Visa information

The UAE offers the widest route list in the 2026 guides: an employment visa sponsored by an employer or free zone, a 10-year Golden Visa for investors, professionals and outstanding talent, a Remote Work visa under the Virtual Working Programme tested at $3,500 a month, and a Green visa for freelancers and skilled workers. The guide scores the UAE 88/100 for visa and bureaucracy — the highest in this batch — and pairs the routes with zero personal income tax.

The routes the guide names

Employment visa — sponsored by an employer or free zone. Sponsorship is the mechanism the guide names; it prints no salary floor for it.

Golden Visa (10 years) — for investors, professionals and outstanding talent; the schemes list repeats it as “Golden Visa 10 years for investors, professionals, talent.” Its financial thresholds sit only in the site FAQ — see the income section below.

Remote Work visa and Green visa — listed together as the routes “for freelancers and skilled workers”; the remote-work route is priced in the next section, and the Green visa is also named in the schemes list.

Retirement visa — for over-55s, covered on the Retirement page.

The income tests — what the sources actually say

For the Virtual Working Programme, both the guide and the site data give the test as a figure: a 1-year remote-work visa on $3,500/mo income. The Hub's site FAQ agrees, describing “a one-year remote work visa for digital nomads working for a foreign employer, requiring proof of employment and a minimum monthly salary of $3,500.”

For the Golden Visa, the guide prints no threshold at all. The site FAQ (in app.js, separate from the guide) states that property investment of AED 2 million or above qualifies, as do certain salary thresholds — treat AED 2 million as the site FAQ's figure, attributed as such, not a guide-stated threshold, and confirm the current criteria before relying on it. No Green visa or employment-visa income test appears in either source.

At the guide's exchange rate of $1 ≈ AED3.6725 (the dirham is described as pegged), dollar figures convert at roughly that rate for planning.

What the paperwork costs — plan budgets, not government fees

The guide does not list individual government visa fees. What it gives is a bundled “Visa, permits & translations” budget line in each move plan, described as covering government fees, apostilles and translations (the Luxury tier adds an immigration lawyer), and those lines are the only sourced cost figures for the application itself:

• $1,050 — Affordable plan (you file yourself)
• $1,500 — Mid-range and Retirement plans
• $3,550 — Luxury plan

The Retirement plan carries one further, separate line: $2,750 for “Retirement visa, lawyer & pension certification”, covering an immigration lawyer, apostilled pension letters, medicals and translations.

Application steps and timelines, by tier

The guide builds the application into each plan's timeline rather than printing a single step list. The common sequence across the plans and checklists is:

• Choose the route first and print its requirements; the Affordable checklist starts with “Visa route chosen and requirements printed.”
• Gather and legalise documents — apostilles and translations are named in every tier; the Retirement paperwork stage adds pension or income letters certified and apostilled, a police certificate, a medical, and birth and marriage certificates translated.
• Check your passport — the Affordable checklist requires a passport valid 18+ months.
• Arrange health insurance before you file (see the Hospitals page for the guide's first-year insurance budgets).
• File — yourself on the Affordable tier, or with a lawyer or agent on the Mid-range, Luxury and Retirement tiers.

Paperwork-stage durations in the guide: ~10 weeks filing yourself (Affordable), ~8 weeks with a lawyer or agent filing (Mid-range), ~6 weeks with a lawyer filing everything (Luxury), and ~14 weeks for the Retirement paperwork stage. After the move, the settle stage includes registering your address and opening a bank account.

Durations and renewals — what the guide does and does not give

The guide is better than most on durations: the Golden Visa runs 10 years, the Virtual Working Programme visa runs 1 year, and the retirement visa runs 5 years, renewable (see the Retirement page). What it does not give is renewal mechanics for the Golden or remote-work visas, any Green visa duration, or a path-to-citizenship timetable — and the site data adds none. Treat renewal mechanics as something to confirm with an immigration lawyer or the authorities before you rely on them.

Frequently asked questions