Temporary Residence in Chile: Apply for the Residencia Temporal

The Residencia Temporal is the first stage of the Chilean system and fits people who genuinely want to live in Chile: the country rewards real arrival, not a residence kept in a drawer. Eligibility depends on your nationality, and we check it before you order. It suits people with passive income and retirees (the rentista and jubilado categories), entrepreneurs and investors, and families looking for first-world infrastructure, legal certainty and, at the end of the road, the strongest passport in the region. The timing is especially attractive: as a new resident, your foreign income stays untaxed for 3 years at first, and up to 6 years on application, exactly the phase in which you build up residence and presence. Which visa category fits your source of income, we settle before you order, because changing category later from within Chile is only possible to a limited extent.

Since February 2022 the reformed migration law Ley 21.325 has applied, and the migration service SERMIG is responsible. The Residencia Temporal comes in several categories, including for people with passive income (rentista) and retirees (jubilado), for employees with a contract and for investors. As a guide for the rentista, our country page gives passive income of around USD 1,000 to 1,500 a month, plus USD 500 to 600 per dependant, or alternatively around USD 125,000 as a lump sum (jubilado from 55); as a rough guide for general proof of means, a monthly income of around EUR 600 is often quoted, but the actual amount depends on the category and family size and is checked for your case before you apply. The application is filed digitally through SERMIG or through the consulate, before you enter. Chile is strict about formalities: incomplete, wrongly translated or unapostilled documents often leave you only 10 to 60 days to correct them, after which the application is deleted and starts from scratch.

Allow several months from a complete filing to approval; the Chilean migration authority is thorough and not always quick. The most common cause of delay is the documents: file incomplete and you often have only 10 to 60 days to correct them before the application is deleted. That is exactly why we check every document before the authority sees it. Nobody can honestly promise you a date.

The application itself is filed from abroad before you enter, so you do not need to travel to Chile to file it. The presence question becomes interesting afterwards: on the route to permanent residence, the 24-month path is only open if you have been away for no more than two months in total; more absence extends it to 30, 36 or 48 months. And you become tax resident with more than 183 days in any 12-month period. Chile itself defuses this tension: as a new resident, your foreign income stays untaxed for 3, and on application up to 6, years, so you can build up your presence while your income is protected. We go through how to plan your days with you before you start.

Your spouse or partner and children run as dependants in the same case, each with their own set of documents (their own certificates, apostilles and translations); adult dependants are a separate item in the quote. For the rentista, the income requirement also rises by around USD 500 to 600 a month per dependant. Filing together in the same window makes sense, so that the whole family's timelines stay in step; we handle the coordination.

The Residencia Temporal is valid for up to two years, and after 12 or 24 months you can apply for the Residencia Definitiva, permanent residence: valid for life and the status that makes Chile genuinely flexible. From your first residence permit, the 5-year clock towards naturalisation also runs, towards the strongest passport in Latin America. We handle both follow-on steps as separate procedures and track the deadlines for you. For the full picture of the country, see the Chile country page and our Chile guide.