UAE Residence Visas and Immigration Support

A residence visa is a permission with conditions attached

It is sold as a product and it is not one. A UAE residence permit is a conditional status: conditional on a sponsor who keeps their own file clean, on a medical result nobody can influence, on premises carrying enough allocation for the headcount, and on your not being outside the country too long.

Most of what goes wrong is sequencing. A licence issued before anyone counted the visa allocation. An office signed for four people that supports two. A dependant application filed against a labour contract whose recorded salary is below the threshold, discovered eight months later.

This page sets out what each category requires, which authority decides it, and where the honest answer is that you should not be applying at all.

01

Two regulators, and knowing which one has your file

Residence is not administered by one body, and the split determines who you deal with at every later step.

• GDRFA — the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs — processes residence for Dubai visa holders.
• ICP — the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security — processes residence for holders in all other emirates, and issues the Emirates ID nationwide.
• MOHRE — the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation — owns the employment relationship on the mainland: the work permit, the quota that permits it, and the contract behind it.
• Free zone authorities operate their own immigration desks, which submit into GDRFA or ICP rather than replacing them.

The sequence, and what each step depends on

This is not one queue. Every step is decided at a different desk, and the file is handed between them more often than it stays put — which is why a delay at one desk is rarely visible from the one before it.

Indicative timeProcessed by

1. 1Establishment card — the company's immigration fileDepends on a live trade licence2–5 working daysGDRFA, ICP or the free zone
2. 2Work permit (mainland employment only)Depends on an available electronic quota2–5 working daysMOHREChanges hands
3. 3Entry permitDepends on the establishment card, and on permit approval2–5 working daysGDRFA or ICPChanges hands
4. 4Entry, or change of status in-countryDepends on nationality, and on the current visa typeSame day to 3 daysGDRFA or ICP
5. 5Medical fitness examinationDepends on nothing — this is the gate1–3 days for a clear resultEHS, DHA or the Abu Dhabi screening centreChanges hands
6. 6Emirates ID biometricsDepends on a valid entry permitSame dayICPChanges hands
7. 7Residence issuance and linking to the passportDepends on a clear medical and completed biometrics3–5 working daysGDRFA or ICPChanges hands

The establishment card, the mainland work permit and the entry permit each run 2–5 working days, a change of status inside the country same day to 3 days, a clear medical 1–3 days, the Emirates ID biometrics the same day, and the residence issuance and passport linking 3–5 working days — and the desk changes at almost every one of those handovers.

Two to four weeks end to end is realistic when documents are consistent and the medical is clear. It is not a promise: firms giving you a fixed date are quoting a queue they do not control. Free zone files often move faster, having no MOHRE layer.

A free zone file is faster only once it exists, and the first step in that sequence — the establishment card — depends on a live trade licence. Where the residence is to come from a new free zone company, the licence is the last step of a sequence of its own. The UAE Government Portal starts that sequence with the sector and then the zone, before the legal form, the trade name and the licence application, and each step leaves something the visa file will later read.

1. The zone is chosen for what it can license, and the visa inherits the choice. Sector comes first because the zone has to admit it. The rest is the premises the zone can offer, where it sits, what it costs across the years you will hold the licence, and where the people you sponsor will actually live and work. Two parts of that decision belong to the visa: the emirate the zone sits in decides whether the residence file goes to GDRFA or to ICP, and the package or premises you take there decides the allocation, as the quota section below sets out.
2. The legal form comes before the name, because the name carries it. A Free Zone Establishment (FZE) has a single shareholder, a person or a company — Jafza and Hamriyah both define it that way — and Hamriyah's Free Zone Company (FZC) has more than one. Other zones name their forms differently and set their own shareholder rules, and the government portal notes that not every zone offers every form. For the visa, the document that matters is the memorandum of association. It names the shareholders, and it is one of the four documents GDRFA's partner or investor permit asks for. Settle who is named on it with residence in mind: a shareholder's permit can rest on the shareholding, while a manager who holds no shares is sponsored by the company as an employee.
3. The trade name is reserved by the zone, not simply chosen. The authority checks the proposal against its rules and reserves it. The baseline the government portal publishes is that the name carries the legal form, is not already taken, fits the activity and legal status, and avoids the names of religions and governing authorities. Meydan asks for up to three options so that one can be secured. The approved name is the one the licence is issued in, and the establishment card follows the licence.
4. The licence type follows the activity rather than being chosen beside it. Hamriyah's commercial licence covers trading in the goods it names, its service licence the services it lists, and its industrial licence manufacturing, processing and assembly; other zones use their own labels for the same split. The application goes to the zone with the documents and the fees, the zone reviews it, and the licence issues on approval. Where the activity needs a second authority's approval, obtain it first. GDRFA grants the partner or investor permit subject to the competent authorities' approval and the applicant's authorisation to practise the activity, so an approval the activity still lacks holds up the residence as well as the trading. The activities a second authority has to approve sets out which those are.

