With just days left in 2025, Spain-based news outlet *Euro Weekly News* has published a concise guide to the raft of regulatory changes that foreign residents – and the companies that move them – will face in 2026. The headline items are the EU’s new Entry/Exit System (EES), expected to go fully live on 10 April 2026, and the companion ETIAS travel-authorisation scheme later that year. Once operational, EES will replace passport stamping for non-EU travellers, capturing fingerprints and facial images on first entry and automatically tallying days spent in the Schengen Area.
For short-term assignees the impact is immediate: the system will enforce the 90/180-day rule to the letter, eliminating the “overstay by accident” grey zone that many UK and US frequent flyers have relied on. Mobility teams must track days precisely or risk fines and future entry bans for staff.
Companies and individual travellers who want to stay ahead of these changes can lean on VisaHQ’s dedicated Spain portal. The service keeps real-time tabs on the rollout of EES and ETIAS, offers intuitive tools to calculate allowable Schengen days, and walks users through every visa option still open post-“golden visa.” HR departments can lodge or renew applications online and get expert support in minutes rather than weeks: https://www.visahq.com/spain/.
![2026 Rule-Book: Spain Warns Expats of Digital Border Controls, Stricter Rental Caps and End of Golden Visa]()
The article also walks through Spain’s tighter housing framework. Rent hikes will no longer be pegged to CPI but to a new national index designed to curb spikes in hotspots such as Madrid and Barcelona. Coupled with an expanded digital registry for tourist rentals, the measures aim to cool prices – but they also impose due-diligence duties on relocating employees who sub-let or Airbnb their homes. Illegal listings can be taken offline overnight, leaving tenants without legal recourse.
On immigration, the piece confirms what global-mobility professionals already flagged: Spain’s “golden visa” investment route closed in April 2025 and will not return. New investors must use standard work, entrepreneur or non-lucrative visas. Meanwhile, the Beckham tax regime survives for now but audits are tightening.
Taken together, 2026 will be the most regulation-heavy year for expats since Spain joined Schengen. HR departments should budget extra time for border registration at the start of Q2, audit housing allowances against the new rent index, and review visa pipelines for senior hires who previously planned on property-investment residency.
For short-term assignees the impact is immediate: the system will enforce the 90/180-day rule to the letter, eliminating the “overstay by accident” grey zone that many UK and US frequent flyers have relied on. Mobility teams must track days precisely or risk fines and future entry bans for staff.
Companies and individual travellers who want to stay ahead of these changes can lean on VisaHQ’s dedicated Spain portal. The service keeps real-time tabs on the rollout of EES and ETIAS, offers intuitive tools to calculate allowable Schengen days, and walks users through every visa option still open post-“golden visa.” HR departments can lodge or renew applications online and get expert support in minutes rather than weeks: https://www.visahq.com/spain/.
The article also walks through Spain’s tighter housing framework. Rent hikes will no longer be pegged to CPI but to a new national index designed to curb spikes in hotspots such as Madrid and Barcelona. Coupled with an expanded digital registry for tourist rentals, the measures aim to cool prices – but they also impose due-diligence duties on relocating employees who sub-let or Airbnb their homes. Illegal listings can be taken offline overnight, leaving tenants without legal recourse.
On immigration, the piece confirms what global-mobility professionals already flagged: Spain’s “golden visa” investment route closed in April 2025 and will not return. New investors must use standard work, entrepreneur or non-lucrative visas. Meanwhile, the Beckham tax regime survives for now but audits are tightening.
Taken together, 2026 will be the most regulation-heavy year for expats since Spain joined Schengen. HR departments should budget extra time for border registration at the start of Q2, audit housing allowances against the new rent index, and review visa pipelines for senior hires who previously planned on property-investment residency.
