UAE Golden Visa for Managers and Executives: AED 30,000 Salary Route

Key points:

• 10-year self-sponsored residency — not tied to your employer after issuance
• Basic salary AED 30,000+/month — allowances and bonuses do not count toward the threshold
• Minimum 2 years with your current employer — recently changed jobs disqualifies
• Employer must have at least 10 employees on UAE visas — hard cutoff, no workarounds
• Attested Bachelor's degree with MOHE equivalency certificate required — start attestation before applying, not in parallel
• Consistent six-month salary history in UAE bank statements — one gap or late transfer can stop the application

How much does the salary-route Golden Visa cost in 2026?

Government fees for the 10-year Golden Visa for salaried managers total AED 4,695. This covers the visa itself, medical fitness test, and Emirates ID — and does not include degree attestation or service fees.

Government fees only. Emirabiz service fee, authority filing, and processing acceleration are not included and are quoted separately.

Degree attestation is a separate cost that depends on your country of education and the attestation chain required. It costs an additional AED 800–1,000.

Employment visa vs Golden Visa: what do executives actually choose?

Many executives in the UAE search for a manager visa — and what they hold or apply for is a standard 2-year employment visa, issued to any salaried employee regardless of title or salary. It works, but it has a structural limitation: residency is tied to one employer. Change employers — or lose the job — and the visa goes with it. The grace period to find new work is 30–90 days.

The Golden Visa solves this. It is self-sponsored, runs for 10 years, and stays valid regardless of what happens to your employment. The salary route is the path most executives earning AED 30,000+ basic salary take to get there.

Who qualifies for the UAE Golden Visa salary route?

Several conditions must hold simultaneously: a basic salary of AED 30,000 or more per month, at least 2 years with your current employer, a company with a minimum of 10 employees on UAE visas, an attested university degree with MOHE equivalency, and a consistent salary history across six months of bank statements. Your occupation must also be classified at skill level 1 or 2 under MoHRE.

Salary and skill level threshold

The basic salary line in your contract is what immigration reads — not the total package figure, that can include allowance, housing, transport. Check your employment contract before applying.

The other variable immigration checks is consistency. A month where salary arrived late — even due to a bank processing issue — or a month with a deduction that brought the transfer below AED 30,000 reads as a pattern in the six-month bank statements, not as a one-off. Immigration will request statements for specific months and dig into discrepancies.

Occupation must be classified at skill level 1 or 2 under MoHRE — this covers senior management, executive roles, and licensed specialists in medicine, engineering, and IT.

Executive Directors: higher threshold

Executive Directors are a separate sub-category with stricter criteria. The salary threshold is AED 50,000 basic per month. In addition, ICP requires a minimum of 5 years of experience in an executive director role, an attested university degree with MOHE equivalency, and a salary certificate confirming the AED 50,000 figure.

Degree requirement

A Bachelor's degree or higher is required — and it must be attested before you submit the application. The attestation chain runs through your home country's relevant authority, then UAE MOFA, then an MOHE equivalency certificate. The MOHE equivalency certificate costs AED 800–1,000. Budget 1–3 months for this step — timeline depends on how quickly your university responds to the verification request.

Company size requirement

Your employer must have a minimum of 10 employees on UAE visas. This requirement was introduced in spring–summer 2025 and is a hard cutoff — there is no workaround. If your company has fewer than 10 visa holders, the application will be declined regardless of your salary or qualifications. Both Mainland and Free Zone companies are eligible, but documentation differs: Mainland applicants provide a labour contract, Free Zone applicants a salary certificate from the relevant authority.

How do you apply for the salary-route Golden Visa step by step?

The process has five stages. The longest is the MOHE equivalency process — start it before everything else, not in parallel.

1. Degree attestation and MOHE equivalency
The process runs in sequence: university registrar verification → home country Ministry of Foreign Affairs attestation → UAE Embassy stamp in your home country → UAE MOFA stamp inside the UAE → MOHE equivalency application at mohesr.gov.ae. Each stage must be completed before the next begins.

2. Initial application via ICP or GDRFA
File the request through the ICP or GDRFA portals. Immigration verifies your professional status, salary level, and employer size at this stage — this is where incomplete files get stopped.

