Remotely from Georgia — A Free, Fast Pandemic-Era Registration for Digital Nomads

In August 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic emptied Georgia's tourism-dependent economy, the Georgian National Tourism Administration launched "Remotely from Georgia": a free, online registration scheme letting remote workers from any of the roughly 95 countries with visa-free access enter and legally work from Georgia for up to 360 days, provided they showed either $2,000 in monthly income or $24,000 in savings.
Unlike Barbados' fee-based Welcome Stamp, the Georgian scheme charged no application fee: applicants simply registered online, agreed to a mandatory 12-day quarantine and produced proof of health insurance and sufficient funds. The low-cost, low-bureaucracy design was explicitly built around Georgia's already-low cost of living (Tbilisi rents and living costs were, at the time, roughly 70–88% below New York City levels according to Numbeo/WSJ-cited data), positioning the country as a low-friction pandemic-era base for location-independent professionals.
According to statistics the Georgian National Tourism Administration released and Eurasianet reported, the programme drew more than 2,700 registered participants in its first five months (August–December 2020). Georgian Journal reported that GNTA figures still put registered participants at "over 2,700" as of March 2023, suggesting growth largely plateaued after the initial pandemic-era surge rather than compounding over the following two years.
The programme has since been superseded: as Georgia's standard visa-free stay was extended to a full year for many nationalities, "Remotely from Georgia" lost its distinct advantage and multiple outlets describe it as phased out and largely obsolete by the mid-2020s. No public data on downstream economic impact (spending, tax revenue, job creation) was found; the only verifiable metric is registered-participant headcount. This is a genuine cautionary case: a fast, low-cost pandemic-era intervention that achieved early uptake but was not sustained as a distinct policy instrument once the emergency rationale disappeared.

Read the full analysis: https://eurasianet.org/georgia-beckons-digital-nomads-with-covid-fighting-success