Residence routes to Uruguay: temporaria, permanente or digital nomad

You move to Uruguay without a visa in advance. With a Dutch passport you enter as a visitor, and then apply in Uruguay for your residence permit at the Dirección Nacional de Migración (DNM). There are two kinds: the residencia temporaria, for an activity of six months to two years, and the residencia permanente, for those who want to stay. You do not need to have held temporaria first, writes the Ministerio del Interior: if you meet the requirements, you apply for permanent straight away.

What stands out: the general rules contain no fixed income amount. For a retiree or a person living on their income, Decreto 394/009 only says that your income must cover your costs in the country.

Route	For whom	How long	Fee
Visitor	anyone with a Dutch passport	90 days, extendable by 90
Hoja de identidad provisoria, nómada digital	anyone working remotely for an organisation abroad	less than 180 days, extendable once by 180	55.71 UI
Residencia temporaria	work, study or another activity with an end date	at least 6 months, at most 2 years, renewable	557.30 UI
Residencia permanente	anyone settling for good, also on a pension or assets	indefinite, unless you are away for more than 3 years	557.30 UI
Ciudadanía legal	after 3 years with a family, or 5 years without

The amounts are in unidades indexadas (UI), a unit of account that follows inflation. For the certificate with which you then get your identity card, you pay another 55.70 UI.

How much income do you need?

No amount is set in the rules. Article 4 of Decreto 394/009 asks a jubilado, pensionista or rentista to prove that status and to show that their income allows them to pay their costs in Uruguay. For this the DNM wants a certificado notarial: a notarial statement about your status, the kind of income, the nominal amount per month and how you receive it in Uruguay.

Your AOW and your occupational pension are therefore not a threshold to meet, but proof that you can get by. How your AOW works out in Uruguay is explained in AOW, pension and tax.

One scheme does name amounts. A retiree with at least US$ 1,500 a month from abroad who buys a home worth US$ 100,000 may, under Ley 16.340, import household goods and a car free of duties on permanent residence; see household goods to Uruguay.

Those who work prove something else. An employee with a residencia temporaria shows a letter from the employer with a salary of at least one national minimum wage. See working in Uruguay.

What do you hand in?

For the residencia permanente the DNM asks for:

• your valid passport and a passport photo;
• a criminal record certificate from your country of origin and from every country where you lived for six months or more in the last five years, if you are 18 or older;
• a carné de salud, a medical check by a care provider recognised by the Ministry of Public Health;
• a vaccination certificate following the Uruguayan schedule, issued in Uruguay;
• proof of your means of support;
• with a partner, your marriage certificate, no older than one year.

Dutch documents get an apostille and a translation by a Uruguayan traductor público. For the check and the vaccinations, see healthcare in Uruguay.