Home / Markets
Where we're strongest
Two core corridors, with counsel on retainer in each. Below: the provinces we actually work in, what Europe still has open, and where the rules stand this quarter.
Core corridor
Canada, province by province.
Canada is not one market. Two provinces hold three in five Canadians, while output per head is highest in the ones almost nobody looks at first. Tap a province to see the numbers and our read on it as a place to buy a business.
Schematic map — shapes are simplified for clarity, not drawn to scale. Shading shows population band.
Population
Where the people are
Statistics Canada quarterly estimate, 1 April 2026.
Output per head
Where the money is made
Nominal GDP per capita, 2023, in Canadian dollars. National figure: $74,039.
Reading those two charts together
Ontario has the buyers; Alberta and Saskatchewan have the output per head. Most Indian investors arrive fixated on Toronto and Vancouver, where every broker's inventory is picked over and multiples reflect it. The provinces with strong per-capita economies and smaller populations are where a well-run business is more often available at a sane price — provided you're honestly willing to live there. GDP per capita also flatters resource-heavy provinces: it measures output, not what a typical household earns.
Core corridor
Europe is a shrinking set of open doors.
Investor-residence routes across the EU have been closing and tightening since 2022. What's left is smaller, more expensive and far more heavily vetted. Country choice is therefore driven as much by what remains open as by where you want to live.
Schematic map — blocks are simplified, not drawn to scale. Status as of August 2026; confirm with counsel before committing funds.
How to read this
The short versionAn open route is not the same as a suitable route. Several of the remaining programmes give you residency without giving you a business, a tax position or a realistic path to citizenship on the timeline you were told.
Two questions decide this properly: where do you actually want to spend time, and what is the money doing while you hold the permit? Everything else is programme trivia.
The ARI route continues, but property purchase no longer qualifies. Remaining options centre on funds, business investment and job creation. Long processing queues, and 2026 changes to nationality law have moved the citizenship timeline.
Lowest entry point left in the EU, but thresholds were raised sharply in prime areas including Attica, Thessaloniki and the popular islands. The cheaper tier applies across most of the country.
Investor visa tied to investment in Italian companies, government bonds, innovative start-ups or philanthropy. No minimum-stay requirement, which suits investors who aren't relocating immediately.
Guest investor residence permit, introduced in 2024. Fast processing relative to the rest of the EU. Short track record, so we look carefully at how it is being administered in practice.
Higher ticket, but the only European route that has granted permanent residency immediately rather than a renewable temporary permit. Low flat tax rates. Outside the euro area.
Residency routes remain. The citizenship-by-investment era in the EU is over: the Court of Justice ruled against Malta's scheme in April 2025, and Cyprus ended its own passport programme years earlier.
Parliament voted in June 2026 to abolish the property, securities and deposit routes from 1 January 2027. The bill went back for a second reading. We would not start a Latvian file on that basis.
Investor residence was removed for new applications on 3 April 2025. Comparison sites still list it as open — a useful test of whether your consultant is reading current law or last year's brochure.
All three ended their investor routes between 2022 and 2024. Business, work and talent visas remain, and for genuine operators those are usually the better argument anyway.
No golden-visa equivalent. Entry is through a real business, employment or self-employment case — which is a higher bar to write and a much more durable position once granted.
The pattern behind the map
Passive routes are being closed; productive ones are surviving. Across Europe the political tolerance for buying residency through property has collapsed, while routes tied to funds, operating businesses and job creation have held. If your plan depends on a passive programme staying open for another three years, treat that as a risk in the plan, not an assumption.
Current market procedure
Where the rules stand this quarter.
Most consultancies are still selling routes that changed eighteen months ago. This section is dated on purpose, and we review it every quarter.
Reviewed August 2026 · next review November 2026
Canada — the numbers that changed
The intake got smaller. The provincial door got wider.
What actually changed for business applicants
- The federal Start-Up Visa stopped accepting new applications at the end of 2025, after backlogs pushed advertised processing times into years
- Holders of a 2025 commitment certificate had until 30 June 2026 to file; certificates issued after that were not honoured
- IRCC has signalled a new, more targeted and capped entrepreneur pilot rather than a permanent closure
- Federal business application fees rose on 30 April 2026
- Provincial entrepreneur streams are, for now, the working route for most business applicants
Our read on it
Two things follow from the same policy. First, a business plan on a slide deck is worth much less than it was three years ago — the volume-driven start-up route that rewarded a good story is paused. Second, buying or building something that a province actually wants, in a province that now has more nomination spaces than it did last year, has become the stronger position.
That's why our diligence asks whether a target business supports a nomination case, not just whether it makes money. The two questions have converged.
Read this the right way
This page describes the direction of policy, not your eligibility. Targets, caps and criteria change between reviews, and provincial streams open and close at short notice. Nothing here is legal advice, and no figure on this page should be relied on as the basis for committing money. We confirm the current position in writing with licensed counsel in the relevant jurisdiction before any file is opened.