UAE Visit Visa 2026: Types, Cost, How to Apply and Who Can Sponsor You

A UAE visit or tourist visa costs, on ICP's published rates, AED 100 application fee plus AED 100 per month for single entry or AED 200 per month for multiple entry, with a refundable security deposit of AED 1,000 to AED 2,000 on sponsored applications, and ICP states a processing time of two days. It is for anyone who is not visa-free and wants to enter the UAE as a tourist, to visit family, or for business meetings.

Question	2026 answer
Who issues it	ICP for most emirates, GDRFA for Dubai; airlines, hotels and agents file into the same systems
ICP application fee	AED 100
ICP issuance fee	AED 100/month single entry, AED 200/month multiple entry
Security deposit	AED 1,000-2,000 depending on entry type; refundable
Sponsor salary needed	From AED 4,000/month for first-degree relatives, up to AED 15,000 for friends
Validity to enter	60 days from the date the entry permit is issued
Processing time	ICP states 2 days
Overstay fine	AED 50 per day

Two numbers people confuse constantly: the validity of the entry permit (60 days to use it) and the duration of stay it grants once you land. They are different clocks. Everything below explains which visa type gives you which, who can sponsor, what the documents actually need to look like, and where the extra charges come from when you buy through an airline or agent instead of applying yourself.

"Visit visa" is an umbrella term. The UAE issues several distinct entry permits, and picking the wrong one is a common and expensive mistake.

Type	Stay granted	Entries	Who typically uses it
Tourist visa, short	30 days	Single or multiple	Holidays, short trips
Tourist visa, long	60 days	Single or multiple	Extended stays, visiting family
5-year multi-entry tourist visa	90 days per visit, extendable by a further 90	Multiple, over 5 years	Frequent visitors; open to all nationalities
Visit visa for relatives or friends	Typically 30 or 60 days	Single or multiple	Sponsored by a UAE resident
Business / work-mission visa	Short-term	Usually single	Meetings, short assignments, sponsored by a UAE company
30-day eVisa for GCC residents	30 days, extendable once by 30	Single	Expat residents of other GCC states
Transit visa	48 hours or 96 hours	Single only, non-extendable	Layover passengers leaving the airport
Medical treatment visa	Per approval	Per approval	Patients and accompanying family

The 5-year multi-entry tourist visa is the headline product and the one most often misunderstood. The UAE opened it to all nationalities, it allows 90 days per visit extendable by a further 90 — so up to 180 continuous days on a single entry — and it runs for five years. It is not a residence visa, it confers no right to work, and it carries a financial test we cover below.

The transit visa is genuinely free-standing: 48-hour and 96-hour versions, single entry, non-extendable, sponsored by a UAE airline, a travel agency or an airport hotel, and only needed if you are not already visa-free or visa-on-arrival eligible and you intend to leave the airport during a layover.

The 30-day eVisa for GCC residents is for expats resident in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain or Oman — not for GCC citizens, who travel visa-free. It requires at least a year of GCC residency, a passport valid six months, and an approved profession. Our guide to travelling between GCC countries on a residence visa covers that route in detail.

Before you pay for anything, check whether you need a visa at all. GCC citizens enter visa-free. Beyond that, the UAE maintains visa-free and visa-on-arrival arrangements with a large number of countries, and the list changes.

Here is the honest position: the UAE government portal deliberately does not publish a definitive nationality list itself. It points readers to Visit Dubai and to individual UAE embassies, and states that the list may vary from time to time. So do not trust a nationality list you found on a blog — including this one. Check with the UAE embassy or mission for your nationality, or the official Visit Dubai resource, close to your travel date.

Broad patterns that hold in practice, with the same caveat:

• GCC nationals — visa-free.
• Many Western European, North American, East Asian and Oceanian passports — visa on arrival, typically 30 or 90 days depending on nationality, at no charge or a small charge.
• Indian passport holders with a valid US visa, US green card, UK residence permit or EU residence permit — a visa-on-arrival facility has existed for this group; conditions attach, so verify before flying.
• Most South Asian, African and many other passports — a pre-arranged entry permit is required.

If you are eligible for a visa on arrival, applying for a paid visit visa in advance is money wasted. If you are not, turning up without one means being refused boarding, not being sorted out at the counter.

