It sounds almost too good to be true: move to a small Italian village and receive a grant towards the cost. Several Italian regions have built genuine, funded schemes to reverse decades of rural depopulation, and a handful of them are open to people moving from outside Italy, not just those relocating within the country.
Calabria, Trentino and Sardinia all run cash grant schemes that explicitly allow applications from people relocating from abroad. Calabria’s “Abita Borghi Montani Calabria” offers up to €20,000 (£17,000) towards starting a business or €5,000 (£4,250) for pensioners and remote workers, with a much larger successor worth up to €100,000 (£85,000) expected this autumn. Trentino’s repopulation fund, worth up to €100,000 (£85,000) in total, has already paid out to applicants moving from Edinburgh and Brussels. Sardinia offers smaller grants of up to €15,000 (£12,750) and has just widened its eligible communes. The better-known schemes in Tuscany and Piedmont, by comparison, are restricted to people who already live in Italy.
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Calabria: the clearest route in
Calabria’s regional government has been the most explicit about wanting international movers, not just Italians relocating internally. Its “Abita Borghi Montani Calabria” scheme, funded through the national mountain development fund, targets Italy’s remoter southern villages – 89 communes were admitted in the latest ranking. The official regional wording states plainly that the grant is offered “a cittadini italiani e stranieri intenzionati a trasferirsi stabilmente in Calabria” – to Italian and foreign citizens intending to move permanently to Calabria.
There are two tracks. Applicants starting a business can receive up to €20,000 (£17,000), while pensioners and people working remotely for an employer based elsewhere can receive €5,000 (£4,250). Either way, you need to transfer your residence to the chosen commune within 90 days of acceptance and keep it there for at least five years. Municipal application windows for the current round have largely closed, but this isn’t a one-off: Calabria’s president has already announced a far bigger successor, “Casa Calabria 100“, offering up to €100,000 (£85,000) towards buying and renovating a home in the region’s internal areas, modelled on Trentino’s scheme below. It’s expected to open for applications this autumn, with a longer residency commitment attached.
Trentino: up to £85,000, and it’s already paid out to applicants abroad
Trentino, the semi-autonomous province in the Dolomites, runs one of the most generous schemes in the country. Under a law passed in August 2024, it offers up to €80,000 (£68,000) towards renovating a property and a further €20,000 (£17,000) towards buying one, in communes that have lost at least 8% of their population over the past two decades. The fund has grown steadily, from an initial €10 million (£8.5 million) to an additional €9 million (£7.65 million) added in August 2025.
What sets Trentino apart is the evidence that it genuinely works for people moving from abroad. Of 291 applications in the first 2025 window, two came from outside Italy entirely – one applicant moved from Edinburgh, another from Brussels. Application windows run periodically rather than once a year; 2025 saw two rounds, and further windows are planned through 2026. If you’re serious about this route, it’s worth checking the province’s own website directly for the next opening, since dates and eligible communes can shift between rounds.
Sardinia: smaller grants, but open to people not yet living in Italy
Sardinia’s scheme is more modest in scale but just as clear on eligibility. It offers up to €15,000 (£12,750), covering half the cost of buying or renovating a first home in one of its smaller communes. The regional government’s own guidance is unambiguous: residence in Sardinia, or in Italy, is not a requirement to apply.
The scheme was originally limited to communes with fewer than 3,000 residents, but in April 2026 the region extended it to cover communes with up to 5,000 residents, backed by €15 million (£12.75 million) a year through 2028. Scoring criteria now specifically reward applicants transferring their residence from abroad, alongside young couples and families with children. Individual communes run their own application windows under the regional rules, so the practical next step is watching for a bando in the specific village you’re interested in, rather than a single region-wide deadline.
What about Tuscany and Piedmont?
Tuscany’s “Residenzialità in Montagna” scheme, and the similar bando in Piedmont, are the versions most often written about – but neither is open to a first move from the UK or the US. Both require applicants to already be resident in a non-mountainous Italian commune before they apply, which rules out anyone moving from abroad rather than relocating within Italy.
Tuscany’s 2024 round offered €10,000–€30,000 (£8,500–£25,500) and drew almost a thousand applications for just 98 places; a smaller 2025 successor reduced the maximum grant to €10,000 (£8,500) while widening the eligible area, and closed to applications in November 2025. Piedmont’s equivalent bando closed back in 2022. Both are useful indicators of where Italy sees genuine opportunity in its smaller communes, but neither should factor into planning a relocation from abroad. However, if you already hold Italian residency elsewhere in the country and later want to move somewhere more remote, they may be worth revisiting.
The one requirement that applies to almost everywhere
Nationality is rarely the real obstacle in any of these schemes. The decisive factor is whether you hold lawful permission to live in Italy. UK citizens lost automatic EU rights after Brexit, and US citizens have never had them, so both are treated as “non-EU” under Italian rules. Calabria and Sardinia both state this directly: non-EU applicants are eligible provided they hold a valid permesso di soggiorno, Italy’s residence permit.
In practice, this means sequencing matters. You’ll typically need a route into Italy already – an elective residence visa, a work permit, or another qualifying long-stay permit – in hand before, or at the same time as, applying for one of these grants. Every scheme then requires you to formally transfer your residenza to the target commune within a set window (90 days in Calabria, up to 18 months in Sardinia) and to maintain it for five to ten years afterwards. Move too early or too late, or without the right permit, and you risk losing eligibility altogether.
What this means if you’re planning a move
If a grant-funded move to rural Italy genuinely appeals, Calabria and Trentino are the two to prioritise, since both have explicit language – and in Trentino’s case, real examples – covering people moving from abroad. Sardinia is a reasonable third option, particularly now its eligible area has widened, though its smaller grant amount makes it less central to a purchase decision. All three are worth watching directly through their own regional or provincial websites, since application windows open and close throughout the year and eligible communes can change between rounds.
None of these grants should be the reason you choose a particular region of Italy – the lifestyle, climate and property market in Calabria’s mountain villages are very different from Trentino’s alpine communes, and different again from inland Sardinia. But if you’re already drawn to one of these areas, understanding which schemes are genuinely open to you – rather than assuming any headline grant figure applies – could meaningfully change what your move costs.
Whichever region and scheme you’re weighing up, the exchange rate will do more to move your final costs than most grants will. Locking in a rate well ahead of completion, through a currency specialist such as Smart Currency Exchange, takes one significant variable out of an already complex process.
