How to move to Mexico: the complete process for 2026
The whole move to Mexico in the order it happens: the four questions to answer first, choosing where to live, which residency route fits you, money, healthcare, children, pets and belongings, the steps before you fly, and the first ninety days after you land. For each step, you’ll find a short explanation here and a link to our detailed guide on that topic.
In this guide
1. Before you decide anything: the four questions
Four answers decide your route, your costs and your timeline, so settle them before you look at flats. Whether you can move to Mexico is rarely in doubt; whether you should, and how, comes down to these:
Who is moving. You and your nationality, a spouse or partner, children, pets, and any family ties to a Mexican national.
How you will support yourself. Income, savings, a pension or a job in Mexico.
Where you want to live. A large city, the coast or a colonial town.
How permanent this is. A trial year, or for good.
Answer them in that order, because each narrows the next. Who is moving and how you will support yourself decide which routes are open. The route and the household then shape where you can live, and how permanent the move is decides whether you rent or buy and how much you ship. The common mistake is starting with the third question: choosing a town on holiday, then finding that the money test or the school calendar does not fit.
Test the second question as soon as you have answered the first, because it can close off a route before you have spent anything: put your own figures through the residency calculator.
If you are retiring, the fourth question also covers pensions, healthcare at older ages and distance from family. Our guide to retiring in Mexico works through the retiree version of the decision.
For the third question, describe an ordinary week rather than a holiday: where you buy groceries, how you reach a doctor, what you do on a wet Tuesday. Our founder, John Watson, explains how that test settled his own choice in why we chose the city over the coast.
2. Choosing where to live
Choose on how an ordinary week works: healthcare within reach, flights home, the climate at its least comfortable, and a community you would actually join.
Our guide to the best places to live in Mexico compares the main cities and towns, including who each one suits and who it does not.
Safety is usually the question underneath the others. It varies by state, city and neighbourhood far more than headlines suggest, so read the official travel advice for the place itself, not the country.
If you are leaning towards Mexico City
The capital suits people who want the widest choice of hospitals, flights and neighbourhoods. What catches people out is the altitude, the traffic and the rainy season. For neighbourhoods, rentals and getting around, use our guide to relocating to Mexico City.
If you are leaning towards the coast
The Pacific side, around Banderas Bay, suits people who want an established retiree community, private hospitals and direct flights home. What catches people out is the summer heat and humidity. Retiring in Puerto Vallarta compares the towns around the bay.
The Caribbean side, around Playa del Carmen, suits people who want a compact town they can live in without a car, close to Cancún airport. What catches people out is the season: sargassum seaweed in the warmer months and the hurricane season. Retiring in Playa del Carmen sets out the trade-offs.
Wherever you are leaning, take a short let first, ideally through the season you would find hardest, before you sign a long lease or buy anything. A street that looked right on a week’s visit can feel very different by the third week of the rains.
When you move to a long lease, expect a deposit and often a request for a local guarantor (fiador) or a rental guarantee policy (póliza jurídica), so ask early if you have no Mexican guarantor. Buying can wait until you have lived somewhere through its hardest season. Near the coasts and borders, foreigners hold residential property through a bank trust (fideicomiso), and a notario formalises the sale in a public deed.
3. Residency: which route applies to you
What you need to move to Mexico depends on which residency route fits you. For most people it is temporary residency, qualified for at a Mexican consulate before they travel, on the strength of income or savings. People who immigrate to Mexico for good usually start there too.
The main residency routes
Temporary residency is the usual start, renewable while you find out how permanent the move is; our guide to temporary residency in Mexico covers the process.
Permanent residency comes directly on a higher financial test, after a period as a temporary resident, or through family; Mexican permanent residency sets out each path.
Family ties to a Mexican national, such as a Mexican spouse or child, open a route with no income or savings test, and it can begin inside Mexico.
A job offer runs through your employer, which applies to the immigration authority first; the Mexico work visa guide explains the sequence. Temporary residency on income or savings does not by itself let you work for a Mexican employer; you need a work permit added to your card.
Remote workers will not find a dedicated digital nomad visa, so people use one of two routes. The first is temporary residency, on the same income or savings test (economic solvency) as everyone else. The second is entering as a visitor, which does not permit paid work in Mexico and suits a trial of a few months, not a settled life. If you expect to stay longer, start residency before you leave; our digital nomad guide to Mexico City compares the two.
The money test
The income and savings thresholds are set in multiples of Mexico’s UMA reference unit, and each consulate publishes its own local figures, in pesos or in local currency. Mexico residency financial requirements sets out the current figures.
