Golden Visa
Long-term residency for categories the UAE has chosen to attract. Eligibility is specific and evidence-led.
- Eligibility assessment
- Evidence pack
- Application and stamping
Visas & Residency
Residency for owners, employees and families - from eligibility through medical, Emirates ID and stamping, with the renewal dates held for you afterwards.
A UAE residency visa is a sequence, not a document. Entry permit, medical, Emirates ID, then stamping – and each step has its own window. Miss one and the sequence restarts, sometimes with a fine attached.
We run the sequence, tell you which steps need you physically present, and group those so one trip covers them.
Routes
Which visa applies to you.
The right route depends on whether you own a company, are employed by one, or are being sponsored by a family member.
Investor Visa
Residency through owning or partnering in a UAE company.
- Partner and investor routes
- Company documents
- Family sponsorship after
Employment Visa
Residency sponsored by an employer, including the labour side with the Ministry of Human Resources.
- Work permit
- Labour contract
- Medical and Emirates ID
The sequence
Four steps, in this order.
1
Entry permit
Issued before the residency itself. If you are already in the UAE, this may instead be a status change.
2
Medical examination
A standard screening at an approved centre. Required in person.
3
Emirates ID
Biometrics captured in person. The card is the identity document you will use for almost everything afterwards.
4
Stamping
The residency is issued and linked to your passport and Emirates ID. Renewal dates start from here, and we hold them.
Questions
Asked before every application.
It depends on the route and the sponsor, and the terms change from time to time. We confirm the current duration for your specific case at the point of application rather than quoting a figure that may have moved.
Usually yes, once your own residency is issued and subject to income and housing conditions. Family sponsorship is a separate application, which we handle as part of the same file.
There is a grace period, and overstaying past it carries a daily fine. If we hold your file we track the date and start the renewal before it becomes urgent.
Before you apply
Four things that decide how smoothly this goes.
- Passport validity. A passport close to expiry will stall the application. Renew it first, not halfway through.
- Attestation. Marriage and birth certificates are attested in the country that issued them. Starting after you arrive adds weeks. The chain.
- Existing UAE status. A previous residency must be cancelled before a new one is issued. An unclosed file is one of the most common hidden delays.
- Name consistency. The name order on the passport, the certificates and the application must match. A middle name recorded in one place and not another is treated as a different person.
Medical and Emirates ID
The two steps that need you here.
Everything else can be filed on your behalf. These cannot.
The medical screening is done at an approved centre. Emirates ID requires biometrics — fingerprints and a photograph — captured in person. Both are quick; the scheduling is what causes trouble, because people book flights around the wrong step.
We book them together wherever the sequence allows, so one trip covers both rather than two.
What people get wrong
- Booking the medical before the entry permit exists, so it cannot be linked to anything
- Leaving the country between the medical and the Emirates ID appointment
- Assuming the residency is complete when the Emirates ID card arrives — stamping is a separate step
After it is issued
Residency is a date, not a status.
Every residency has an expiry, and so does the Emirates ID, and they are not always the same date. Overstaying past the grace period carries a fine that accrues daily against the individual, not the company.
There is also a rule people discover too late: a residency visa can lapse if the holder remains outside the UAE for an extended continuous period. If you are planning a long absence, ask us first — it is usually manageable in advance and expensive to fix afterwards.
For clients on retainer we hold every visa expiry across the company alongside the licence dates. How that works.
How many visas you can sponsor
The question behind the hiring plan.
Capacity is not a number you choose. It is assessed, and it is assessed largely on your premises.
Every company has a ceiling on how many residency visas it may sponsor. On the mainland it is tied to the registered premises under Ejari and the labour quota granted by the ministry. In a free zone it is usually set by the package you bought, with additional visas available at a cost and sometimes requiring a larger space.
This is why the office decision and the hiring plan are the same decision, and why signing the cheapest available space is one of the more expensive mistakes in this business.
- Decide the headcount for the first two years before choosing premises
- Ask what the space supports before signing, not after
- Remember that your own residency and your family’s count within the picture
- Increasing capacity mid-year means a new tenancy, a new Ejari and an amendment – not a phone call
Insurance
Mandatory, and not the place to economise.
Medical cover is a condition of residency, for the employee and for every dependant.
Residency requires medical insurance meeting the requirement in force, and it is checked. Beyond the compliance point, the cover you buy is the cover your family actually has, and the cheapest compliant policy is frequently not what someone with children would choose if they had read it.
Worth checking before you buy
- Whether the policy meets the requirement for the emirate the residency is issued in
- What the network is – which hospitals and clinics accept it without a referral
- Maternity cover and its waiting period, if that is foreseeable
- Whether dependants are on the same policy or need their own
- What happens to the cover when someone leaves the company
Who pays for what
Said plainly, because it is often misrepresented.
For employment residency, the costs of employing someone in the UAE are the employer’s responsibility under labour law. That includes the work permit, the residency and the insurance required for it. An employer asking a new hire to fund their own visa is not describing a normal arrangement.
For investor and family routes the applicant bears the cost, which is the ordinary position – you are sponsoring yourself or your family rather than being employed.
In every case we itemise government charges separately from our fee, so you can see which line is the authority’s and which is ours. How we quote.
Talk to a consultant
Tell us what you need. We will tell you what it takes.
A short WhatsApp conversation is usually enough to scope a file. No forms, no call centre — you reach a consultant who handles the work.