UAE Golden Visa Entry Permit Cost 2026: AED 300

What the entry permit is, and why it carries its own fee

The golden visa is two transactions at the immigration counter rather than one, and the fee confusion starts there. If you are outside the UAE when your file is approved, ICP does not post you a ten-year residence permit. It issues an entry permit first — a visa whose only job is to get you into the country so the residence permit can be completed on the ground.

ICP’s golden residency guide puts it plainly: eligible applicants for golden residency who are outside the UAE are granted a six-month, multiple-entry entry visa, renewable for an additional six months, to complete the procedures for obtaining golden residency. Six months, multiple entries, one purpose.

That is why the permit has a fee schedule of its own, separate from the residence permit’s, and why a quote with a single visa fee line on it is hiding at least two transactions. It is also why an applicant already in the UAE on an employment or visit visa may never pay this fee at all. There is nothing to enter for, and the file goes through status adjustment instead.

• The entry permit is issued to applicants outside the UAE, to come in and finish the residence permit.
• ICP publishes it as six months, multiple entry, extendable once for a further six months.
• It is a separate transaction from the residence permit, with its own published fee lines.
• An applicant already inside the UAE adjusts status instead, which ICP prices at AED 500.

What ICP publishes to issue the entry permit in 2026

We opened ICP’s service cards for the permits that exist to complete golden residence procedures on 2 November 2026. There is no single generic entry permit card; there are route-specific ones, and the two we could read price identically.

The real estate investor card describes a service through which a visa is issued for real estate investors to complete the procedures for obtaining the golden residency for ten years, and lists three fee lines: application fees AED 100, issuance fees AED 100, smart services fees AED 100. The card for graduates of accredited universities outside the UAE lists exactly the same three lines for the same purpose.

AED 300 is our addition of those three lines, not a total ICP prints. But two independent route cards carrying an identical three-line structure reads as a schedule rather than one page nobody updated, and both state the same completion time of two days and the same two conditions: a valid health insurance policy within the UAE, and a passport valid for no less than six months.

• Application fees: AED 100.
• Issuance fees: AED 100.
• Smart services fees: AED 100.
• Published completion time: 2 days, through the ICP smart app or the smart services website.
• Conditions on both cards: valid UAE health insurance, passport valid at least 6 months.

ICP’s cards show December 11, 2024 in the body and 02/11/2026 in the footer, so the schedule is current as served while the body date is older than the footer. A fee schedule is only as current as the day you read it, so open the card before you pay.

Where the AED 1,250 figure comes from

The number almost every guide quotes is AED 1,250, and it is not invented. Sovereign Group reported it on 25 April 2023 from an ICP announcement made that month, and it is the only page in the results that publishes the components rather than just the total.

Look at what that structure tells you. AED 100 application and AED 100 smart services are the same two lines ICP’s cards still carry today. The AED 28 e-services and AED 22 federal authority fees are small administrative add-ons. The entire gap between AED 1,250 and the AED 300 on today’s issuance cards is one line: the AED 1,000 described in 2023 as issuance.

Before that, the permit was reported at AED 1,150 when it launched in April 2021, with the same AED 1,000 core and no smart services charge. So the AED 1,000 has been the heavy line throughout, which is what makes its absence from the current issuance cards worth examining rather than waving away.

• Issuance: AED 1,000.
• Application: AED 100.
• Smart services: AED 100.
• e-Services: AED 28.
• Federal authority fees: AED 22.
• Reported total: AED 1,250, announced by ICP in April 2023.

The AED 1,000 is on ICP’s extension card today

The AED 1,000 has not disappeared. It is on ICP’s visa extension card, attached to the second six months rather than the first.

That card prints, in its own words, fees for extending a multiple-entry visa to complete Golden or Blue Residency procedures (6 months) at 1000 AED. Beside it sit an application fee for all types of visa extensions at AED 100, an extend-entry fee of AED 500, and a AED 50 fee for requesting an extension of entry permit validity before you arrive in the UAE.

The condition matters as much as the amount. The card says the permit may be extended once for an equivalent period only: one extension, six months, and then the window closes. ICP’s golden residency guide says the same thing from the other side, describing the visa as renewable for an additional six months.

We cannot reconcile the 2023 announcement with the 2026 cards from published pages alone, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What we can do is say which page says what. If a provider quotes AED 1,250 as the cost of getting the permit, ask which page it is from. The cards we could reach price issuance at three lines of AED 100 and put the AED 1,000 on an extension you may never need.

• Extending the six-month golden or blue residency permit: AED 1,000.
• Application fee for any visa extension: AED 100.
• Extend entry fees: AED 500.
• Extending entry permit validity before arriving in the UAE: AED 50.
• Extendable once only, for an equivalent period.