The company's documents are not the visa's, and the two packs overlap less than older checklists suggest. Each zone publishes its own list, and Jafza, for one, reserves the right to ask for more. Its FZE pack for an individual shareholder runs to the zone's application form, an environment, health and safety form, KYC and ultimate beneficial owner forms, an appointment letter for the director, manager and secretary, passport copies for the shareholder, manager and secretary valid for at least six months, a business profile, and a project summary or business plan held to one page. Hamriyah asks for passport copies of the shareholder and the manager. Meydan's standard route starts from a passport copy for each shareholder, the chosen activities and the name options, and the zone issues the memorandum and articles of association itself on formation. A corporate shareholder adds its own certificate of incorporation and memorandum and articles, notarised and attested — usually the longest wait in the file. Three items from older checklists need placing correctly. The photograph is certainly in the visa file: GDRFA's partner or investor permit lists one first. The memorandum, at Meydan, is the zone's document rather than yours to draft, and once issued it is a visa document too. And a business plan that describes a team should describe the team the premises can sponsor. Where a shareholder or manager already lives in the UAE under another sponsor, some zones add a letter from that sponsor; the section on applicants who already hold a permit, below, says which.

Use one passport throughout, and check its expiry against the date the residence file will go in rather than the date the licence is applied for: Jafza and GDRFA each ask for six months' validity, and they measure it at different moments. The formation half of this — narrowing the zones, the trade name rules, share capital and the full pack — is set out on free zone company formation. On the mainland the trade name and the licence come from the emirate's economic department instead, as mainland company formation explains.

Entry permit and residence are different documents

The entry permit is a short-lived electronic authorisation to enter for the purpose of taking up residence. The residence permit follows once the medical, biometrics and file are complete. Two separate clocks run here and they are routinely quoted as one. The entry permit carries its own validity, which starts when it is issued rather than when the holder lands. Separately, ICP's residency permit service states that employment-based applicants must complete the residency issuance procedures within sixty days from the date of entry into the UAE. A permit that has been sitting unused for weeks and a sixty-day formalities window that has not started yet are not the same fact, and a firm that conflates them will tell you that you have longer than you do. Confirm both against the permit actually issued, with GDRFA or ICP.

Changing status inside the country, or leaving and returning

If the applicant is already in the UAE on a visit or tourist visa, the status can generally be adjusted in-country without departing — faster, cheaper and less disruptive than an exit-and-re-entry, and the default we aim for. It is not universally available: eligibility turns on nationality and on the visa currently held, and where it is refused the applicant must leave and re-enter on the permit. Book nothing non-refundable until that is answered.

Where the applicant already holds a UAE permit, the previous sponsor sets the timetable

A second residence permit is not stacked on top of a first, and the document everyone expects to need — a no-objection letter from the current sponsor — is not what either authority actually publishes. GDRFA Dubai's service page for the green residence permit for a partner or investor lists four documents: a personal photograph, a passport valid for not less than six months, the partnership or memorandum of association or the investment contract, and the trade licence — subject to the competent authorities' approval and the applicant's authorisation to practise the activity. No sponsor's letter appears anywhere in it. ICP's residency permit service reads the same way: a passport valid for no less than six months, and sixty days from entry for employment-based applicants to finish the formalities, with no no-objection condition and no clause at all about a permit already held under somebody else. The constraint is real, but it is not a form. The existing permit has to be released before the new one can be linked to the passport, and the sponsor who holds it is the only party who can release it — so an incoming file waits on an outgoing one, on an employer settling end-of-service or a partner signing off a departure from the shareholding. That is a negotiation with a counterparty, not a document you collect.

