Sharjah Golden Visa Cost 2026

There is no Sharjah golden visa, and that is the whole answer

The question assumes a product that does not exist. There is one UAE Golden Visa, created federally, and the emirates differ only in which authority processes your file and which body nominates you. Dubai runs its own residency directorate, GDRFA, with its own published permit fees. Abu Dhabi runs a residents office and a nomination channel of its own. Sharjah runs neither.

So a Sharjah applicant files through the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security - the ICP - and pays the ICP's published fees. That is not a downgrade or a workaround. It is the default route, and the same one used by Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah.

This matters for cost because it tells you which of the two circulating price lists is yours. Every figure built from GDRFA's schedule belongs to a Dubai file. Searching for a Sharjah number and finding Dubai's is the single most common error on this topic, and it is an expensive one in both directions.

• One federal Golden Visa; emirates differ by processing authority and nominating body.
• Dubai: GDRFA, own fee schedule. Abu Dhabi: own residents office and nomination route.
• Sharjah: no emirate-level programme, authority or published schedule.
• A Sharjah file is a federal ICP file, as in the other northern emirates.

If a provider quotes you a "Sharjah Golden Visa fee" as a government line, ask which government page prints it. No Sharjah authority publishes one, so the answer should be an ICP page or it is the provider's own charge wearing a government label.

What the ICP actually publishes, line by line

The ICP's Issuing Residency Permit service card carries the fees for every residence it grants, golden residence included. Three lines apply to a ten-year golden residence, and the authority totals none of them for you.

The application fee is AED 100. The smart services fee is AED 100. The third line is the one that decides the page, and it is worth quoting exactly as the ICP prints it: "New Golden Residence issuance for a 10-year duration, per year - 100 AED".

The ICP's separate service card for individuals with specialised talents prints the same three components - application, issuance and smart services, each at AED 100 - and states a service completion duration of two days. It also lists what the file must carry: a passport with at least six months of validity, a personal photograph, and valid health insurance within the UAE.

• Application fee: AED 100.
• Smart services fee: AED 100.
• Issuance: AED 100, per year, for a ten-year duration.
• Stated completion on the specialised-talents card: two days.
• Required: passport valid six months, photograph, valid UAE health insurance.

Why "per year" is the two words that move the number

Read the issuance line as a single charge and the whole federal file is AED 300. Read it as the ICP writes it and the issuance component is AED 100 multiplied by ten years, which puts the file at AED 100 plus AED 1,000 plus AED 100: about AED 1,200. The gap between those two readings is AED 900 on one permit.

The words are not decorative, and the ICP's own schedule proves it twice over. Green residence is priced for a five-year duration, per year, at AED 100. Blue residence is priced for a ten-year duration, per year, at AED 100. If the phrase meant nothing, the authority would be charging an identical AED 100 for a five-year permit and a ten-year one, and would have no reason to name the duration inside the fee at all.

AED 300 is nonetheless the figure most cost guides publish, and it is wrong for a plain reason: it reads the shortest of the three lines and drops the qualifier printed in the middle of it.

• One-off reading: AED 100 + AED 100 + AED 100 = AED 300.
• As printed: AED 100 + (AED 100 x 10) + AED 100 = about AED 1,200.
• Difference between the readings: AED 900.
• Same construction on green residence (five years) and blue residence (ten).

This is the one number on this page worth checking yourself before you budget. Open the ICP's Issuing Residency Permit card, find the golden residence block, and read the fee name in full rather than the amount beside it.

The AED 1,640 you keep reading is a Dubai price

GDRFA Dubai publishes its golden residence permit as five separate lines: a residence permit fee of AED 1,100, a knowledge dirham of AED 10, an innovation dirham of AED 10, a fee within the country of AED 500, and delivery of AED 20. They add up to AED 1,640, which GDRFA does not total either, and the page states an expected completion of 48 hours.

GDRFA also prints a note that most comparisons drop: the issuance fee increases by AED 100 for each year whenever the residency period is more than two years. On a ten-year grant that is eight further years, so the Dubai line reads closer to AED 2,440 than AED 1,640.

Both authorities, then, price long residence by the year. Compared honestly the federal route is not a fifth of Dubai's price, and it is not five times it either. The two schedules sit within roughly AED 60 of each other on a ten-year permit - and none of it is a choice a Sharjah applicant gets to make.

• GDRFA Dubai: AED 1,100 permit + AED 500 in-country + AED 10 + AED 10 + AED 20 = AED 1,640.
• GDRFA note: issuance rises AED 100 for each year beyond two, so ten years reads about AED 2,440.
• ICP federal, as printed: about AED 1,200 across ten years.
• Stated turnaround: GDRFA 48 hours; ICP two days on the talents card.
• Not a menu - the authority follows the emirate your file belongs to.

The Emirates ID is a separate bill, also charged by the year

Neither permit schedule covers the identity card, and the card is not a formality. The ICP's identity-card service prints it in the same construction as the residence: "Fees for issuing a new Identity Card for residents, per year of residence - 100 AED", plus a smart service fee of AED 100.

On a ten-year golden residence that is AED 1,000 for the card and AED 100 in smart services: about AED 1,100 per person. It is close enough to the permit itself that leaving it out of a budget understates the file by nearly half.

