Vanuatu — DSP / CIIP.
Reformed and reopened after a 2025 regulatory overhaul; no longer Schengen visa-free.
At a glance
What changed, and why it matters
This page reflects a program in the middle of real change, not a stable baseline — worth reading carefully before treating any figure here as final. Vanuatu's Development Support Programme (DSP) and Capital Investment Immigration Plan (CIIP) were suspended in March 2025 for a "100-day regulatory overhaul" tightening due diligence, following earlier pricing-irregularity concerns; reporting into 2026 describes further suspensions and reopenings as the reforms have rolled out. Separately — and more consequentially for most applicants — the European Union permanently ended Vanuatu's Schengen visa-free exemption on 12 December 2024, after having suspended it in March 2022. A Vanuatu passport in 2026 does not carry the EU access it did as recently as 2021.
How crypto moves today
Vanuatu has never accepted crypto directly through a government payment gateway the way El Salvador does. Crypto-funded applications route through licensed agents who convert the holding to fiat before it's remitted to government accounts — the same agent-conversion pattern common across most of our directory, now paired with materially stricter post-reform due diligence: mandatory biometric capture (from 1 July 2025), a required Vanuatu National ID for applications (from 18 July 2025), and due diligence aligned to ICAO standards.
What this means for an applicant weighing Vanuatu today
The core appeal of a Vanuatu passport — speed and a low headline price — is less true post-reform than it was in Vanuatu's earlier years as a program, and the loss of Schengen access removes what was previously one of its strongest selling points. This is exactly the kind of shift our Advisory vertical exists to catch before it affects a client's strategy, not after — see our Mandate for why we treat this landscape as continuously moving rather than fixed.