Spain’s Council of Ministers has approved a far-reaching amnesty that will allow hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants to legalise their status from 1 April 2026. Under the royal-decree scheme, foreigners who can prove at least five months of continuous residence in Spain before 31 December 2025, hold a clean criminal record and meet basic integration criteria will be granted a one-year residency visa that can be renewed annually.
Government sources say the move responds to “acute labour-market shortages” in agriculture, hospitality, logistics and elder-care—sectors where up to 12 percent of the workforce is believed to be undocumented. Since 2022, more than half of Spain’s net job creation has been driven by foreign labour, and employers’ federations have lobbied hard for an amnesty to bring shadow-economy workers into the formal tax and social-security net.
The Interior Ministry expects around 500,000 applicants, although NGOs such as Cáritas suggest the real pool of eligible migrants may top one million. Applications must be filed online between 1 April and 30 June; successful applicants will receive a digital residence card allowing them to work as employees or self-employed, travel freely within Schengen for up to 90 days in any 180 and count the new permit time toward long-term residency and, eventually, citizenship.
![Spain unveils 2026 migrant amnesty: one-year renewable residency visa for up to 500,000 undocumented foreigners]()
For step-by-step guidance on the paperwork, deadlines and supporting evidence required, applicants and their employers can turn to VisaHQ’s Spain portal (https://www.visahq.com/spain/), where seasoned visa specialists offer document checklists, pre-submission reviews and online tracking tools—not only for the new regularisation permit but also for standard work visas, Schengen travel, and long-term residency or citizenship planning.
Critics from the conservative Partido Popular accuse the Socialist-led government of bypassing parliament and creating a “pull factor” at Spain’s borders. The Interior Ministry counters that similar regularisations in 2000, 2005 and 2020 boosted GDP by an average 0.3 percentage points in the first year and raised social-security revenues by €1.5 billion.
For multinational employers and global-mobility managers, the amnesty offers an opportunity to convert informal staff or dependants into fully documented employees. Companies are urged to identify eligible workers quickly, compile proof of residence—utility bills, empadronamiento certificates, bank statements—and schedule medicals and criminal-record requests early to avoid last-minute bottlenecks.
Government sources say the move responds to “acute labour-market shortages” in agriculture, hospitality, logistics and elder-care—sectors where up to 12 percent of the workforce is believed to be undocumented. Since 2022, more than half of Spain’s net job creation has been driven by foreign labour, and employers’ federations have lobbied hard for an amnesty to bring shadow-economy workers into the formal tax and social-security net.
The Interior Ministry expects around 500,000 applicants, although NGOs such as Cáritas suggest the real pool of eligible migrants may top one million. Applications must be filed online between 1 April and 30 June; successful applicants will receive a digital residence card allowing them to work as employees or self-employed, travel freely within Schengen for up to 90 days in any 180 and count the new permit time toward long-term residency and, eventually, citizenship.
For step-by-step guidance on the paperwork, deadlines and supporting evidence required, applicants and their employers can turn to VisaHQ’s Spain portal (https://www.visahq.com/spain/), where seasoned visa specialists offer document checklists, pre-submission reviews and online tracking tools—not only for the new regularisation permit but also for standard work visas, Schengen travel, and long-term residency or citizenship planning.
Critics from the conservative Partido Popular accuse the Socialist-led government of bypassing parliament and creating a “pull factor” at Spain’s borders. The Interior Ministry counters that similar regularisations in 2000, 2005 and 2020 boosted GDP by an average 0.3 percentage points in the first year and raised social-security revenues by €1.5 billion.
For multinational employers and global-mobility managers, the amnesty offers an opportunity to convert informal staff or dependants into fully documented employees. Companies are urged to identify eligible workers quickly, compile proof of residence—utility bills, empadronamiento certificates, bank statements—and schedule medicals and criminal-record requests early to avoid last-minute bottlenecks.
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