Where a no-objection letter genuinely survives, it survives narrowly, and what decides it is the identity of the sponsor rather than the status of the applicant. A resident on a work visa taking a second job applies for a MOHRE part-time work permit, valid one year; under the part-time contract system such employees may hold several part-time jobs without the approval of the original or any secondary employer, though the ministry's permit is compulsory and the route is confined to skilled workers — degree holders, or holders of a two- or three-year technical or scientific diploma. Someone on a family visa doing exactly the same thing needs the part-time permit and an NOC from their sponsor. MOHRE's published fee was AED 100 on application and AED 500 on approval when the schedule was read on 20 August 2026. So the letter is asked for where a person sponsors a person, and not where a company or a shareholding does. Anyone who tells you a sponsor's NOC is a standing requirement for every applicant already on a UAE visa is describing a market practice rather than a published rule; ask which service page it appears on, and price the delay into the sponsor's cooperation instead.

The letter survives in one more place, outside the immigration file altogether and earlier than the permit: the free zone's own checklist for forming the company. Jafza's guide to setting up an FZE requires a shareholder, manager or secretary who already holds a UAE residence visa to include a no-objection letter signed by the local sponsor, with a copy of the current visa. Hamriyah asks for a copy of the shareholder's and manager's visit or tourist visa or, from a holder of a UAE employment visa, an attested no-objection letter from the current sponsor. Meydan states that its standard company route needs no letter from a current employer. That letter does not follow the pattern above — it is asked of an employer as readily as of a family sponsor — because it is the zone's condition for the licence, not GDRFA's or ICP's for the permit, and the answer changes with the zone rather than with the applicant. Ask which zone's list it is on; if the answer is none, it is the market practice described above.

Employment visas and the quota behind them

A standard work visa is valid for two years and renewable, and the employer applies for it. On the mainland the residence process cannot begin until MOHRE issues the work permit, and MOHRE will not issue one unless the establishment has electronic quota available — the ministry runs a dedicated quota service for exactly this reason.

Quota is not a fixed entitlement:

• Mainland — allocation is assessed against the tenancy enrolled with the relevant emirate's economic department. More people generally means more enrolled floor area, which is why signing a small office before counting headcount is expensive to undo.
• Free zone — allocation is bought with the package. Flexi-desk products carry a small allocation; physical offices carry more. Upgrading mid-term is possible and rarely cheap. The number was therefore settled by the facility, which is why a free zone licence comes with an allocation rather than a count of visas.
• Offshore — RAK ICC and Jafza Offshore companies carry no visa entitlement at all. If a residence visa is the objective, an offshore company is the wrong vehicle before any other consideration.

Set the three against each other and the difference is not the number. It is what the number is attached to, and what it costs you when it has been attached to the wrong thing.

what the visa allocation is attached to, jurisdiction by jurisdiction

What carries the allocationWhere it bites

1. MainlandFloor area on the tenancy enrolled with the relevant emirate's economic departmentSigning a small office before counting the headcount is expensive to undo
2. Free zoneThe package — a flexi-desk carries a small allocation, a physical office carries moreUpgrading mid-term is possible and rarely cheap
3. OffshoreNothing: RAK ICC and Jafza Offshore companies carry no visa entitlement at allThe wrong vehicle before any other consideration, where the visa is the objective

Mainland allocation is measured off the enrolled tenancy, free zone allocation is bought with the package — small on a flexi-desk, larger on a physical office — and an offshore company carries none of it at all.

Sponsorship is an obligation, not a favour: Wage Protection System salary payment, end-of-service accrual and repatriation liability sit with the employer while the visa is live.

04

Investor and partner visas

Where the entitlement comes from ownership rather than employment there is no labour contract and no MOHRE file — the shareholding is the basis. Expect to produce the trade licence, the memorandum of association or share certificate, and evidence of the shareholding. Terms vary by emirate and by whether property is also held.

Property is a separate route. Dubai Land Department's Taskeen investor residence issues a two-year permit to a property owner, and where the property is jointly owned the applicant's share must be not less than AED 400,000. DLD's published fee card, read on 20 August 2026, put the investor's two-year permit at AED 10,212.50, a spouse at AED 7,382.25 for two years, children under 18 at AED 6,482.25, and parents at AED 8,882.25 for one year. DLD revises this card without notice; treat those as the shape of the bill on that date and confirm the current one before you budget.