It is also the line that settles the argument in the section above. Applied to the identity card, the one-off reading would price a ten-year card at AED 100 and a two-year employee card at the same AED 100. Nobody quotes that, and the commercial guides that price a ten-year golden visa card land near AED 1,100 - which is exactly AED 100 a year across ten years plus the smart service fee. The same phrase is read correctly on one ICP page and incorrectly on the other.

• Identity card: AED 100 per year of residence.
• Smart service fee: AED 100.
• Ten-year golden residence: about AED 1,100 per person.
• Charged per person on the file, not per family.

The medical fitness test does not go through Dubai's DHA

Every applicant aged 18 and over sits a residency medical fitness examination, and no permit schedule includes it. The authority that runs it depends on the emirate, which is where Sharjah guides go wrong most often: they quote Dubai Health Authority tiers, or a named Dubai express provider, at a file that will be examined in Sharjah.

Sharjah's residency medical fitness runs through Emirates Health Services, the federal provider covering Sharjah and the northern emirates, at its own screening centres. Dubai's published range - from AED 250 for the standard service to AED 1,020 for the fastest tier - is a DHA tariff and does not apply to a Sharjah appointment.

We could not load the Emirates Health Services fee page from this session to quote its current tariff, and the figures circulating in third-party guides for a Sharjah test do not agree with one another. So treat the medical as a real, modest, separately-billed line, and get the number from the centre you will actually attend rather than from any page quoting Dubai.

• Payable by everyone aged 18 and over on the file, dependants included.
• Sharjah: Emirates Health Services centres, not Dubai's DHA.
• Dubai's AED 250 to AED 1,020 tiers are a DHA schedule and do not apply.
• Confirm the tariff at the Sharjah centre; third-party figures disagree.
• Typing or service-centre charges are normally added on top.

Checked 14 November 2026: the Emirates Health Services and Ministry of Health and Prevention fee pages did not respond from this session, so no medical figure is quoted here as verified. A number we cannot read on an official page does not belong in a cost table.

The nomination is the gate, and nothing prices it

The fees above buy a permit you are already entitled to. They do not buy eligibility, and eligibility is the part of a golden visa file that actually fails. The federal portal sets out the routes - investors, entrepreneurs, exceptional talent and rare specialisations, outstanding students, humanitarian pioneers and frontline heroes - and each carries its own evidence.

For the talent routes, the ICP's specialised-talents card names the body whose approval the file needs, and the list is category-specific rather than geographic. Arts and culture applicants need a recommendation from UAE government cultural authorities. Innovators and inventors need the Ministry of Economy or the competent local authority. Athletes need the General Sports Authority or local sports councils. Digital technology talents need the UAE Council for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Transactions.

None of those approvals carries a published price, which is exactly where a provider's margin sits. A nomination is a judgement by a government body, and no fee you pay makes it more likely. Any part of a quote that is contingent on it being granted is a provider pricing an outcome it does not control.

• Arts and culture: UAE government cultural authorities.
• Innovators and inventors: Ministry of Economy or competent local authority.
• Athletes: General Sports Authority or local sports councils.
• Digital technology: UAE Council for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Transactions.
• No authority publishes a fee for the recommendation itself.

What a family multiplies, and what it does not

The eligibility threshold is not multiplied. An AED 2 million property or investment qualifies the holder and does not need to grow because a spouse and children are added. What multiplies is the per-person paperwork, and that is most of the real bill.

Each dependant on the file carries their own residence issuance, their own identity card at AED 100 per year of residence, their own medical fitness examination if they are 18 or over, and their own health insurance. On ten-year grants the identity cards alone run to roughly AED 1,100 a head.

So a family of four is not four times the headline permit. It is one eligibility case and four sets of per-person lines, which is why a single blended total quoted for "a family" tells you almost nothing. Ask for the lines per person instead.

• Thresholds qualify the holder; they are not multiplied per dependant.
• Per dependant: residence issuance, identity card, medical if 18+, insurance.
• Identity cards alone: about AED 1,100 each on a ten-year grant.
• A blended family total hides which lines are per person.

A Sharjah file, totalled from published lines only

Built from pages that print numbers, a single applicant's ten-year golden residence filed in Sharjah comes to about AED 1,200 in ICP permit fees and about AED 1,100 for the Emirates ID: roughly AED 2,300 of government charges, plus a medical fitness examination and UAE health insurance that neither schedule prices.

That is a long way from the AED 10,000 to AED 10,400 figure the better-ranked Sharjah pages quote without a source, and a long way from AED 300. The difference between a real total and a quoted one is not margin alone - it is attestation, equivalency, translation, typing, insurance and service charges, bundled into a single number so none of them can be questioned.

Two honest caveats. Nominations and recommendations are unpriced, so no total is complete until you know which body must approve you. And fees change: both ICP cards and the GDRFA page were read on 14 November 2026, and the number you pay is the one on the page the day you file.

• ICP permit lines, ten years: about AED 1,200.
• Emirates ID, ten years: about AED 1,100 per person.
• Published government subtotal: about AED 2,300 for one applicant.
• Not priced anywhere: nomination, medical tariff, insurance, attestation and service fees.
• All figures read from official pages on 14 November 2026.

Nothing on this page is a prediction of approval. Both authorities publish fees for issuing a permit to an applicant who already qualifies, and meeting a threshold has never obliged the UAE to grant residence.