Moving to Ukraine from New Zealand

Our residency index: 40/100, possible, with conditions. It is our own rating of how realistic long-term residency in Ukraine is for New Zealand citizens, based on the routes Ukraine publishes. Residency comes through employment with a Ukrainian sponsor, marriage or family reunification, study, or a capital investment into a Ukrainian company; there is no passive-income, pension, or sufficient-means route.

The cheapest self-funded routes we track:

• Investment: about $100k (Ukraine permanent-residence (immigration) permit via USD 100,000 direct foreign investment into the economy; cheaper than the EUR 100,000 (about USD 116,000 at 1.16) temporary business-residence route; 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, New Zealand 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.

As of 13 October 2026, the US State Department advises against all travel to Ukraine ("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 Ukraine

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

• Moving to Ukraine from the US
• Moving to Ukraine from the UK
• Moving to Ukraine from Canada
• Moving to Ukraine from Australia
• Moving to Ukraine from Ireland

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 New Zealand 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.