There are five realistic routes into the system, and they all file into the same ICP or GDRFA back end. What differs is who carries the sponsorship liability and what markup sits on top.

1. Apply yourself through the government channel. ICP Smart Services or the GDRFA Dubai channel. Cheapest, and you deal with the authority directly.
2. Be sponsored by a UAE resident. A resident family member or friend sponsors the visit. This is the standard route for parents, siblings and spouses, and it carries an income test on the sponsor.
3. Through an airline. Emirates, Etihad and flydubai are all authorised channels and will arrange a visit visa when you hold a ticket with them. Convenient; the price bundles their service charge.
4. Through a hotel or tour operator. Licensed tourism establishments can sponsor tourists. Common for packaged trips.
5. Through a licensed travel agent or typing centre. Files on your behalf; adds a commercial service charge.

The sponsor income test. ICP's published position on the visa service is a monthly income of AED 4,000 for first-degree relatives, rising to AED 15,000 for friends. The intermediate tier for other relatives — widely quoted as around AED 8,000 — is repeated everywhere but we could not confirm it against ICP's own published text, so treat it as indicative rather than official.

The logic behind the tiers is straightforward: the closer the relationship, the lower the bar, because the state is more confident the visitor will actually leave. A sponsor bringing an unrelated friend is asked to demonstrate substantially more income.

Sponsors should also know their profession on the labour card matters, not just the salary figure. A profession that immigration does not treat as eligible to sponsor is a recurring cause of refusal even where the salary clears the threshold. This is one of the eleven reasons covered in our UAE visit visa rejection guide.

Filing through ICP directly, the sequence is:

1. Choose the right category. ICP's visa service covers seven: visitor visas for relatives and friends, unsponsored residency visas, tourism through authorised establishments, treatment visas, work-mission visas, study visas, and Green Residence entry visas. Picking "tourism" when you mean "visit relatives" changes the documents required.
2. Create or log into the ICP account. On the ICP Smart Services website or the UAEICP app. A UAE resident sponsor uses their own credentials; a self-applicant registers.
3. Enter the applicant's details exactly as printed in the passport. Given name and surname must match the machine-readable zone. This is the single most common cause of rejection and it is entirely avoidable.
4. Upload the documents — passport bio page, photo to specification, and the supporting proof the category requires.
5. Pay the fee and the security deposit where one applies.
6. Wait for the entry permit. ICP states two days. You will receive it electronically — there is no sticker and no embassy visit in the normal case.
7. Enter within 60 days of the permit being issued. Miss that window and the permit lapses; the fee does not come back.

For Dubai-issued visas the route is GDRFA Dubai's own channel or an Amer centre, and the logic is identical. If you are being sponsored by a Dubai resident, the file goes to GDRFA; if by a resident of any other emirate, it goes to ICP. Our status-check guide explains how to tell the two systems apart and read the result.

Requirement	Detail	Why applications fail on it
Passport	Valid at least 6 months from entry	ICP stated requirement; short validity is an automatic stop
Personal photograph	To specification — plain background, full face, recent	Selfies, cropped photos and coloured backgrounds get bounced
Health insurance	Valid UAE health insurance policy	Listed by ICP among general visa requirements; policies that do not cover the UAE fail
Return or onward travel	Confirmed ticket for most categories	Open-ended or implausible itineraries draw scrutiny
Medical report	Required for some categories	Category-dependent; check before assuming it does not apply
Sponsor's Emirates ID and visa	Valid, not expiring mid-visit	A sponsor whose own visa is near expiry cannot sponsor cleanly
Sponsor's salary certificate or contract	Proving the income tier for the relationship	Salary below the tier, or an ineligible profession on the labour card
Proof of relationship	Attested marriage or birth certificate for first-degree relatives	Unattested documents; surname mismatches between mother and child
Accommodation proof	Hotel booking, or the sponsor's tenancy contract / Ejari	Missing entirely on self-applications
Bank statement	Not formally published, but assessed in practice	Thin balances on high-risk profiles

For the 5-year multi-entry tourist visa specifically, the published requirements are stricter and worth quoting precisely: a bank balance of USD 4,000 or equivalent held over the last six months, health insurance valid for 180 days, and proof of return or onward travel. The six-month history matters — depositing USD 4,000 the week before you apply does not satisfy it.

