Moving to North Macedonia from the UK

Our residency index: 80/100, comparatively open. It is our own rating of how realistic long-term residency in North Macedonia is for UK citizens, based on the routes North Macedonia publishes. Residency is readily obtained by forming or co-owning a company (or via employment or self-employment) with no labor-market test, and EU/OECD nationals also qualify via property purchase, but there is no fixed published income or capital gate for the open company/self-employment route.

Our dataset has no self-funded income or savings threshold for North Macedonia. Check the official requirements before you apply.

For short visits, UK passport holders can visit visa-free for up to 90 days, according to the passport-index dataset. Short-stay entry covers visits; living there takes a residence permit.

Ranked by our match model for a typical couple who both hold UK passports, using the preset answers of our best places to live list. Your own answers would change the order. We pick the cities, up to five, by how often English Wikipedia readers looked them up over the past year.

1. 1

   1. Skopje

   70% match

   Est. cost

   €2,377/mo

   Avg temp

   14°C

   Safety index

   68/100

2. 2

   2. Ohrid

   67% match

   Est. cost

   €2,171/mo

   Avg temp

   13°C

   Safety index

   68/100

Our estimate for a couple living centrally runs from €2,171 a month in Ohrid to €2,377 in Skopje. For comparison, we estimate €4,315 a month in London. Use these figures to compare places rather than to set a budget.

North Macedonia is in our low to medium tax tier (moderate personal income tax); the UK is in our high tax tier (high personal income tax). Tiers describe each country's own income tax. They do not cover tax you may still owe in the UK after you leave, or the treaty between the two countries, so check both with a tax adviser before you move.

• Best cities for a couple on €2,500 a month

• Moving to North Macedonia from the US
• Moving to North Macedonia from Canada
• Moving to North Macedonia from Australia
• Moving to North Macedonia from Ireland
• Moving to North Macedonia from New Zealand

Every country and origin we cover

Every figure here comes from the datasets behind our city and country pages:

• Short-stay entry: the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT license), which records the entry rule for short visits on each passport.
• Residency index, routes and thresholds: the OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. It is a summary, not legal advice.
• City ranking: our match model, the one behind the quiz, run with a typical couple's preset answers and both partners holding UK passports. It ranks up to five of the country's best-known cities: of the cities in our quiz (100,000 people or more, capitals and a few towns movers seek out, such as Faro), the five most read about on English Wikipedia over the past year. It folds suburbs into their main city and leaves out countries with a residency index under 40 and areas under a US State Department Level 4 advisory, as our best-cities lists do.
• Costs: our cost model, a country-level cost-of-living index scaled for city size, from our city dataset (last rebuilt June 2026).
• For North Macedonia, the cost index and the safety score are country-level estimates from World Bank indicators, calibrated to our reference tables; our North Macedonia country page names each indicator and year. Source: The World Bank (World Development Indicators, Worldwide Governance Indicators), CC BY 4.0.
• Tax tiers: three coarse bands we assign by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation.