Portugal

It seemed almost too good to be true, and in a way, it was. The counterintuitive truth about Portugal today is that the golden era is over. The NHR program was closed at the end of 2023, replaced by a much narrower incentive for highly specialized tech and science roles. Yet, despite the rising costs and the loss of its ultimate tax loophole, people are still moving here in droves on the D8 Visa. Why? Because the underlying appeal of Portugal—the profound safety, the slow-paced Mediterranean culture, and the deeply human scale of its cities—was never actually about the tax code. It is a country that forces you to realize you can’t put a price tag on a genuinely high quality of life.