Can Americans, Canadians and Britons just move to Mexico?
A US citizen can live in Mexico, as can Canadians and Britons, but living here means residency. You can visit without a visa to look around, but a visitor permit cannot generally be turned into residency from inside Mexico, except on family grounds.
VIAMEXICO NOTE: The most costly plan we hear is “come as a visitor and sort residency out later”. We often hear from people who came to look around and stayed. The fix is always the same: fly out, apply at a consulate and return. Deciding first saves that detour.
4. What decides the cost of moving to Mexico
The cost of moving to Mexico comes in two parts: a one-off outlay for the move itself, and the monthly cost of living once you are here. Five things decide both. The city, and the neighbourhood within it, set your rent and much of your daily spending. Household size scales almost everything else. Schooling can become a family’s largest expense. The residency route carries its own consulate and immigration fees, paid by each person applying. And the choice between shipping belongings and buying locally moves the one-off outlay more than most people expect.
What catches people out is timing: deposits, furnishing and fees fall in the first months, before a Mexican bank account is open. The other surprise is that what you spend each month is not what a consulate asks you to prove. The residency test looks at documented income or savings, not your planned budget, so a modest life here does not lower the threshold.
Cost of living in Mexico in 2026 holds ViaMexico’s monthly budgets by city and our estimate of the one-off arrival costs.
Local costs are in pesos and move with the exchange rate. If you plan in dollars or pounds, watch the rate rather than fixing on one conversion; Banco de México’s daily FIX rate is the official reference.
5. Money, banking and tax
Arrive with a way to pay that does not depend on a Mexican bank, because the account comes after the residency card, not before it.
Opening a Mexican bank account
In practice the order is: residency card first, then your RFC (the tax registry number), then the account. The common mistake is closing a home account or card before the Mexican account is open; keep both running through the first months. How to open a bank account in Mexico as a foreigner explains what each step asks for.
The RFC is issued by the tax authority, SAT, and its RFC registration page sets out the procedure and documents.
What follows you from home
If you are American, two things catch people out. US citizens stay subject to US federal tax filing rules wherever they live, so moving does not end your filing obligation. And Medicare generally does not pay for care you receive in Mexico. Moving to Mexico from the US covers that side.
If you draw a UK State Pension, check how it is paid abroad and whether it will still rise each year; GOV.UK’s guidance on the State Pension if you retire abroad is the place to start.
If you are Canadian, check pension payments abroad with Service Canada and your tax status with the Canada Revenue Agency.
Mexican tax residency
Living here can make you a Mexican tax resident, with obligations of its own alongside whatever your home country still expects. Take cross-border tax advice before you move, not after your first tax year here.
6. Healthcare and insurance
The usual pattern is private health insurance as your main cover, with IMSS, the public system, as an optional backstop once you hold legal residency. Arrange private cover that starts before your home cover stops. The common mistake is treating IMSS as the main plan: it can refuse cover for some pre-existing conditions and makes you wait for others, and it assigns your clinic and family doctor.
IMSS voluntary enrolment is priced by age band in an official table. The IMSS Seguro de Salud para la Familia procedure sets out who qualifies and how to apply. Confirm the current price there.
Age matters. Insurers restrict new policies at older ages and ask for medical information as you approach those limits, so in your sixties, secure private cover early.
Healthcare in Mexico for expats covers hospitals, how private insurance works here, and what IMSS does and does not include.
7. Bringing children, pets and belongings
Each of these runs on its own calendar, and the school calendar is the least flexible of the three.
Children and schools
Start the school search first and run it alongside residency. Popular schools fill early, and admissions ask for records and assessments that take time to gather. International schools in Mexico explains the admissions process and what to ask.
Ask each school about its language of instruction, because the school shapes a child’s Spanish while parents have to build their own; learning Spanish in Mexico covers both.
Pets
Bringing a dog or cat into Mexico means meeting two sets of rules: Mexico’s import requirements, which depend on where the animal travels from, and your airline’s own rules on health certificates, crates and whether your pet flies in the cabin or as cargo. Settle both before you book your own flight. Mexico’s side is set by SENASICA, the agricultural health authority.
Belongings: menaje de casa
New residents can bring used household goods into Mexico under the menaje de casa customs procedure, which is tied to your residency status and has its own paperwork. ANAM’s menaje de casa page sets out what qualifies.
Cars
Your immigration status decides whether a foreign-plated car can stay. Visitors and temporary residents can generally bring one in on a temporary import permit tied to their stay. Permanent residents cannot keep a car on that permit, so it must be formally imported, where it qualifies, or taken out of Mexico. Know which status you will hold before you ship a car or drive one down.