A note on the relationship documents: if you are sponsoring parents and your mother's surname differs from yours, expect to need an attested marriage certificate linking them. This catches out a large share of Indian and Pakistani applicants every year. Our visit visa for Indian parents guide covers that attestation chain specifically, and the attestation process itself is in our GCC attestation playbook.

The government fee and the price you actually pay are two different things. Here is both.

Cost line	Amount (AED)	Notes
ICP application fee	100	ICP published rate, per application
Visit visa issuance, single entry	100 per month of stay	ICP published rate
Visit visa issuance, multiple entry	200 per month of stay	ICP published rate
Security / financial guarantee deposit	1,000-2,000	ICP published range; depends on entry type; refundable on clean exit
Health insurance for the visit	Commercial premium	Must cover the UAE for the stay
Airline, hotel or agent service charge	Commercial markup	Not a government fee; varies by channel
Typing centre / Amer charge	Commercial charge	Where you file in person
Extension (if needed)	See extension guide	Separate transaction with its own fee
Overstay fine	50 per day	Standardised rate; accrues from the day the stay expires

So on ICP's published rates, a 30-day single-entry visit visa is roughly AED 200 in fees before the deposit — AED 100 application plus AED 100 for the month. A 60-day multiple-entry visa is around AED 500 in fees — AED 100 plus two months at AED 200. Add the refundable deposit and insurance and you have the real outlay.

That is why the AED 350 to AED 1,200 per person figures you see quoted for sponsored visits are not wrong — they simply include the deposit, insurance and a service charge on top of the government fee. Nobody is overcharging you by definition; you just need to see which lines are government and which are commercial. The agency and airline markups themselves are not published anywhere official, so compare two or three quotes rather than assuming the first is standard.

If you would rather hand the whole thing over — including the sponsor-eligibility check that determines whether the application is worth filing at all — tell us who you are bringing and from where, or look at the UAE visa service page.

This single distinction causes more overstay fines than anything else on this page, so it is worth its own section.

• Validity of the entry permit: 60 days from issue. That is your window to enter the UAE. ICP publishes this. If the permit is issued on 1 March, you must land by roughly 30 April or it expires unused.
• Duration of stay: counted from the date you land. A 30-day visa gives you 30 days from arrival, not 30 days from issue. A 60-day visa gives 60 from arrival.

So a 60-day visit visa issued on 1 March and used on 25 April gives you until late June. People who read the "expires 30 April" on the permit and book a return flight for 29 April throw away a month they paid for. People who read it the other way round — assuming the 60 days runs from issue — overstay.

The same applies to the 5-year multi-entry tourist visa, with bigger numbers: five years of validity, but 90 days of stay per visit, extendable once by a further 90. The five years is how long you may keep arriving; the 90 days is how long you may stay each time.

Count from the entry stamp, and give yourself a buffer of a few days. The fine is AED 50 per day and it starts the day after your stay expires.

Yes, in most cases, and the rules are more generous than older guides suggest. Extension is a separate transaction filed with ICP or GDRFA before the current stay expires, and it does not require a border run in the ordinary case.

What we can state from official sources:

• The 30-day eVisa for GCC residents is extendable once, for a further 30 days.
• The 5-year multi-entry tourist visa's 90-day stay is extendable once, by a further 90 days.
• GDRFA Dubai operates a distinct service for extending a tourist visa for single or multiple trips, for Dubai-issued files.

Extension fees are not published in a single consolidated official schedule we can cite, and they differ between the ICP and GDRFA routes. We have covered the extension route in full — including the current caps on total stay, which route applies to which file number, and the realistic all-in cost on each — in our dedicated guide to extending a UAE visit visa without exiting. Read that before you book a flight to Oman.

Two rules that matter regardless of route: file before expiry, not after — an expired visa is a fines problem, not an extension problem — and an extension does not reset the deposit, which stays with the original sponsorship until you leave cleanly.

Often, yes — and this is where a visit visa becomes commercially interesting rather than just a holiday document.

The two common conversions:

• Visit to employment. You arrive on a visit visa, receive a job offer, and the employer converts you in-country rather than sending you out and back. This runs as a two-step process: the MOHRE work permit, then the change of status with GDRFA or ICP. ICP publishes a status adjustment fee of AED 500 for the in-country change. Our full walkthrough is in changing a UAE visit visa to an employment visa.
• Visit to family residence. Parents or a spouse arrive on a visit visa and the resident sponsor converts them to a dependent residence visa without an exit. Same status-change mechanic, different sponsor and different eligibility test.

