Many vacationers dream of someday living abroad, however a rising quantity of US residents are making that fantasy a actuality.
Demand for extra citizenship, residency, and funding alternatives abroad has by no means been greater, “as affluent Americans seek international diversification in unprecedented numbers,” in response to a brand new report by residence and citizenship planning agency Henley & Partners.
Travelers are actually constructing so-called “sovereign portfolios,” or collections of residency rights, citizenships, investments, and enterprise pursuits throughout a number of nations, the agency says.
The shift is a component of a rising motion amongst rich vacationers in search of elevated flexibility and world entry. “The wealthy individual of 2026 is no longer selecting a single country; they are constructing a portfolio of jurisdictions,” says Dr. Parag Khanna, founder and CEO at AlphaGeo, an information agency that helped Henley & Partners analyze the development.
In 2025, the quantity of purposes for residency and citizenship by funding packages—additionally referred to as “golden visas” or “golden passports”—from US nationals doubled, in response to Henley & Partners, and it nonetheless stays elevated in 2026. “Only 7% of applications by US citizens originate from Americans living outside the country, highlighting that demand is being driven overwhelmingly by US residents rather than expatriates,” says the report.
Most Americans are in search of residency and citizenship funding alternatives in Europe. Almost half of all US nationals’ purposes are directed there, and Portugal and Italy are their high two choices. Latin America and the Caribbean are additionally widespread selections for Americans, with greater than 1 / 4 of purposes focusing on packages in these areas.
While demand for these packages is excessive amongst US residents, people all around the globe are additionally seeking to diversify their residency, citizenship, and funding holdings: In the primary half of 2026, Henley & Partners acquired purposes from 86 nationalities for 47 funding migration packages, the agency says. “The objective is to ensure that no single government holds the whole of a family’s life and capital,” says Basil Mohr-Elzeki, managing companion and head of personal purchasers Americas at Henley & Partners.
For many vacationers, and American residents particularly, buying residence and citizenship overseas affords a way of stability “in a world that has grown harder to predict,” Mohr-Elzeki says. In different phrases, the present mixture of US political tensions and world conflicts are driving extra US nationals to hunt new choices abroad. “What used to be a simple precaution, a single spare passport set aside for emergencies, has become a deliberate discipline,” provides Mohr-Elzeki.