Golden Visa: the categories, and what they really ask for

The Golden Visa is a five or ten year renewable residence with no sponsor, the ability to sponsor family, and — the provision that matters most in practice — relief from the six-month absence rule that voids an ordinary permit. It is approved on the evidence a category asks for, and nothing about forming a company produces it: a trade licence does not come with a Golden Visa, whatever a formation package implies. The UAE Government Portal publishes the categories as follows.

	Duration	Main requirement as published
Investors in public investments	10 years	Minimum capital of AED 2 million
Real estate investors	5 years	Property ownership, or contribution to an establishment paying at least AED 250,000 annually in taxes
Entrepreneurs	5 years	Proof of an innovative or technical project, documents proving project value, and a letter from a business incubator or the relevant authority in the emirate
Exceptional talent or rare specialisation	10 years	Doctors, scientists, inventors, creatives, executives, athletes, PhD holders and specialists in priority scientific and engineering fields; each sub-category sets its own evidence
Outstanding students	5 years (high school) / 10 years (top university students)	Certificates of excellence and recommendation letters
Humanitarian pioneers and frontline heroes	10 years	Certificates of appreciation, humanitarian documentation, or at least five years of service

Public investment, exceptional talent and the humanitarian categories run to ten years; real estate, entrepreneurs and the high-school student route to five, with the top-university student route at ten again.

Read that against what you have been told. The federal portal lists the real estate route at five years, while Dubai Land Department separately issues a ten-year renewable permit to an investor whose property is worth AED 2 million or more at the time of purchase, wholly owned, with a bank no-objection letter where it is mortgaged. Both are correct — different routes, different approving bodies — and which one you land in depends on where you apply. DLD's fee card for that route totalled AED 9,884.75 when it was read on 20 August 2026: medical AED 700, Emirates ID for ten years AED 1,153, permit confirmation AED 2,856.75, DLD fees AED 4,020, administrative fees AED 1,155, processing 7 to 10 business days, family members AED 5,774.50 each. That total is quoted to the fils because the card is, not because the figure is durable — it is a snapshot of one authority's schedule on one day, and DLD reprices without announcement.

Refusals are common in the talent and entrepreneur categories, and the reason is almost always the same: the evidence does not reach the bar the category actually sets, which is higher than the summary line suggests. Assess eligibility before filing — for the entrepreneur route the incubator or authority letter comes from somebody else, so settle the Golden Visa route before the company is formed rather than after.

Green Visa and Blue Visa

The Green Visa is a five-year self-sponsored residence for skilled workers, freelancers and self-employed people, and for investors and business partners. It is not tied to an employer, it survives a change of job, and holders may sponsor first-degree relatives. Thresholds are set by ICP per category and are no longer published in summary form on the government portal — check the current figures with ICP.

The Blue Visa is a ten-year residence recognising contributions to environmental protection and sustainability, granted by nomination rather than application.

Extending your visa to your family

A dependant's permit is not an application in its own right. It is derived from the sponsor's, and that single fact decides three things a family usually discovers in the wrong order: nothing can be filed until the sponsor's own residence has been issued, every dependant's permit expires on the sponsor's date rather than its own, and the document the authority reads is the sponsor's employment contract — not the sponsor's bank balance.

Who a resident may sponsor. A resident may sponsor a spouse, unmarried daughters, sons under 25, and children with special needs. The sponsor must have a minimum salary of AED 4,000, or AED 3,000 plus accommodation. Everyone being sponsored who has reached 18 must pass the medical fitness examination. A wife sponsoring her husband is permitted and is decided case by case rather than as of right, so it is worth putting to the authority before the family commits to a date.

Parents are a different application, and nobody is told that early enough. Sponsoring a mother and father is allowed, and it is the request we are asked about most once a family has settled. It is not the spouse-and-children application with different names on it:

• the income condition is higher, and it is set by the immigration authority rather than by the employer
• the authority normally wants evidence that the resident is their sole supporter — that there is no other child in the home country who could maintain them
• the permit is generally granted for a shorter term than a spouse's, so it comes back round as a piece of work rather than being settled once
• it carries its own medical insurance requirement, priced on the parent's age, which is the cost most people have not budgeted for
• parents are expected to be sponsored as a pair; an application for one alone needs the authority's agreement and a reason it will accept

None of those five is a figure we will quote without reading the current rule for the specific emirate and route, because they move, and because a wrong number here costs a family a flight.

