Visas · Investor visa
The investor visa rests on an investment you can actually evidence.
Colombia grants a migrant visa to a foreigner who has made a qualifying foreign direct investment or bought real estate in their own name. Both routes turn on the same thing: the investment registered with Banco de la República, in your name, and maintained for the life of the visa. That evidence is accounting work, and it is where files fail.
- Two routes: direct investment, or real estate.
- The investment must be registered with the central bank.
- It must be maintained throughout the visa's validity.
Visa M — Inversionista · Article 79 of Resolución 5477 de 2022
Start with the financial side.
Tell us what you hold today. We answer the same business day.
Category
M · Migrant
Duration
Granted for up to three years. Beneficiaries are permitted.
Work permit
Permits the activity the visa was granted for. It is not an open work permit for an unrelated employer.
Counts towards residency
Five continuous years as an M-Inversionista holder count towards the R resident visa. There is no shorter route for a larger investment: the direct-to-residency option that existed under Resolución 6045 de 2017 was abolished in October 2022.
The financial threshold
Written in law as minimum wages, not in pesos.
Colombian visa thresholds move every January with the minimum wage, and article 79 measures them at the date you file. The peso figures below are calculated from the 2026 wage, currently $1.750.905 a month, set transitionally by Decreto 0159 de 2026.
Foreign direct investment
> $1.138.088.250one-off
More than 650 monthly minimum wages
Article 79 numeral 1 requires an amount above 650 minimum wages.
Real estate, in your own name
$612.816.750one-off
At least 350 monthly minimum wages
Article 79 numeral 2 sets a minimum of 350 minimum wages.
Requirements
What the file has to prove.
Consulates apply these differently in practice, and the detail changes between resolutions. Treat this as the shape of the file, then have it confirmed for your nationality before you submit.
- Foreign direct investment above the threshold, or real estate at or above it, held in your own name.
- Investment extracts you or your attorney generate from Banco de la República's Sistema de Información Cambiaria, showing the investment registered in your name.
- For the real estate route, the public deed and a Certificado de Tradición y Libertad titled exclusively to you.
- Three months of bank statements evidencing solvency.
- Health cover valid in Colombia for the period of the visa.
- On renewal, proof the investment was maintained for the whole of the previous visa period.
Who does what
We are accountants. That is precisely why this works.
This visa turns on a financial fact somebody has to establish and certify. That is our work, and it is where applications fail. The immigration filing is prepared with the firm’s immigration counsel, briefed and supervised by us, so one team holds the whole file and you deal with one point of contact.
Handled by the firm
The financial half, signed by a licensed accountant.
- Structuring the transfer so the funds arrive in a form that can be registered at all.
- The exchange declaration that accompanies the inflow, which for foreign currency channelled through the exchange market is itself the registration.
- Obtaining the Banco de la República investment extracts the application now requires.
- The public accountant's certification where the file calls for one.
- The tax consequences of holding the visa, and of owning a Colombian asset that produces Colombian-source income.
Coordinated by the firm
The immigration filing, by counsel we brief and supervise.
- The visa application and the consular filing.
- The public deed of purchase before a Colombian notary, and the title work behind it.
- The foreigner registration and cédula de extranjería process after approval.
We do not present coordinated work as our own, and we do not quote processing times or predict approvals. Those belong to the authorities.
The part most sites get wrong
What this visa does to your tax position.
Holding this visa neither creates nor prevents Colombian tax residency. Residency is decided by presence: 183 calendar days or more, continuous or not, in any rolling 365-day period. What the visa does guarantee is that you now hold a Colombian asset producing Colombian-source income, which is taxable here whether or not you are resident. Note also article 79's standing obligation to report any change in the investment to the visa authority immediately.
After approval
Foreigner registration and the cédula de extranjería.
Register within
15 calendar days from entering Colombia, or from the date the visa is issued if it was granted while you were in the country
Apply for the cédula
at the moment of registration, or within 3 business days where the registration was completed electronically
Applies to holders and beneficiaries of any visa valid for more than three months, and is issued by Migración Colombia. The exemption list covers tourism, business, crew, events and two courtesy categories are exempt regardless of the visa's validity. Source: Decreto 1067 de 2015, articles 2.2.1.11.4.1 and 2.2.1.11.4.4, and Resolución 9316 de 2024.
In short
The essentials, in three lines.
- 01Colombia's M investor visa, under article 79 of Resolución 5477 de 2022, is granted for foreign direct investment above 650 monthly minimum wages or for real estate held in the applicant's own name at or above 350.
- 02The investment must be registered with Banco de la República and evidenced through investment extracts generated from its Sistema de Información Cambiaria, and it must be maintained for the life of the visa.
- 03There is no investment fast-track to permanent residency: the direct route under Resolución 6045 de 2017 was abolished in October 2022, and the R visa now requires five continuous years of migrant status.
Questions
What people ask about this visa.
No. The purchase has to be at or above the legal threshold, titled exclusively to you, and registered as foreign investment with Banco de la República. Buyers who paid from a Colombian account, or who bought years ago and never registered the investment, own the property but cannot produce the investment extracts the application asks for. Rebuilding that position is the most common piece of work we do on these files.
The requirement changed and older guides describe the previous version. Cancillería's current requirements ask you or your attorney to generate investment extracts from Banco de la República's Sistema de Información Cambiaria showing the direct investment registered in your name. It is no longer a letter requested from a central bank department.
Not any more, and this is the single most repeated error in English-language content about Colombia. Under Resolución 6045 de 2017 an investment above 650 minimum wages granted a resident visa directly. Resolución 5477 de 2022 abolished that route in October 2022. Today the same amount qualifies you for an M investor visa, and the R visa requires five continuous years of migrant status.
The visa is expressly conditioned on maintaining the investment, and any change in its circumstances must be reported to the visa authority immediately. Selling without planning the immigration and exchange consequences first can cost you both the visa and the clean route to repatriating the proceeds.
Who answers
The accountant who signs the certification, not a call centre.
Kathiuska Villegas Padilla is a Colombian Contadora Pública with a postgraduate specialization in Tax Management. Where a visa file needs a shareholding certificate, an income certification or evidence of registered investment, it carries her signature and she answers for it.
We work inside your company's software
QuickBooks
- Zeus
Other routes into Colombia.
M · Migrant
Business owner visa
For foreigners who own or hold a stake in a Colombian company with capital above the threshold.
Read moreV · Visitor
Digital nomad visa
For remote workers earning from abroad. The tax question it raises is the important one.
Read moreV · Visitor
Rentista visa
For foreigners living on periodic income. A visitor category, which matters if residency is the goal.
Read more
Where this comes from
- Resolución 5477 de 2022, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores
- Cancillería, visa requirements by category
- Estatuto Tributario, article 10 (tax residency)
Verified on 10 September 2026 against the consolidated text of Resolución 5477 de 2022 and its amendments. Immigration rules change by resolution and consulates apply them differently in practice. This page is general information about how the financial requirements work, not immigration advice, and nothing here is a promise of approval or of a processing time.
Free initial call
Start with the number the application turns on.
Before anything is filed, someone has to establish the investment, the capital or the income, and be willing to certify it. That is where we start, and it is the part that decides whether the file is worth submitting.
What decides your tax position
183 days
Tax residency starts at 183 days of presence in any rolling 365-day window. No visa category changes that, and the tax authority has said so in a published ruling.
Find out whether your file actually holds.
Free initial call with the director. We reply the same business day.
Talk to the firm
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- TodayWe write back to confirm a time.
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- 24 hA written proposal with scope and fees.
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