The thing to plan for is timing. A conversion takes weeks, and it has to complete before the visit visa's stay expires — otherwise you are converting from an overstay position, with fines attached and a sponsor who may lose appetite for it. If a conversion is even a possibility, start it in the first half of the visit, not the last week.

A visit visa confers no right to work. Working on one before the permit is issued is a real risk, not a technicality, and it exposes both you and the employer.

Refusals cluster around a short list of causes, most of them preventable at the form-filling stage:

• Name or passport spelling mismatch between the application and the passport's machine-readable zone.
• A previous overstay on any UAE visa, by the applicant.
• Sponsor's profession not eligible to sponsor, even where the salary clears.
• Photo not to specification.
• Insufficient demonstrated funds for the profile and nationality.
• Missing accommodation proof — no hotel booking and no tenancy contract from the sponsor.
• Insurance that does not meet the requirement or does not cover the UAE.
• An implausible itinerary — a one-way ticket, or a return date that does not match the visa length.
• Wrong category chosen — applying under tourism when the real purpose is visiting a resident relative.

Rejection is not necessarily the end. There is a short reapply window for correctable errors, and a much longer cooling-off if the refusal was on grounds that look like a pattern. The difference between the two, and how to tell which one you are in, is the subject of our visit visa rejection and reapply guide — read it before you resubmit, because a second identical rejection is worse than none.

Your situation	Best option	Why
One holiday, under a month	30-day single entry, or visa on arrival if eligible	Cheapest; check eligibility first before paying at all
Parents visiting for the season	60-day sponsored visit visa	Longer stay, and extendable if plans change
You travel to the UAE several times a year	5-year multi-entry tourist visa	One financial test, five years of entries, 90 days each
Short business meetings	Business / work-mission visa via the UAE company	Correct category; a tourist visa is the wrong instrument
Long layover, want to leave the airport	48h or 96h transit visa	Cheap and purpose-built; non-extendable
You live in Saudi, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain or Oman	30-day GCC-resident eVisa	Designed for your status; needs 1+ year residency and an eligible profession
A job offer is likely during the visit	60-day visit visa, then status change	Buys the runway a 30-day visa does not

The general rule: buy length you might need, not length you expect to use. Extending costs more per day than buying the longer visa up front, and an overstay costs far more than either.

• Paying for a visa you did not need. Check visa-on-arrival eligibility with your embassy first.
• Confusing the 60-day entry window with the length of stay. Two clocks; count the stay from the arrival stamp.
• Buying a 30-day visa for a 45-day trip and paying more to extend than the 60-day would have cost.
• Sponsoring on a salary that clears the number but a profession that does not qualify. Check both.
• Letting the sponsor's own visa expire during the visit. It undermines the sponsorship.
• Unattested relationship documents. The marriage certificate linking a mother with a different surname is the classic.
• Forgetting the deposit. It is refundable — on a clean exit. It is not refundable if the visitor overstays or disappears.

And one more that is really a planning point rather than a mistake: if there is any chance the visit turns into a move, read the conversion rules first. A visit visa is a perfectly good on-ramp to residence, but only if you start the conversion with weeks in hand.

A UAE visit visa is cheap when it works and expensive when it does not. The government fees are modest — AED 100 application plus AED 100 to AED 200 per month, on ICP's published rates — but a rejection costs the fee and the trip, and an overstay costs AED 50 a day plus the deposit. Almost all of that risk sits in the application quality: the right category, an exact name match, a sponsor who genuinely qualifies, and documents attested where they need to be.

Wathim files UAE visit and tourist visas for families, employers and individuals: we check the sponsor's eligibility before anything is paid, pick the right category and duration for the trip, assemble and attest the relationship documents, file with ICP or GDRFA as your file requires, and handle the extension or the status change if the visit turns into something longer. See the UAE visa and residency service, the GCC residency hub, or everything we handle in the UAE.

Tell us who is visiting, from where, and for how long and we will tell you which visa to buy and what it will actually cost. Related reading: extending without exiting, why visit visas get rejected, visit visas for Indian parents, and converting a visit visa to employment.