The order it has to happen in. The sequence is the same machinery as any other residence, and the sponsor is the gate on the first step: the sponsor's own residence permit and Emirates ID are issued, and nothing can be filed before that; an entry permit is obtained for each dependant, naming the sponsor; the dependant enters on it, or changes status inside the country; everyone who has reached 18 sits the medical; each dependant enrols for an Emirates ID, children included; and the residence is issued against the completed file.

The document that delays most families is an attestation, not a visa. A spouse application needs the marriage certificate and a child's needs the birth certificate, each attested so that the UAE will accept it — which in practice means a chain through the issuing country's own authorities and its UAE mission, and then the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here. That chain runs on the issuing country's timetable rather than ours, and it is the one part of a family file that cannot be started late and caught up. A tenancy contract in the sponsor's name and a current salary certificate complete the picture. Start the attestations before the sponsor's residence is even issued: it is the only step in a family's whole file that can be done early.

Two further details cause most of the remaining trouble. First, the salary the authority reads is the one on the labour contract or salary certificate, not what reaches the bank account — which is why a dependant application fails against a contract signed a year earlier. Second, dependants' permits are tied to the sponsor's: cancel the sponsor and the dependants' must go too. The government portal states dependants then have a six-month grace period to obtain a new permit, and that a sponsor who neither renews nor cancels may be fined.

A child born in the UAE does not arrive with residence. The birth certificate is issued first, then the child's passport through their own country's mission, and only then the residence application — and there is a deadline running from the date of birth, after which the file attracts a penalty. Treat a newborn's papers as a dated obligation rather than as something to do once life settles down.

Because a dependant's permit derives from the sponsor's rather than standing on its own, the order in which a family can actually arrive is set by the sponsor's file, not by the family's plans — which is the argument in nobody moves to Dubai, somebody is sponsored into it.

The medical is a genuine gate

This is the step no consultancy can influence, and any firm implying otherwise is selling something that does not exist.

Applicants must be free of communicable diseases, specifically including HIV and tuberculosis. A positive HIV result ends the application. In addition, the following must test negative for syphilis and hepatitis B: workers in nurseries, domestic workers including housemaids, nannies and drivers, food handlers and restaurant and café staff, salon and beauty centre workers, and health club staff. Female domestic workers must also test negative for pregnancy.

Screening is not uniform. Abu Dhabi screens for pulmonary tuberculosis by chest X-ray; Dubai does not. Under Cabinet Resolution No. 5 of 2016, residents renewing a permit undergo TB screening, and anyone found with scars, active TB or drug-resistant TB is issued a conditional fitness certificate and a one-year residence permit, with treatment to be undertaken in the UAE. That is a real outcome, not a theoretical one, and it changes the renewal cycle for the person concerned.

Plan for follow-up testing: it adds one to three weeks and cannot be expedited.

Emirates ID: the number that outlives every visa

The Emirates ID is issued by ICP for the entire country — including Dubai, whose residence file sits with GDRFA. It is a legal requirement for every citizen and resident, and the application is bundled into the residence file rather than filed separately: biometrics are captured at an ICP-approved centre once the entry permit is live, and the card follows the residence approval.

The detail worth knowing is that the 15-digit identity number is permanent. It stays with the person for life — across a change of employer, a change of emirate, a cancellation, and a fresh application years later. That is the mechanism by which an unresolved file follows somebody back: the new application matches the number on the old one.

In daily use it is the card, not the residence permit, that banks, telecom providers, landlords and government portals actually read, and it is what opens the smart gates at the airport.

Renewal can be filed up to six months before expiry, or at any point after. Leave it more than one month past expiry and a late fee of AED 20 per day accrues, capped at AED 1,000 — a small number that quietly reaches its ceiling in under two months.

Cancellation, in the order it has to happen

Order matters more here than anywhere else.