8. Before you fly: the steps in order
How long does it take to move to Mexico? The consulate appointment usually sets the pace, because availability varies and everything else waits for it. We have had clients move in two weeks and others wait a couple of months. The difference is almost always how quickly their closest consulate has an appointment, and whether they are open to travelling to another consulate with an earlier one.
However long you have before you fly, work through this list. Steps 1 to 3 and step 9 happen in that order; the rest run alongside them:
Confirm your residency route and book the consulate appointment.
Gather financial statements in the exact form your consulate asks for.
Attend the appointment. If you are approved, the visa goes in your passport.
If you have children, settle schools.
Arrange health cover that starts before your home cover ends.
Decide what to ship, sell or store.
Tell your bank, pension provider and tax adviser what is happening.
Keep a way to receive verification codes sent to your home number.
Fly, and enter Mexico while the visa is still valid. At immigration, show the residency visa so the officer records your entry for the residency card, not as a visitor, and check afterwards that your entry was recorded correctly.
If you are moving from the UK, GOV.UK’s living in Mexico guide covers healthcare, pensions, tax and driving for British residents.
VIAMEXICO NOTE: The chain runs visa, flight, residency card, RFC, bank account, and each link waits for the one before it. Two things sit alongside the chain and catch people out: a lease and a utility bill, because banks and several offices ask for proof of address. Secure somewhere you can use as an address early. A common early move is signing a long lease from abroad before the visa is granted. If the consulate appointment slips, the rent starts anyway, which is why we suggest a flexible short let first.
9. The first ninety days after you arrive
Finish residency first, then the registrations that depend on it, then the life around them.
Within 30 calendar days of entering Mexico, apply for the canje at your local immigration office, exchanging the visa in your passport for a residency card. Then collect the card.
Confirm your CURP, which usually comes with the card.
Register for your RFC.
Open a bank account.
Sign a longer lease once you know the neighbourhood.
Confirm your health cover is running.
Start school, if you have children.
The canje is handled by the Instituto Nacional de Migración. Expect more than one visit: fingerprints, photographs and collecting the card can fall on separate days, though sometimes the card is ready the same day. Ask your office what it wants before the first visit.
The part that takes longer than the paperwork
Settling socially takes longer than any registration. The first months can be lonely even in a large city, and people who settle well tend to join something weekly: a class, a club, a volunteer group. The expat community in Mexico City describes how that works in the capital, and the pattern holds elsewhere.
10. What people get wrong
Most mistakes come from doing a reasonable thing at the wrong moment. If one of these describes your plan, change it before you spend money.
Applying for the wrong route. People default to temporary residency without checking whether family ties or finances would qualify them for permanent residency directly. Our founder did exactly that, and tells the story in what I got wrong in my first year.
Selling the house before the visa. Keep your options open until the visa is in your passport.
Shipping too much. Much of what fills a house at home ends up stored or sold here.
Underestimating the school calendar. Admissions run to their own timetable, not yours.
Letting home health cover lapse first. Private insurers ask about your health before they cover you, and a new policy can exclude a condition you already have.
Leaving the canje until you have settled. Missing the deadline can mean leaving Mexico and starting again at a consulate.
The mistake we see most is treating the move as one big deadline rather than a sequence. People who map the order before booking anything arrive calmer and settle faster.
11. Frequently asked questions
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Without residency you can stay as a visitor for no more than 180 days at a time, and the officer at your point of entry may grant fewer. The cap is in article 52 of the Ley de Migración (last reformed in the Diario Oficial on 15 January 2026). A visitor stay does not allow paid work in Mexico.
The common mistake is treating back-to-back visitor stays as a way of living here: without residency, many banks will not open an account and many landlords will not sign a standard lease, in our experience. If you expect to stay beyond a trial, apply at a consulate before you travel.
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Generally no. The income and savings route starts at a Mexican consulate outside Mexico; the main exception is family ties to a Mexican national, handled here as a change of status, and the Instituto Nacional de Migración on gob.mx lists the procedures.
Do not stay beyond the days you were granted while you decide, because an overstay complicates any later application.
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Not step by step: the individual steps are not complex. The difficulty is the order, paperwork in Spanish, and the way requirements vary from one office or consulate to the next.
What makes it manageable is keeping to the order in sections 8 and 9, bringing originals and copies to every appointment, and planning who will help with Spanish at the immigration office, the bank and the landlord.
