Albania Investor Permit: Residence Through Investment

Who the investor permit is for

Article 69 of Law 79/2021 provides a unique permit category for investors — in practice, shareholders and directors of an Albanian company who actually run it. This is a route for entrepreneurs, not for passive capital: the authorities look for genuine business activity, employees and turnover, not a shell company with a rented desk.

The investment threshold is set by joint ministerial instruction rather than by the law itself, and this is where you must be careful. Legal practitioners have long cited a benchmark of 10,000,000 ALL (roughly €85,000–90,000) invested, with an employment ratio of about five Albanian workers per foreigner and salaries at or above the national average. The permit is issued for two years and renewable for three.

Regulatory uncertainty to declare openly: Law 43/2025 entered into force in January 2026, and some legal and trade sources report new thresholds of €100,000 for business or government-bond investment and €300,000 for real-estate-linked investment. We have not found official confirmation of these figures in published implementing acts. Treat every threshold you read online — including ours — as provisional, and get the current figure confirmed in writing before you structure an investment around it.

Setting up an Albanian company

The standard vehicle is a limited liability company (sh.p.k.), registered at the National Business Centre (QKB) — incorporation itself is quick and inexpensive by European standards, with minimal share capital requirements. You will receive a company extract and a tax identification number (NIPT), both of which go into the permit file. Foreigners can own 100% of an Albanian company in most sectors; the notable exception is agricultural land, which foreign individuals cannot buy directly and is typically held through a local structure.

The practical bottleneck is not incorporation but banking: opening a corporate account involves source-of-funds checks, and some banks are reluctant with newly arrived foreign founders — the same banking catch-22 that affects retirees and nomads, in corporate form. Plan the banking step early, because capital contributions and operating expenses need to move through traceable channels to stand up in the permit assessment.

Documents for investor applications

Expect to file, via e-Albania: the QKB company registration extract and statutes showing your shareholding or director role; the NIPT; evidence of the invested capital and of real activity (contracts, invoices, payroll for Albanian staff); your passport; health insurance valid in Albania; proof of accommodation; and an apostilled, sworn-translated criminal record certificate issued within six months — mandatory for every applicant under the 2025 amendments. Documents issued abroad need the usual order of operations: apostille first, translation second.

Applications in this category involve an element of assessment — evaluators look at the credibility of the business plan and your active involvement — so a thin file with a dormant company is a weak file, whatever the nominal investment. Applicants report that files from some regions take 45–60 days or more; build that into your timeline and keep proof of funds impeccably documented.

Investor permit vs golden visa

Some consultancies market this category as "Albania residency by investment" or even "golden visa". The label is misleading in two ways. First, there is no passive option: unlike genuine golden visas, you cannot simply buy government bonds or a qualifying property and collect residence — Article 69 presumes an operating business, and the property-only route (Article 84) is a different, one-year permit with no investment threshold at all. Second, there is no citizenship track attached: Albania has no citizenship-by-investment programme and never has. Our golden visa debunk tells that story, including the passport scheme that was announced and suspended in 2023 under EU pressure.

If a provider quotes you a fixed package for "guaranteed Albanian residency by investment" with a passport at the end, you are looking at marketing of ordinary permits at best — and at a red flag at worst.