Published Registers

Published registers, in the context of Vanuatu citizenship, are the official records that anyone can consult — legislation and regulations as gazetted, public notices about the programmes, and foreign acts that set the travel status of Vanuatu nationals — as distinct from the files about individual applicants, which are not public. The practical rule is that the framework is published, while the people who pass through it are not.

This page is for applicants, advisers and compliance teams who want to verify something independently rather than take an agent's word for it. It sets out what can be checked in an official public source, what cannot, and what to do when the information you need sits in the closed category. Where your personal data is held and for how long is covered on the record keeping page.

What Does the Vanuatu Official Gazette Contain?

The Official Gazette of the Republic of Vanuatu is the formal channel through which laws, regulations and official notices are made public. For the citizenship programmes, that means the Citizenship Act [CAP 112] as amended and the regulations made under it — the instruments that create the programmes, set the contribution levels and establish the licensing of designated agents.

Consolidated Vanuatu legislation is also reproduced by the Pacific Legal Information Institute (PacLII), which is often the easiest place to read the text. A consolidation is a convenience copy; where wording matters, the gazetted instrument and any later amending instrument are what count.

What the Gazette is not is a register of individual citizens. Applicants should not expect to find their own grant published there, and should not rely on the Gazette, or on any public source, to confirm an individual decision. The evidence of your status is the certificate of citizenship and the confirmation issued through the Citizenship Office.

Public and Closed Information at a Glance

Information	Status	Where to check
Citizenship Act and programme regulations	Public	Official Gazette; consolidated text on PacLII
Which programmes exist	Public	Citizenship Office, which lists the Citizenship Contribution Program, the Honorary Citizenship Development Support Program and the Citizenship Real Estate Option Program
Programme suspensions	Public notice	Commission and Citizenship Office announcements, such as the March 2025 suspension of new Capital Investment Immigration Plan applications
Whether a particular agent holds a current licence	Verifiable on request	Ask the agent for its licence and confirm it with the Citizenship Office
An individual application, due diligence report or decision	Closed	Available to the applicant through the designated agent only
Names of people granted citizenship	Closed in practice	Not available as a public, searchable register
Visa status of Vanuatu nationals abroad	Public	The legislation of the destination country or bloc

Which Foreign Publications Matter Most?

Some of the most consequential public records about the Vanuatu passport are published not in Port Vila but in Brussels and London: the EU acts that ended visa-free Schengen travel, culminating in Regulation (EU) 2025/11 and a permanent visa requirement from 3 February 2025, and the UK Immigration Rules, which have listed Vanuatu among the nationalities needing a visitor visa since 19 July 2023. The full sequence of EU instruments, from Council Decision (EU) 2022/2198 onwards, is ranked alongside Vanuatu's own texts on the procedure sources page, and how those reviews came about is examined under international scrutiny.

One of those acts matters here for a different reason: it is a rare published figure about the programme itself. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/2059 records 1,988 applications and 27 rejections over 2022–2023.

Why Are Applicant Records Not Published?

Citizenship files contain identity documents, family details, financial records and the findings of background checks. Keeping them closed protects applicants and their families, and it is consistent with how most states treat naturalization and nationality files. It also means that some things applicants would like to verify — how many files a given agent has lodged, how often a particular kind of file is refused — are not available from any official public source.

That gap is where marketing claims flourish. When an agent quotes an approval rate, an average processing time or a number of families it has helped, there is no public register against which that figure can be tested. Treat such numbers as unverified unless the agent can show you where they come from.

Is There a Public List of Designated Agents?

The one thing an applicant most needs to verify — that the firm lodging the file is a licensed designated agent — should not be assumed to be available as an open, searchable online list. Treat any "official register" displayed on a commercial website with caution, and confirm a firm's licence status with the Citizenship Office through contact details you have found yourself. The checks to run on a licence are set out step by step on the authorized agents page.

How Do You Read a Gazetted Instrument?

A gazetted text answers a narrower question than most people expect: what the rule said on the day it was made. To use it for a Vanuatu citizenship question today, read it with a few checks in mind:

• Title and date. Note the full title of the instrument, the date it was made and whether it states a separate commencement date.
• What it amends. Programme regulations are often changed by amending instruments rather than replaced, so the current rule may be spread across several texts.
• Whether it is still in force. Later instruments can revoke or supersede earlier ones, and a notice that was correct when published may no longer describe the position.
• The consolidation date. If you are reading a consolidated version on PacLII, check the date to which it is updated and whether anything has been gazetted since.

If an agent quotes a rule, ask for the title and date of the instrument it comes from. A precise reference can be checked; a general "the regulations say" cannot.

Reading Published Figures Carefully

When public figures do exist, they are useful only in context. The contribution levels under the Development Support Program — US$130,000 for a single applicant, US$150,000 for a couple, US$165,000 for a family of three and US$180,000 for a family of four — are published amounts, and so is the due diligence fee of US$5,000. Additional dependant charges are set by the schedule and should be read from the current version, not from an old price list.

Likewise, the EU figure of 1,988 applications and 27 rejections describes a specific two-year period and was published in the context of a visa decision. It is evidence of how the EU viewed screening at the time, not a forecast of anyone's chances today.