Spain Visa for Turkish Citizens

At a glance

• Routes: non-lucrative residence (living on savings or passive income, with no work in Spain) or the international telework visa (remote work for companies outside Spain).
• Where you apply: the Spanish mission for the place where you legally reside, not the country of your passport. In Türkiye, that is the Consulate General in Istanbul or the Embassy in Ankara, depending on your province.
• Turkish documents: Apostille (Türkiye has been a party to the Convention since 1985), followed by sworn translation into Spanish.
• Non-lucrative means, 2026: €28,800 a year (€2,400 a month) for the main applicant, plus €7,200 a year for each family member.
• Digital nomad income, 2026: €2,849 a month for the main applicant, plus €1,068 for the first family member and €356 for each additional one.
• Turkish nationals in the Gulf: Turkish documents by Apostille, local documents through the route of the country where you live.

These thresholds are tied to official indicators: the IPREM, which has remained at €600 a month since 2023, and the 2026 minimum wage of €1,221 a month in fourteen payments set by RD 126/2026. They are confirmed on the filing date.

Non-lucrative or digital nomad: choosing the route

The decision turns on where your income comes from, and it should be made before a single document is ordered.

The non-lucrative residence suits Turkish retirees, investors, property owners and families living on savings, rental income, dividends or a pension. It authorises residence in Spain without carrying out work or professional activity there. The first authorisation lasts one year; renewals are for two years each, and after five years of continuous legal residence you can apply for long-term residence. Our non-lucrative residency service covers this route end to end.

The international telework visa suits Turkish professionals who work remotely, exclusively through digital means, for companies established outside Spain: engineers, consultants, analysts and designers. The working relationship must have existed for at least three months, the company must have been active for at least a year, and you need a degree or at least three years of professional experience. Self-employed applicants may work for Spanish clients provided that work does not exceed 20% of their total professional activity. See our digital nomad visa service.

If you intend to keep working for a Turkish employer from Spain, the telework route, not the non-lucrative one, is built for you. Our comparison of the two routes sets out the differences.

Applying from Türkiye: Istanbul or Ankara

Spanish missions admit visa applications only from people who reside in their consular district, and you prove that residence with original documents. Türkiye has two offices to consider.

• Consulate General of Spain in Istanbul. Its district covers Istanbul and the Marmara and Aegean provinces, including Tekirdağ, Kırklareli, Kocaeli, Sakarya, Bilecik, Bursa, Yalova, Çanakkale, Balıkesir, Manisa, İzmir, Aydın, Denizli and Muğla; the Mediterranean coast including Antalya; and the Black Sea provinces from Bolu and Zonguldak to Artvin. For both the non-lucrative and the telework visa, the consulate states that applications are lodged at the BLS International offices, by appointment.
• Embassy of Spain in Ankara. In our reading it handles residents of the Turkish provinces outside the Istanbul list. BLS International has an office in Çankaya, Ankara, but the embassy's pages do not say whether national visas are lodged there or at the embassy itself. We confirm the lodging arrangements with the mission for every file.

Check your province against the Istanbul list before booking anything.

Foreign nationals living in Türkiye, including many Iranians in Istanbul, follow the same rule and prove residence with their ikamet. No official page we have reviewed sets a minimum remaining validity for it, so a permit close to expiry is a point we raise with the mission before filing.

Turkish documents: the Apostille advantage

Türkiye ratified the Hague Apostille Convention in 1985. Turkish public documents for Spain therefore carry an Apostille rather than passing through the longer consular legalisation chain that applies to documents from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, the UAE or Kuwait. The Istanbul consulate's telework page expressly requires the Apostille on foreign documents.

For most Turkish files this covers:

• the criminal record certificate (adli sicil kaydı), issued by the Ministry of Justice's Directorate General of Criminal Records and Statistics and available through e-Devlet, public prosecutors' offices and Turkish embassies abroad;
• civil status records for family applications, such as marriage and birth records;
• any other Turkish public document the mission asks for.

Each apostilled document is then translated into Spanish by a sworn translator. We confirm the apostilling authority document by document at the start.

The Apostille shortens the chain; it does not remove the need for care. A name spelt differently in the passport and the civil register causes more delay than the Apostille itself.

Turkish nationals living in the Gulf

Many Turkish nationals considering Spain live in Dubai, Riyadh, Kuwait City, Muscat or Manama. The principle is simple: you apply where you legally reside, not where your passport was issued. The Spanish mission pages in the Gulf require proof of residence in their district (for the telework visa, legal residence in the country where the application is lodged), so your Emirates residence visa, iqama or equivalent card becomes a core document.

You will also run two document chains in parallel:

• Turkish chain: Turkish civil documents and, if you lived in Türkiye during the relevant period, the Turkish criminal record, all with Apostille and sworn translation. The certificate can be requested through e-Devlet or a Turkish mission.
• Country-of-residence chain: the local police clearance and any local documents, validated through that country's own route.