Why the entry permit is not the residence permit

Here is the likeliest reason AED 1,250 feels right to people who have actually paid: it is very close to what the residence permit costs, and the two get collapsed into one line constantly.

ICP’s Issuing Residency Permit card carries a separate fee set for each category. The golden residence set reads: application fees AED 100; new golden residence issuance for a 10-year duration, per year, AED 100; smart service fees AED 100. Per year is the operative phrase. Ten years at AED 100 is AED 1,000, plus AED 100 application and AED 100 smart services.

That comes to AED 1,200 — again our arithmetic, not a figure ICP states. It is AED 50 short of the widely-quoted AED 1,250, and it is a residence permit fee rather than an entry permit fee. The same card carries a AED 500 status adjustment line and a AED 20 financial security deposit fee, which is where an in-country applicant’s money goes instead of into an entry permit.

So, on published lines: roughly AED 300 to come in, roughly AED 1,200 for the ten-year permit itself. Anyone quoting a single number near AED 1,250 for the whole thing has either priced only the residence permit or merged the two.

• Golden residence application fee: AED 100.
• Golden residence issuance, 10-year duration, per year: AED 100 — AED 1,000 across ten years.
• Smart service fees: AED 100.
• Our total for the ten-year permit: AED 1,200.
• Status adjustment, for applicants already in the UAE: AED 500.
• Financial security deposit fee: AED 20.

The sixty-day clock, and the AED 50 a day that follows it

The entry permit buys six months of entries, but the residence permit has a tighter clock inside it, and this is the line that actually costs people money.

ICP’s residency issuance card states the condition: the foreigner’s stay in the UAE must not exceed sixty days from the date of entry while the residence issuance is completed, and overstay fines apply if it is not finalised in that period. Six months to come and go; sixty days from an entry to finish the file.

The fine is published on the same cards. Expiry of the permitted stay period for the visa holder, or expiration of the entry visa, is AED 50 per day. The entry permit cards carry that line in identical wording.

AED 50 a day is modest for a week and unpleasant for a quarter. The practical reading is that the medical fitness test and the biometrics are the long poles, and the file that slips is the one that reaches the sixty-day window without an insurance policy in force.

• Stay must not exceed 60 days from the date of entry while the residence permit is completed.
• Overstay, or an expired entry visa: AED 50 per day.
• The six-month permit governs entries; the sixty-day rule governs the file.

Nomination is AED 100 on its own card, not AED 350

One more figure travels with the entry permit, and it is cheap to settle. A nomination fee of AED 350 is widely quoted for the golden residency pre-approval step. ICP’s nomination card prices it differently.

That card, a pre-approval service for obtaining the golden residency targeting distinguished categories, publishes application fees 0 AED, issuance fees 0 AED and smart services fees 100 AED. The application and the issuance are free; the AED 100 is the smart services charge every ICP transaction carries.

Its conditions and documents are the same light set as the entry permit cards: valid UAE health insurance, a passport valid at least six months, a passport copy, a personal photo, and supporting documents for golden residency eligibility. Completion time, two days.

AED 100 rather than AED 350 is a small saving in absolute terms. Its value is diagnostic. A quote carrying AED 350 for nomination was built from other quotes rather than from a schedule, and everything else on it deserves the same question.

• Nomination application fees: AED 0.
• Nomination issuance fees: AED 0.
• Smart services fees: AED 100.
• Published completion time: 2 days.

How to read a quote with an entry permit line on it

The published lines above come to a short arithmetic that any provider quote can be checked against, and the check takes a minute.

For an applicant outside the UAE: roughly AED 300 for the entry permit, roughly AED 1,200 for the ten-year residence permit, and AED 1,000 only if the second six months is needed. For an applicant already inside: no entry permit, AED 500 for status adjustment, the same AED 1,200. Medical fitness and Emirates ID are separate, priced by other authorities. Health insurance is priced by an insurer rather than by a schedule.

What that arithmetic does not do is tell you what a service is worth. It tells you which part of the bill is government and fixed and which part is the provider’s, and the second part is the only part you can negotiate.

Our standing caution applies here more than anywhere on this site: none of these fees makes approval likely, and none of them is refundable because you expected a different outcome. The 2023 reporting notes that issuance fees are refunded only where ICP rejects the application. Pay the schedule, not the story.

Fees and conditions in this area change, and ICP’s cards carry two different dates. Confirm every line on the service card itself before relying on it, and treat any total in this article as our arithmetic from published lines rather than a figure ICP publishes.