1. Dependants first. Their permits derive from the sponsor's. Cancelling the sponsor while dependants are live creates a status problem for people who did nothing wrong.
2. Then the employment relationship. On the mainland the MOHRE work permit and contract are settled before the residence file closes; end-of-service entitlements are calculated here, not afterwards.
3. Then the residence permit — through GDRFA for Dubai holders, ICP elsewhere. The sponsor submits the request, not the individual.
4. The Emirates ID cancels automatically with the residence permit. There is no separate step.
5. Then the establishment card, if the company itself is closing.

Grace periods after cancellation are tiered by the permit that was cancelled — reported as 180 days for Golden, Green and Blue holders and their families, 90 days for skilled workers in MOHRE levels 1 to 3 and property owners, and 60 days where a guarantor or host sponsored the permit. Confirm your tier before planning around it. Overstaying past it accrues a daily fine, widely applied at AED 50 per day since October 2022, plus an exit permit fee.

Days

1. Golden, Green and Blue holders and their families180
2. Skilled workers in MOHRE levels 1 to 3, and property owners90
3. Where a guarantor or host sponsored the permit60

0100200

On one scale: 180 days reported for Golden, Green and Blue holders and their families, 90 days for skilled workers in MOHRE levels 1 to 3 and for property owners, and 60 days where a guarantor or a host was the sponsor. Those are reported tiers rather than a figure either authority publishes in a fee card, so confirm which one your cancelled permit sits in before you plan a departure around it.

Leaving a visa live against a departed employee or an exited shareholder saves nothing. It keeps the liability with the company, and it surfaces at liquidation.

Health insurance is now part of the file

Since 1 January 2025, MOHRE's Basic Health Insurance Scheme has been a prerequisite for issuing or renewing residence permits in Sharjah, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah and Umm Al Quwain, at AED 320 per year, with pre-existing conditions covered without a waiting period. Dubai and Abu Dhabi already required cover under their own health authorities. Budget per head.

Where a UAE residence visa is the wrong purchase

If you are not going to live here. A residence permit lapses if you remain outside the UAE beyond the usual six months, and it carries renewals, repeat medicals and insurance premiums throughout. For an owner who visits quarterly it is a recurring cost attached to a status they cannot maintain.

If the point is tax residency. A Golden Visa is not a tax residency certificate and does not create one. Tax residency for individuals is determined under Cabinet Decision No. 85 of 2022, on day counts and on where your permanent home, employment or business actually is — see UAE corporate tax for how that interacts with a company. A ten-year visa proves none of those tests. Your home country may continue to tax you regardless of what is in your passport.

If the visa is the reason for buying property. The AED 2 million route means buying a AED 2 million asset, not a AED 10,000 visa, and the permit rests on continued ownership. Buy the property on its own merits.

If you are sponsoring parents casually. DLD's own schedule, on the 20 August 2026 card above, priced a parent's permit at AED 8,882.25 for one year against AED 7,382.25 for a spouse for two. It renews annually, at older-age insurance premiums, indefinitely.

If you are buying allocation for headcount you do not have. Free zone visa allocation is paid for whether or not it is used. Buy for the team you will actually place in the next eighteen months.

If there is an unresolved immigration record. A previous overstay, an absconding report or a prior refusal has to be cleared at source. A fresh application filed on top of it will be refused, and the fee will not come back.

If the medical outcome is the real question. Where a communicable disease is likely to be found, the honest advice is to establish that before anyone books flights, resigns a job or ships a household. We would rather lose the engagement than take a fee for an application that cannot succeed.

What we need before we can quote

The number of people, their nationalities, whether each is inside or outside the UAE today, the emirate and jurisdiction of the licence, whether dependants are coming, and the salaries as they will be recorded on the contracts rather than as discussed. That determines the allocation, the premises to support it, whether status can be changed in-country, and the cost.

If the company is still to be formed, add the activity, the zone you are considering and the names that will go on the memorandum. Those decide the licence the establishment card will be opened against, which authority will hold the residence file, and whose residence can rest on a shareholding rather than on employment.

Check every figure here against the authority cited. Immigration fees and thresholds are revised without notice.

Tell us the headcount and the jurisdiction and our PRO services team will map the file — including the cases where the honest answer is that the visa you were quoted is not the one you need.

Frequently asked questions