The Grenada Investment Migration Agency confirmed in its latest operational briefing that the 30-day residency requirement and the due-diligence fee uplift will both come into force inside the April-June 2026 window. The rule attaches to applications filed after the cut-over date, not to files already in the pipeline. For anyone whose timeline lands inside that window, the question is no longer whether the rule applies, but how to schedule the days and which family members carry which portion of the burden.
The structural shape of the rule is split. The main applicant has to land in Grenada for at least five days within twelve months of receiving the passport. The remaining twenty-five days can be distributed across the rest of the family over the following four years. That second clause is what most agents I have read on this story have softened or skipped. It matters because it means a family of four can in practice split the residency load so that any single member only carries a modest portion of the total.
| Rule Element | Pre-Window (Files Now) | Post-Window (April-June 2026 Cut-Over) |
|---|---|---|
| Main applicant first-year stay | None required | At least 5 days within 12 months of passport |
| Family stay over 5 years | None required | 25 days shared across dependants |
| Biometric capture | Optional / case-by-case | Mandatory for all applicants |
| Due diligence fee (age 17+) | USD 5,000 | USD 7,500 to 8,000 |
| Interview (age 17+) | Online, post-filing | Online, post-filing (unchanged) |
The fee uplift is the second concrete change. The DD line for any applicant aged 17 or older moves from USD 5,000 to roughly USD 7,500 to 8,000. For a family of four with two adults and two teens above the threshold, that is an additional ten thousand on the all-in. The investment contribution itself has not been re-priced in this round, and the 235,000 USD floor for a family of four on the National Transformation Fund route remains the published number.
The biometric capture requirement is the third piece. From the cut-over date forward, all applicants regardless of age have to provide biometric data. Our office is a licensed agent of the Grenada, Saint Kitts, Saint Lucia and Dominica programs, and across the four Caribbean files I currently have visibility into, the operational impact of mandatory biometrics is not the data capture itself, which is roughly a 30 minute appointment. The impact is the scheduling. Biometrics tied to a small island bureau create their own backlog, and the smart play if your timeline crosses the cut-over is to schedule biometrics on the same trip as the first 5 days of residency, which compresses two operational obligations into one transatlantic flight.
Where the rule is going to matter most is for the cohort of Grenada CBI applicants whose original use case was passport mobility plus E-2 treaty access without any intention of touching the island again. That cohort is real and it is sizeable. Grenada is the only Caribbean CBI program with US E-2 treaty access, and that single feature has been the dominant reason a meaningful portion of the buyer pool has chosen Grenada over Saint Kitts or Dominica. For a family that was modeling Grenada purely as an E-2 vehicle with no Caribbean travel, the rule adds a real operational floor. A family of four splitting the 25 days across four years means roughly 6 days per person, which is manageable, but it is no longer zero.
What I am telling clients in May 2026 is that the answer depends on where their timeline sits relative to the cut-over. Files that can land before the IMA publishes the formal commencement date carry the old fee structure and no residency obligation. Files that land after carry both. The middle of that window is roughly six weeks wide, which means anyone who has been sitting on a half-prepared application for the last two quarters has a narrow runway to either decide they are filing now or decide they are filing under the new rules. There is no third option, and the agents telling you the IMA will grandfather your file because you signed an engagement letter in February are reading their own marketing material, not the agency's commencement language.
The comparison with Antigua is worth a paragraph. Antigua's CBI residency requirement is a 5-day landing inside the first five years, which is materially lighter than Grenada's incoming 30-day total. But Antigua does not give E-2 treaty access, and it carries a different due diligence regime. For a family whose primary motive is E-2, Grenada at 30 days is still the better-fitting vehicle than Antigua at 5 days. For a family whose primary motive is mobility plus regional retirement, Antigua at 5 days is materially lighter operationally. The two programs do not solve the same problem, and the question of which one is cheaper or faster is the wrong way to choose between them.
The honest read on the IMA's timing is that the April-June 2026 window is the agency's negotiated landing zone with the regional bodies. The pricing-floor coordination that ECCIRA wrote into the regional framework last year required each member program to demonstrate operational tightening. Grenada's 30-day rule is its visible deliverable. The fee uplift is the second deliverable. Both are now on the calendar, both will commence inside the window, and both will apply to files filed after the date the IMA publishes its commencement notice.
One operational point that gets lost in most coverage is how the IMA actually counts the days. The 5 days for the main applicant has to be inside the first 12 months from passport issuance, which is the same as saying the clock starts from the date of the citizenship certificate, not from the date the file is submitted. The 25 days for the family pool runs across years 2 through 5 from the same start date, and any 24-hour period in which a family member is physically present on Grenadian territory counts as one day, regardless of how the day is split. There is no minimum stay per visit. A weekend trip of 3 days counts as 3 days. A single overnight counts as 1 day. For families whose Caribbean exposure is mostly through Florida or the East Coast, this counting method makes the 25 days materially more flexible than the headline implies.
The second operational point is the funding-source documentation. The DD fee uplift comes with a heavier source-of-funds workload, particularly for applicants whose capital came through a 2024 or 2025 liquidity event, a real-estate divestment, or a crypto realization. The IMA has been signaling that the post-window DD will require a continuous paper trail covering the last 36 months instead of the previous 24. For families who were planning to source from a 2023 transaction, that change has real implications for which transaction documentation they have to surface and which professional letters they have to commission.
If your file is sitting half-prepared and you are weighing whether to push to close before the cut-over or restructure for after, send me the family composition and the funding source. WhatsApp +15595666666. I will tell you which side of the window your file actually belongs on, and I will not be selling you the answer that pays my retainer faster.
