In the past few weeks, several media outlets in the United Kingdom have reported that anyone who wants to move to Switzerland can receive a 20.000-franc grant, but is a town in the heart of the Swiss mountains really offering expats huge sums of money to plant their roots?
Our story starts on January 5, when British tabloid The Daily Mirror published a piece titled “World's happiest country is two hours from UK - and they'll pay you to move there.” In it, the newspaper claimed that anyone who wants to move to Switzerland to take advantage of one of the best standards of living in Europe can receive 20.000 francs.
They explained that the “Swiss government” offers families 20.000 francs for every adult under 45 and 10.000 francs for every child who settles down in the village of Albinen, Canton Valais. All they have to do is buy a house in the town worth over 200.000 francs, commit to living there for 10 years and become Swiss citizens.
While the headline may have Brits packing their bags and heading to the airport, the story has quite a few problems. As is typical, a nugget of truth surrounds a fog of missing information.
For one, the grant itself is only offered to permanent residents of Switzerland - those with C-residence permits and Swiss citizens - meaning newcomers could not take advantage of the deal. Contrary to the Mirror’s claims, the bonus package was not offered by the government but by local authorities in Albinen itself.
What’s more, the town of Albinen voted to introduce the 20.000 franc grants in 2017, eight whole years ago. The plan itself was designed to repopulate the town of just under 100 people. Families specifically were encouraged to move there so that the local council could reopen the nearby school.
There is no indication that the scheme is still ongoing, with officials at the time noting that only five to 10 families would benefit from the programme.
Ever since Albinen started to offer the 20.000 franc grant in 2017, the scheme has been plagued with misinformation. The story at the time was misreported by outlets across the world, after which the local council was inundated with 12.000 applications from overseas.
At the time, the local authorities said the “misplaced excitement" meant that only “one out of a hundred could be considered a serious applicant due to the strict rules and regulations.” “There were people who arrived with their suitcases and asked where the money and the apartments were. It was crazy,” Albinen's then-Mayor Beat Jost told reporters in 2021.
In the Mirror’s case, the paper trail quotes a November 2024 article by a fellow British tabloid the Daily Express, which itself is sourced from a piece by relocation company Seven Seas Worldwide. In the report, the claim is repeated alongside other examples of places that pay you to move there.
As its source, Seven Seas Worldwide used a 2023 piece from the Daily Mail where the inaccurate reporting is repeated. The daisy chain of misinformation is complete when the source for that piece is found: one of the original 2018 articles which caused the viral interest in the first place.
So has the scheme been a success? According to The Local, a family from Aargau was the first to take advantage of the project in 2018. 38 people have become Albinites since the scheme began, including 11 children.