Moving to Russia from Canada

Our residency index: 30/100, hard to obtain. It is our own rating of how realistic long-term residency in Russia is for Canadian citizens, based on the routes Russia publishes. Long-term residency runs from a temporary residence permit (RVP) to permanent residence, realistically reached via an employer-sponsored highly-qualified-specialist job, an investor/golden-visa route, family ties, the compatriot-resettlement program, or the quota-free 'traditional values' decree, as Russia has no standalone passive-income or sufficient-means visa and only a tiny general quota.

The cheapest self-funded routes we track:

• Investment: about $207k (Russian investor residence permit (golden visa), RUB 15,000,000 non-refundable contribution to socially significant regional projects, the cheapest qualifying route (real estate starts at RUB 20-25M outside Moscow, company investment at RUB 30M); RUB converted at ~72.5/USD, early June 2026; as of June 2026)

Check the official requirements before you apply: amounts, conditions and exchange rates change, and what a couple needs can differ from a single applicant's threshold.

For short visits, Canadian passport holders need a visa before a visit, according to the passport-index dataset. Short-stay entry covers visits; living there takes a residence permit.

As of 13 October 2026, the US State Department advises against all travel to Russia ("Level 4: Do Not Travel"). We do not rank its cities here or on our best-cities lists. Read the current advisory on travel.state.gov and your own government's travel advice.

See the cities we track in Russia

Russia is in our low to medium tax tier (moderate personal income tax); Canada 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 Canada after you leave, or the treaty between the two countries, so check both with a tax adviser before you move.

• Moving to Russia from the US
• Moving to Russia from the UK
• Moving to Russia from Australia
• Moving to Russia from Ireland
• Moving to Russia 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 Canadian 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).
• Tax tiers: three coarse bands we assign by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation.