Spain's Retirement Visa in 2026: €28,800 a Year, Three Documents That Expire, and the Order to File Them

The Spain retirement visa income requirement for 2026 is €28,800 a year, about $32,800 at September’s exchange rate, plus €7,200 for each family member you bring. A married couple has to show €36,000. That’s the number everyone quotes, and it’s the part of the file that almost never causes a refusal. People who can’t meet it don’t apply.

The files that fail usually fail on a date. A background check that turned six months old while the apostille was in the mail. A medical letter signed four months ago. A health policy with a €10 copay. None of them is exotic, and all of them send you back to the start.

This page is the Non-Lucrative Visa filed from the United States, checked against the consulates’ own pages in September 2026. I’ll go through the money, the file, the calendar, and what happens after you land.

The Spain retirement visa income requirement, and what counts

Spain doesn’t set its own number. It borrows one. The threshold is 400% of the IPREM, the public income index the Spanish government uses for benefits and fees, which has sat at €600 a month since 2023. Each family member adds 100% of IPREM.

Two things make this harder than it looks.

It has to be passive. Pensions, Social Security, rental income, dividends, interest, annuities. A salary doesn’t count, and neither does freelance income from US clients. Savings can stand in for income, but consulates want to see the full amount sitting in your accounts with a history behind it: statements for the last three months on every account, plus a bank certificate showing when each account was opened, its balance on December 31 and its average balance over the past twelve months. A lump that arrived last week reads like borrowed money, because often it is.

It’s set above the life. The average American retirement benefit was $2,086 a month in July 2026, about €1,830. On Social Security alone, the typical retiree doesn’t qualify. That’s the fact that reorders every Spain plan, and it’s why I start here instead of with the weather.

If you’re still working and your income stops when the work stops, this isn’t your visa. The Digital Nomad Visa is: it asks for about €2,850 a month in 2026 (200% of Spain’s minimum wage), lets you work for foreign employers or clients, and caps Spanish-source income at 20%. You can’t slide from one to the other later without trouble, so decide before you file.

The consulate is chosen for you

You apply where you legally live, and you prove it with a driver’s license or state ID. Apply to the wrong consulate and you’ll be sent to the right one, weeks later.

The door is different too. Six consulates (Washington, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Houston and San Francisco) take files through BLS International, an outsourced visa center with online booking. New York and Boston take them at the consulate itself, with the appointment requested by email. Everywhere, you go in person.

The file, document by document

This is the list the consulates publish, in the order I’d gather it. Where one consulate asks for more than the others, I say which.

The forms. The national visa application and form EX-01, the application for the residence authorization itself. One set per person, signed.

The passport. Valid for at least a year, with two blank pages, and issued less than ten years ago. That last rule catches people whose passport is technically valid. If yours is close, renew it before anything else.

The FBI check. It has to be the FBI’s fingerprint-based Identity History Summary. State police checks are refused. It needs an apostille, and for a federal document only the State Department’s Office of Authentications can issue one. Then a sworn translation into Spanish. It can’t be more than six months old on the day you apply. If you’ve lived in another country for more than 180 days in the last five years, Washington also wants that country’s check.

The medical certificate. A doctor’s letter stating you don’t have a disease with serious public-health implications under the 2005 International Health Regulations. Consulates publish the wording: use it word for word. How old it can be depends on the consulate: 90 days in Washington and Los Angeles, three months in Miami, Boston, Chicago, Houston and San Francisco, and New York prints no limit. Washington wants it signed by a physician, not a nurse practitioner or physician assistant, with the clinic’s stamp and the doctor’s license number.

Health insurance. A policy from an insurer authorized to operate in Spain, covering everything the public system covers, with no deductible, no copay, no waiting period and no coverage cap. Washington states it plainly: travel insurance isn’t accepted, and the policy must run for a year and be kept for your whole stay. Most people pay the first year up front.

Proof of money. The statements, certificate and income letters described above, plus a copy of your latest US tax return.

An affidavit. Washington asks for a notarized letter: your background, why you’re moving, how long you plan to stay, an address in Spain for at least the first three months, and a written commitment not to work “by any means, either on-site nor remotely.” Other consulates don’t spell it out as fully. Write one anyway.

Translations. Everything that isn’t in Spanish needs an official or sworn translation.

Fees. For US citizens the visa fee is $140. All eight consulates also list a residence-authorization fee of about $13, and the BLS centers add a service charge. Los Angeles takes money orders on the day. Nothing is refundable.

The trap is the calendar

Three documents expire, and they don’t expire together.

• The FBI check: six months.
• The medical certificate: 90 days or three months, depending on the consulate.
• Bank statements: the last three months.

The FBI check itself can come back in days through an FBI-approved channeler. The apostille is the slow part. The State Department’s own page has quoted about five weeks for mail-in service, at $20 per document, and delays beyond that happen, so plan for longer. After the apostille comes the translation.

So you build the file backwards from the appointment.

I keep a version of this as a free printable checklist, with a line to write the issue date of each document. It’s the page I’d tape to the fridge.

Three things people get wrong

“The Golden Visa is the easy route.” It’s gone. Spain ended residency by property purchase on 3 April 2025, and it hasn’t come back.

“Remote work is fine as long as the clients are in the US.” It isn’t. The Non-Lucrative Visa prohibits work of every kind, and the place it bites is the renewal, when the immigration office reads a year of your bank statements. Regular deposits from a US LLC look exactly like what they are.

“Any health insurance will do.” The consulates reject travel policies and anything with a copay or deductible. An international plan that “covers Spain” isn’t the same thing as a Spanish-authorized policy, and the consulate reads the wording.

After you land: the TIE

The visa sticker isn’t your residence. It’s permission to enter and finish the process in Spain, and it has dates on it. Los Angeles, Miami and New York quote a 90-day visa; Washington says a year. Plan around the dates printed on your own sticker.

Within one month of arriving, you apply for the TIE, the physical residence card. That means an appointment for fingerprints, booked through the government’s cita previa portal. It’s free and it’s the only official channel, and slots in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Málaga go fast. You’ll pay a small fee on form 790, code 012, around €16 in 2026. Bring your passport, the approval, a photo, form EX-17 and a padrón certificate, the town-hall registration of your address. Getting the padrón usually needs a signed lease, which is why the first apartment matters more than it seems.

The renewal is where the rules really apply

The first card lasts a year. Under the regulation in force since May 2025, a renewal is granted for two years, and it now requires that you actually lived in Spain for more than 183 days in the calendar year. The immigration office in Spain decides it, not the consulate, and it looks again at money, insurance and how you’ve been living.

Applicants are commonly asked to show means for the whole two-year period, which doubles the number: a couple who proved €36,000 at entry should plan to show €72,000. Offices apply this differently, so check the Ministry’s renewal sheet the year you renew. After five years of legal residence you can apply for long-term residency, which no longer depends on the income test.

Those 183 days also make you a Spanish tax resident, with Spanish tax on your worldwide income. That’s a separate page, and it’s the one that costs people the most: Spain taxes for Americans.

Do it yourself, or pay someone

Plenty of people file this themselves, and with the list above you can. But a refusal costs months, and consulates read the same rule differently. If your situation has a wrinkle — a couple with one pension and one salary, income paid from a trust, a past you’d rather explain in person — an hour with an immigration lawyer before you file is cheap insurance. I don’t have an arrangement with any lawyer or agency, and I don’t send readers to one.

If Spain’s numbers work for you, the next question is what the life costs once you’re through the door: what it costs to live in Spain in 2026.