conversions to the bank credit used for the investment.

Early adopters with incomplete records from defunct exchanges face the hardest version of this, and a reconstructed compliance report becomes essential rather than optional. Alongside this, gather apostilled criminal record certificates from every country where you've lived more than 12 months in the past decade, and check whether your current nationality permits dual citizenship at all. China, India, Japan, and the UAE generally do not. 

The detail on digital-asset documentation is covered in Bitcoin and Golden Visa eligibility.

Where Bitizenship Sits In This Landscape

Bitizenship structures two residency-to-citizenship pathways. It does not operate, market, or broker Caribbean citizenship by investment, and it does not sell passports. That distinction is deliberate and worth stating plainly, because it defines who Bitizenship is and isn't for.

The Portugal route is Bitizenship's Portugal Fund, a Golden Visa-eligible private equity fund. Under Portuguese rules, funds are the eligible investment category, and the qualifying investment for Golden Visa eligibility is €500,000. The fund invests in a fully owned Portuguese company focused on Bitcoin ecosystem research and investment activity, so investor exposure comes through that company's operations rather than a direct Bitcoin purchase. 

The stay requirement is 14 days every two years, with permanent residency eligibility after five years of legal residence and a consequential pathway to citizenship thereafter, subject to requirements.

The Italy route is the Bitcoin Dolce Visa, built around a €250,000 Class B equity investment in Bitizenship Italia S.r.l., a Milan-based Innovative Startup. Under Italian rules, the eligible investment route is a startup, not a fund. The startup's treasury is held in BTC as working capital and deployed for non-custodial Bitcoin Layer-2 network validation and related R&D, and the company retains ownership of its assets. 

Visa approval comes before capital transfer, and processing typically takes three to six months.

Both are residency by investment. Neither is citizenship by investment.

• Portugal: fund route, €500,000, 14 days every two years, PR eligibility at five years.
• Italy: startup route, €250,000, no minimum stay to maintain the visa, citizenship only after ten years of continuous legal residence at 183 or more days per year with B1 Italian.
• Both include qualifying family members and Schengen travel across 27 countries.
• Both carry investment risk. Returns are not guaranteed, and citizenship is never automatic.

Conclusion

Getting a second passport in 2026 means picking one of five real routes and accepting the trade-off attached to it: descent is cheapest but depends on your family tree, marriage is circumstantial, naturalization is slow but produces the strongest passports, investment is fast but non-EU, and merit is discretionary. 

The market got tighter this year, not looser, which raises the cost of choosing badly. 

Bitizenship occupies one specific slot in that map, offering two Bitcoin-aligned residency pathways in Portugal and Italy that lead toward permanent residency and, subject to full legal, language, residency, and integration requirements, eventual citizenship eligibility. 

Get in touch to work out which of the five paths actually fits your family, timeline, and capital.

Read Next

• The Most Powerful Passports in 2026 (and How Investors Actually Move Up the Ranking)
• Best Digital Nomad Visas in 2026
• The Prima Casa 18-Month Rule: How Foreign Buyers Cut Italian Registration Tax From 9% to 2%

FAQs:

1. What is the fastest way to get a second passport in 2026?

Citizenship by investment in the Eastern Caribbean is the fastest legitimate route to a second passport, typically four to twelve months, with a regional minimum investment of US$200,000 in force since July 2024. Descent claims can also be quick where documentation is clean, since recognition confirms a status you already held. Bitizenship does not offer Caribbean citizenship by investment, and its Portugal and Italy programs are residency pathways with longer citizenship horizons, so investors who need a passport in months should look elsewhere.

2. Can you buy a second passport in the European Union?

No. There is no lawful citizenship-by-investment program in the EU following the Court of Justice ruling of 29 April 2025 in Case C-181/23, which found that granting nationality in exchange for predetermined payments breached EU law. Any offer of an instant EU second passport should be treated as a red flag. Bitizenship structures EU residency by investment in Portugal and Italy, which are permits that may lead to citizenship over time subject to requirements, not purchased citizenship.

3. Does a second passport reduce my US taxes?

No. A second passport does not change US tax obligations, because the United States taxes citizens on worldwide income regardless of residence. Only formal renunciation ends that obligation, and it carries its own consequences including a potential exit tax. Bitizenship frames its programs as mobility and optionality tools rather than tax strategies, and recommends engaging a qualified cross-border tax advisor before making any decision on this basis.

4. How much does a second passport cost through investment?

Costs for a second passport through investment start at US$200,000 for Eastern Caribbean citizenship programs, while European residency routes range from €250,000 for Italy's Innovative Startup Investor Visa to €500,000 for a qualifying Portuguese Golden Visa fund investment. Government fees, legal fees, and family members add to all of these figures. Bitizenship's Italy program is built around the €250,000 equity threshold and its Portugal Fund around the €500,000 qualifying investment, with capital at risk in both cases.

5. Which second passport route is best for Bitcoin holders?

The best second passport route for Bitcoin holders usually depends on presence tolerance and source-of-funds documentation rather than headline price. Holders who can document their acquisition history and want minimal physical presence often favour Portugal's fund route at 14 days every two years, while those prioritising a lower threshold and faster approval often favour Italy's Investor Visa. Bitizenship structures both as compliant, euro-denominated investments that provide indirect Bitcoin ecosystem exposure rather than direct Bitcoin purchases, with outcomes always subject to the relevant legal requirements.

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Disclaimer:
This article is published by Bitizenship for informational and educational purposes only. It reflects Bitizenship's perspective on the investment migration market and is not intended as legal, tax, immigration, investment, or financial advice, nor as an offer or solicitation to subscribe to any investment product. Comparisons with other firms are based on publicly available information and our own assessment of structural differences in business models. We have aimed for accuracy, but descriptions of programs, regulations, and competitor offerings are necessarily summaries and may not capture every legal nuance. Program terms, eligibility criteria, processing times, tax regimes, and regulatory frameworks change frequently and vary by individual circumstances. The Bitcoin Dolce Visa involves an equity investment in Bitizenship Italia S.r.l., an Italian private company. Any investment decision should be made only after reviewing the official documentation and consulting independent legal, tax, and financial advisors qualified in the relevant jurisdictions. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Capital is at risk. Residency and citizenship outcomes depend on meeting all legal, language, residency, and integration requirements set by the relevant authorities and are never guaranteed. Always refer to official government and regulatory sources, and engage qualified professionals before acting on any information in this article.