The fastest passport in this guide, with one structural catch
Argentina offers something rare: a genuine, fast, attainable route to a second citizenship. You can naturalize after just two years of continuous legal residence, you do not need to pass through permanent residency first, and you keep your original passport because dual nationality is allowed. For a nomad who is tired of perpetual visa runs and actually wants a base and a passport, that combination is close to unbeatable in this reference.
The catch is not in the timeline but in what counts toward it. The Digital Nomad Visa, the obvious first thing a remote worker reaches for, does not build any residency at all. The two-year clock runs only on proper temporary residence, which comes through a different door, usually the Rentista visa. Understanding that split, between the visa that lets you live here and the residence that leads to a passport, is the whole strategy.
Temporary residence, the time that counts
Everything begins with a temporary-residence permit, and for most nomads that means the Rentista, the passive-income route covered on the visa page. It grants renewable residence, typically a year at a time at first, and crucially the time you hold it counts toward both permanent residence and naturalization. Work permits, family-based permits, and a handful of other categories count too. What does not count is the Digital Nomad Visa, which sits outside the residency system as a capped temporary stay.
The practical move for anyone aiming at the passport is therefore to get onto a qualifying residence permit early and start the clock deliberately, rather than spending a year on the nomad visa and discovering it bought no progress. If your income is active rather than passive and the Rentista does not fit cleanly, this is exactly the point to take Argentine immigration advice on which residence category does, because the choice of permit is what determines whether your years in Buenos Aires count for anything.
The continuity rule that resets everything
The two-year requirement comes with a discipline that catches the unwary: it must be continuous legal residence, and leaving the country during the period can reset the count. Argentina wants the two years to be genuinely lived in Argentina, not accumulated by someone who holds a permit but spends most of the year elsewhere. For a nomad whose instinct is to keep moving, this is the real constraint on the citizenship plan.
So the citizenship route asks you to actually settle. If a passport is the goal, treat the two years as a period to base in Argentina in earnest, keeping travel modest and within whatever limits your permit and the naturalization rules allow, rather than assuming the time accrues while you roam. This is also where the residency plan collides with the tax plan, because two continuous years in Argentina will make you a tax resident, with worldwide income and assets in scope. The passport and the tax bill arrive together, which is why the tax page is required reading before you commit to settling.
Permanent residence, optional on the way
After roughly two to three years of temporary residence you can apply for permanent residence, which ends the renewal cycle and gives you indefinite rights to live and work in Argentina. It is a comfortable end state for someone who wants to stay without taking citizenship. But it is worth being clear that permanent residence is not a prerequisite for naturalizing, since Argentina lets you apply for citizenship directly from temporary residence at the two-year mark. So for many nomads, permanent residence is a parallel option rather than a required step, and the citizenship petition can come first.
Citizenship, dual nationality, and the digital process
Naturalization is available after two years of continuous legal residence under Argentina's longstanding nationality law, for applicants aged 18 or over. You demonstrate a lawful and sufficient source of income, a clean criminal record, and genuine residence, and you express the intent to become Argentine. Since October 2025 the process runs digitally through the immigration authority's RaDEX platform, with the naturalization step itself taking several months on top of the residence period, so the realistic total from arrival to passport is closer to three years than two once processing is counted.
The standout features are the two-year timeline and the dual-nationality allowance. Argentina does not require you to renounce your existing citizenship, so you keep your original passport while gaining an Argentine one, a sharp contrast to Spain's formal renunciation rule for most nationalities. The Argentine passport itself is genuinely useful, with strong visa-free access across South America and into the Schengen area. For a nomad weighing where a few committed years could buy a valuable second citizenship, Argentina sits at the very top of this guide.
What this means for your plan
Your strategy depends on whether you want a passport or just a pleasant base. If citizenship is the goal, skip the idea that the nomad visa helps, get onto the Rentista or another qualifying residence permit, and commit to two genuinely continuous years in Argentina, accepting the tax residency that comes with them. The reward is a second passport on one of the fastest timelines anywhere, with your original nationality intact.
If you only want to live here for a while, the Digital Nomad Visa's 360 days, possibly stretched with tourist time, may be all you need, and you can enjoy Argentina without triggering the residency or tax consequences of settling. Either way, decide early, because the residence route and the tax position are locked together. Read the visa page for how to secure the residence that starts the clock, and the tax page for what crossing into residency means for your money.