The most generous entry in the niche
Most countries make you earn your stay with forms, fees, and a consulate appointment. Georgia mostly does not. Citizens of roughly 95 countries, a list that includes the US, UK, every EU state, Canada, Australia, and many more, can enter and remain for a full 365 days on nothing more than a valid passport. There is no visa sticker, no online pre-registration, and no income test. You land, and you are legally resident for a year. For a nomad weighing where to base, that is about as low as friction gets.
One thing did get added at the start of 2026. Since 1 January 2026, every visitor must carry valid travel or medical insurance covering the duration of their stay. It is rarely checked at the border in practice, but it is now a legal requirement, and you would not want to be the exception who gets asked. Any standard nomad insurance policy satisfies it, so treat it as a box to tick rather than an obstacle.
The border hop, and why it is now less certain
For years, the 365-day allowance came with an unofficial extension hack. When your year approached its end, you crossed into Armenia, Turkey, or Azerbaijan, spent a day or a weekend, came back, and the clock reset for another 365 days. Plenty of people lived in Tbilisi semi-permanently this way, never holding a residence permit and never paying for one.
That strategy still technically works at the entry level, but 2026 made it shakier as a long-term plan. The work-permit regime described below changes the backdrop against which border-hopping nomads operate, and relying indefinitely on tourist-style entry to run what is really a settled working life has always carried some grey-area risk. If Georgia is a one or two year base, the visa-free route is genuinely easy. If you intend to put down roots, the residency path below is the cleaner answer.
The change that actually matters: 1 March 2026
Here is the development that reshaped the Georgia conversation. On 1 March 2026, a mandatory work-permit and work-authorization regime came into force. For most of the previous decade, Georgia drew remote workers precisely because it asked so little. You could live here for a year visa-free, register a one-person business, and pay almost nothing, with very little scrutiny of how or where you actually worked. The new regime inserts a formal layer into that picture.
The honest position, as of this writing in 2026, is that the details are still settling and the interaction between the new permit rules and genuinely location-independent work is not fully clear. Some of the regime is plainly aimed at foreigners taking local employment, which is a different situation from a freelancer billing clients abroad. But the ambiguity is real, and it touches the 1 percent Individual Entrepreneur structure that so many nomads use. This is not a reason to write Georgia off. It is a reason to get current, local advice before assuming the old frictionless model still applies untouched. The tax page covers how this lands on the 1 percent regime specifically.
Residence permits, for people who want to stay
If Georgia is going to be more than a long visit, a residence permit is the proper foundation, and several routes exist. The most common grounds are work, freelance or business activity, study, and family reunification. Permits are typically issued for 6 or 12 months at first, are renewable, and crucially they count toward the 6-year timeline for permanent residency, which the visa-free years do not.
The property route deserves a specific note because the number changed. Owning Georgian real estate valued at 150,000 dollars or more now qualifies you for a short-term residence permit, renewable for as long as you hold the property. That threshold was raised from the old 100,000 dollars, so any guide quoting the lower figure is out of date. The valuation used for residency is assessed rather than simply taken from your contract, so confirm how your specific purchase would be appraised before buying with a permit in mind.
How to approach it in practice
For a stay of up to a year, do almost nothing. Arrive with a valid passport and an insurance policy, and you are set. Keep a copy of the insurance and note your entry date so you know when the 365 days run out.
For a longer horizon, start the residency conversation early and with a local immigration specialist, not a forum thread, because 2026 is a transitional year and the rules are moving. Match the permit type to your actual situation, whether that is the property route, a business permit tied to your Individual Entrepreneur registration, or a work permit under the new regime. Then read the tax page before you commit, because in Georgia the tax setup and the visa setup are tightly linked, and the residency page covers the path from permit to permanent residency and the distant question of citizenship. Most nomads, in the end, land in Tbilisi.