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No. Some people choose to do the process themselves. Help earns its keep in particular places: the consulate file, a rental where the landlord wants a local guarantor, the bank account and school admissions. This is what ViaMexico can help with. relocation services in Mexico: what to look for sets out what good help looks like and when a guide is enough.
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Yes. You apply at a Mexican consulate, and each consulate publishes its own figures and document rules; the SRE’s directory of Mexican consulates abroad (in Spanish) lists every office. In Canada, start with the consulate that serves your province.
In the UK, applications go through the Consular Section of the Embassy of Mexico in London. Check its own published figures rather than converting a US consulate’s. What differs after that is home-country admin, which section 5 covers.
12. Where ViaMexico fits
ViaMexico coordinates the steps above through one point of contact, from the consulate file to the bank, the lease and the school. Every step in this guide to how to move to Mexico can be done without us, and many people do exactly that.
For people retiring here, our relocation service for retirees covers residency, healthcare, banking, finding a home and bringing pets.
For families, our family relocation service adds school applications and assessments to the same process.
If you would rather talk your own route through with someone who does this every week, the first step towards working with ViaMexico is booking a discovery call below.
Cámara de Diputados, Ley de Migración, última reforma DOF 15 January 2026, article 52 fr. I (visitor stay of no more than 180 days, no paid work) and article 59 (30 calendar days from entry to apply for the residency card). Linked in FAQ 1.
Secretaría de Gobernación and Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Lineamientos generales para la expedición de visas, DOF 25 July 2025 (residency financial criteria; for visitor visas, days set by the officer at entry, no more than 180). Primary source for the residency tests in section 3.
Instituto Nacional de Migración, Forma Migratoria Múltiple Digital (FMMd) (stay granted by the immigration officer at the entry checkpoint).
Cámara de Diputados, Reglamento de la Ley de Migración, última reforma DOF 23 May 2014 (where applications start; change of status).
Instituto Nacional de Migración, Lineamientos para trámites y procedimientos migratorios (PDF) (canje).
Instituto Nacional de Migración, inm.gob.mx. Linked in section 9.
Instituto Nacional de Migración on gob.mx. Linked in FAQ 2.
Consulate of Mexico in Montreal, “I want to live in Mexico on a temporary basis” (one consulate’s own requirements list; requirements differ between consulates).
Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Directorio: Consulados de México en el Exterior (includes consular sections of embassies). Linked in FAQ 5.
Banco de México, tipo de cambio FIX. Linked in section 4.
Servicio de Administración Tributaria, Inscripción al RFC. Linked in section 5.
RENAPO, Consulta tu CURP (gob.mx)
GOV.UK, State Pension if you retire abroad. Linked in section 5.
GOV.UK, Living in Mexico. Linked in section 8.
Service Canada (Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security paid outside Canada) and Canada Revenue Agency (leaving Canada). Named in section 5; canada.ca.
IMSS, Seguro de Salud para la Familia (IMSS-02-014). Linked in section 6.
SENASICA, Viajar con mascotas (gob.mx, page dated 11 September 2026). Linked in section 7.
Agencia Nacional de Aduanas de México (ANAM), Menaje de casa. Linked in section 7.
Cámara de Diputados, Ley de Migración, arts. 43, 52 fr. VII and IX, 53, 132 and 134 (work permission, overstays, regularisation); Reglamento de la Ley de Migración, arts. 144, 146, 164 and 165 (work permit on the residency card). Already linked above (Ley in FAQ 1; Reglamento in this list).
Cámara de Diputados, Ley Federal de Derechos, arts. 8 and 22 (immigration document and consular fees); Embassy of Mexico in Washington, Residente temporal 2026 (one appointment per person).
IRS, Publication 54, Tax Guide for U.S. Citizens and Resident Aliens Abroad (Rev. December 2025).
Medicare.gov, Travel outside the U.S.
Reglamento de la Ley del Seguro Social en materia de afiliación, arts. 82, 83 and 99 (IMSS pre-existing conditions and waiting periods); Reglamento de Prestaciones Médicas del IMSS, arts. 5 and 65 (assigned clinic and family doctor).
Ley Aduanera, art. 106 fr. IV a) (temporary vehicle import for visitors and temporary residents); ANAM vehicle import guidance.
Ley sobre el Contrato de Seguro, arts. 8 and 47 (health declaration to insurers).
Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, art. 27 fr. I; Ley de Inversión Extranjera, arts. 2, 11 and 13 (restricted zone, bank trust); Código Civil Federal, art. 2320 (sale in a public deed).