How to Get Panama’s Friendly Nations Visa in 2026

For most of the last decade, the Friendly Nations Visa deserved its reputation. Nationals of a long list of countries could obtain permanent residency almost immediately, and the qualifying tie to Panama could be satisfied by incorporating a company — a formality that cost a fraction of what the visa was worth.

That version of the visa no longer exists. Since Executive Decree 226 of 20 July 2021, the category is structured in two stages. Article 3 of the decree empowers the Servicio Nacional de Migración to grant a provisional residence permit for a period of two years to applicants in this subcategory, who must be nationals of specific countries maintaining friendly, professional, economic and investment relations with Panama, and whose purpose is to carry out economic or professional activities in the country.

Two consequences follow, and both are frequently understated in guides written before the reform or copied from them:

• Permanent residency is no longer the first step. You are granted a two-year provisional permit (SNM calls it PPT-PE) and file a separate application for the permanent permit (PPP-PE) afterwards.
• The qualifying tie is now concrete. Incorporating a company is not, by itself, one of the recognised grounds. The checklist asks for employment, real estate, or a fixed-term deposit — each with its own documentary proof.

Two conditions have to be met at the same time, and applicants tend to focus on the first while the second is what actually gets scrutinised.

Your nationality has to be on the list. The category applies to nationals of specific countries designated as maintaining friendly, professional, economic and investment relations with Panama. The list is set by decree and runs to more than fifty countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. It is also the part of this system most likely to change without any public announcement in English, so confirm your own nationality against the current decree before you spend money on documents.

You have to be coming to do something economic. This is the part that gets lost. The purpose stated in the decree is to carry out economic or professional activities in Panama. The three routes in the next section are not a menu of ways to buy residency in the abstract — they are three ways of evidencing that economic tie.

The SNM checklist sets out three grounds. You pick one, and it determines which extra documents sit on top of the base document set in section 04.

Every applicant files these eight items regardless of route. This is the SNM list, in the order the immigration service itself uses:

1. Power of attorney (notarised) and application. The power of attorney must state the name and nationality of the applicant’s parents.
2. Three photographs.
3. A duly collated copy of your passport, notarised or authenticated as applicable.
4. Criminal record certificate.
5. Health certificate.
6. Certified check for B/.250.00 made out to the National Treasury.
7. Certified check for B/.800.00 made out to the Servicio Nacional de Migración.
8. Sworn declaration of personal background (the SNM form).

Two items on that list are worth pausing on, because they are where self-organised applicants lose weeks.

The power of attorney is item one for a reason: this is a represented filing. The requirement that it name your parents and their nationality surprises people who assembled their documents before speaking to anyone, and it is not something you can add later with a pen.

The health certificate is issued in Panama. That single word determines the sequence of your entire application: you cannot complete the file from your home country, and the certificate has a shelf life, so it belongs near the end of your document gathering rather than the beginning.

Dependents are filed alongside the principal applicant, with their own documentary requirements:

• A letter of responsibility from the resident or national.
• Proof of the relationship — marriage certificate for a spouse, birth certificates for children, or the judicial record of guardianship or custody as applicable.
• For dependents over 18 and under 25: certification from an educational institution confirming full-time, regular student status, plus a sworn declaration of single status.

The requirement people miss is the last one: proof that the principal has sufficient economic solvency. The checklist sets this out in numbers — a minimum income of B/.1,000.00 per month, plus B/.100.00 for each dependent — and gives two accepted ways of evidencing it: a copy of your income tax return with its paz y salvo, or an up-to-date work letter with the corresponding Caja de Seguro Social stub and a copy of your work permit.

Note what that means arithmetically. A principal with a spouse and two children is evidencing B/.1,300.00 per month, not B/.1,000.00 — and the accepted evidence is documentary and Panamanian in character. Savings do not substitute for it.

Only part of this is a fixed number. Being clear about which part is which is the difference between a budget and a guess.

On timelines, be sceptical of precision. The SNM requirements document does not commit to a processing time, and published estimates from firms that handle these filings vary widely — ranges from two to six months all circulate, often on pages that otherwise cite the same decree. A quoted timeline is an expectation, not an entitlement, and any guarantee of one should be read as a sales technique.

The provisional permit runs for two years. The permanent permit (PPP-PE) is a separate application, and the SNM checklist describes it economically: the same requirements as the provisional application, with the exception of the criminal record certificate and the check.

That sentence is short and its implications are not. “The same requirements” includes the evidence of your qualifying ground. The job letter, the Registry certificate, the deposit certificate — whichever route you used to get in is the route you are still on when you file to stay.

This is where the employment route diverges sharply from the asset routes in risk profile. An employment-based applicant’s qualifying tie can end without their consent: companies close, contracts lapse, roles are eliminated. An applicant on the deposit route controls whether the certificate still exists in year two, provided they respected the three-year term in the first place. Neither is wrong — but the employment route’s lower entry cost is paid for with two years of dependency on someone else’s business continuing to exist.