3. Medical and biometrics
Complete a mandatory HIV and chest X-ray test. Provide fingerprints for the 10-year Emirates ID.

4. Current visa cancellation
Once Golden Visa approval is confirmed, your employer cancels the existing work visa — not you directly. The cancellation is filed through MoHRE and GDRFA (Dubai) or ICP (other emirates). The Golden Visa is issued immediately after cancellation — you do not need to leave the UAE at any point during this process.

5. Final e-visa and Emirates ID
The 10-year residency is issued electronically. Emirates ID is delivered to your stated address within approximately one week.

What documents are required?

Five documents are required before you submit the application.

How long does the Golden Visa processing take?

Timeline depends on one variable: whether you hold a MOHE equivalency certificate before you apply.

If the MOHE equivalency certificate is already in hand, the full process breaks down as follows:

• ICP/GDRFA application review: 3–7 days
• Medical and biometrics: 1 day
• Emirates ID delivery: ~1 week
• Total: approximately 2–3 weeks

If you are starting from scratch, the bottleneck is the full attestation-to-equivalency chain — and it runs in sequence, not in parallel:

• Home country attestation (university registrar → home country MFA → UAE Embassy in home country): 2–6 weeks depending on country and courier speed
• UAE MOFA stamp (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, or Sharjah): 1–3 business days
• MOHE equivalency assessment: 4–8 weeks after complete document submission; complex cases up to 12 weeks
• Total attestation-to-equivalency: 2–4 months minimum

Immigration will not move forward until the MOHE equivalency certificate is confirmed. Total process in this scenario: 4–5 months.

Salary route, property, or deposit — which Golden Visa route fits your situation?

The salary route is one of three main paths to a UAE Golden Visa. It requires active employment, a qualifying basic salary, and an attested degree. If you do not meet one of these criteria, two alternatives give access to the same 10-year Golden Visa without an employment requirement — they are residency through buying property and placing a bank deposit.

Not eligible for the salary route? See the Golden Visa property route or the Golden Visa via bank deposit.

Why do salary-route Golden Visa applications get rejected?

Five reasons lead to rejection on the salary route:

• Your basic salary is below AED 30,000, even if your total package is higher. The figure that matters is the basic salary line in your employment contract. A total package of AED 35,000–40,000 with AED 22,000–25,000 basic will be declined. If you do not meet this threshold, the property or deposit route may be the right alternative.
• You do not have a valid MOHE equivalency certificate. Basic salary alone is not enough. A Bachelor's degree or higher with full attestation chain and MOHE equivalency certificate is a hard requirement. Two situations make this harder than expected: degrees earned entirely online are frequently rejected by MOHE at the equivalency stage, and name inconsistencies between your passport and degree certificate trigger a rejection that requires restarting the attestation chain from stage 1. Check both before you begin.
• Your company has fewer than 10 employees on UAE visas. This requirement was introduced in 2025 and is a hard cutoff. If your employer has 7–9 visa holders, the application will not proceed regardless of your salary or qualifications. This is not something that can be resolved during the application process — it is an eligibility gate.
• You have been with your current employer for less than 2 years. The salary route requires a minimum of 2 years of continuous employment with the same company. If you changed jobs recently — even to a higher-paying role — you will not qualify until that threshold is met.
• Your bank statements do not match your stated salary. Immigration checks that the salary shown in your employment contract actually arrives consistently in your UAE bank account each month. If statements show gaps, late transfers, or amounts below AED 30,000 in any month, the application will be held or declined. The pattern across all six months matters — not just the most recent one.

Immigration does not look at one month. It looks at six. A single late transfer, a single deduction, a single gap — reads as a pattern, not an exception. The file either holds across all six months or it doesn't.

Bottom line on the salary-route Golden Visa

Managers and professionals earning AED 30,000+ often come to the salary route expecting a clean, predictable process. In practice, five requirements must hold simultaneously — and a gap in any one of them leads to rejection: basic salary in the contract (not total package), consistent six-month salary history with no interruptions, a MOHE equivalency certificate, a company with at least 10 employees on UAE visas, and a minimum of 2 years with your current employer. The threshold is not the hard part; the file is.

Once the visa is issued, it opens two further options worth planning for: sponsoring your family on the same 10-year residency, and applying for a UAE Tax Residency Certificate if your physical presence qualifies.