The second chain is where the Gulf states differ:

• UAE: not a party to the Apostille Convention. Documents are legalised by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then by the Embassy of Spain in Abu Dhabi, which covers the whole country. Non-lucrative applications are lodged at the BLS centre in Dubai. Our guide for UAE residents covers this in detail.
• Saudi Arabia: a party to the Apostille Convention since December 2022; applications go through BLS in Riyadh or Jeddah for the Embassy in Riyadh.
• Kuwait: not a party; documents are legalised by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then by the Embassy of Spain in Kuwait, which also covers Bahrain.
• Oman and Bahrain: parties to the Apostille Convention since 2012 and 2013 respectively.

For the non-lucrative route, criminal records are required from every country you have lived in during the last five years. A Turkish national who moved from Istanbul to Dubai three years ago will normally need both certificates.

Funds and the source of funds

For the non-lucrative route, the regulation requires monthly means of 400% of the IPREM for the main applicant and 100% of the IPREM for each family member: on 2026 figures, €2,400 a month (€28,800 a year) for the main applicant and €600 a month (€7,200 a year) for each dependant. A couple with one child therefore plans on at least €43,200 a year. Consulates may apply their own calculation method, so we build files with a margin rather than to the exact minimum.

What persuades a case officer is a coherent picture, not one day's balance:

• statements showing the funds held consistently over time, not deposited shortly before the appointment;
• documentary evidence of recurring income: tenancy agreements and title deeds for rental property in Türkiye, pension statements, dividend resolutions;
• for Gulf residents, a clear trail wherever money has moved between a Turkish account, a Gulf account and the account you present.

If your means are held in Turkish lira, remember that the thresholds are in euros; in our view a comfortable margin is the best protection against exchange-rate movements.

For the telework route the test is income from the remote activity: €2,849 a month for the main applicant on 2026 figures (200% of the minimum wage, annualised over twelve months), plus €1,068 for the first family member and €356 for each additional one. A lower monthly calculation also circulates, but we prepare every file on the higher figure.

Health insurance, criminal records and the rest of the file

For the non-lucrative route, the Spanish mission pages in Türkiye ask for public or private health insurance with an insurer authorised to operate in Spain, covering all the risks covered by the Spanish public health system. Many consulates also require the policy to be free of co-payments, deductibles and waiting periods, and travel policies are a classic cause of refusal.

For the telework route, our position is this: when you apply at a consulate, private health insurance is required for the visa; when you apply from inside Spain to the UGE-CE, private insurance is not required, because Social Security registration gives you public cover.

Other core items:

• criminal record certificates covering the last five years (non-lucrative), or the last two years plus a sworn declaration covering the previous five (telework, as stated on several mission pages);
• proof of residence in the consular district;
• the government fee (form 790, code 052, for the non-lucrative route).

Families applying together

Spouses, minor children and, depending on the consulate, dependent adult children can apply together with the main applicant on the non-lucrative route, each adding €7,200 a year to the required means. On the telework route, the family may apply jointly with the main applicant or later. Turkish marriage and birth records follow the same Apostille and translation process, which keeps Turkish family files comparatively straightforward.

Timeline and what happens after approval

The official information sheet for the non-lucrative visa gives the mission one month to resolve a complete application. After notification you collect the visa in person within one month, enter Spain within its validity (at most three months) and apply for your residence card (TIE) within one month of arrival. In practice the calendar is set less by the decision period than by appointment availability and document preparation, which for Gulf residents includes the second legalisation chain.

For Turkish nationals who keep business interests in Istanbul or the Gulf, the rule to plan around is presence. Renewing a non-lucrative permit requires having lived in Spain for more than 183 days in the calendar year, alongside continuing means and insurance. Renewals are filed within the two months before expiry, and can still be filed up to three months after, although late filing may be penalised. Our guide to renewals and the TIE explains the sequence, and our renewal service handles it for existing residents.

How Parastoo Legal Group works on Turkish files

We are a Madrid-based immigration and global mobility firm, founded in 2022, with more than 400 approved residencies and a 93% approval rate. Our team of 15 works in Turkish, Persian, Arabic, Spanish and English.

• A free first consultation by video call or phone, where we settle the route and the competent mission: Istanbul, Ankara or the mission in your Gulf country of residence.
• A dedicated case manager who draws up the document map: what needs an Apostille, what follows a Gulf legalisation route, what needs sworn translation, and in which order.
• A short cover memo for the case officer summarising the applicant, the route and the evidence.
• Follow-through in Spain: our non-lucrative and digital nomad services include preparation and filing, the fingerprint appointment and TIE, opening a Spanish bank account, family members' applications and, if a refusal occurs, the administrative appeal (recurso de reposición). Sworn translations, Apostilles and legalisations, and government fees are separate.