Saudi Arabia · Residency by investment
Premium Residency — Unlimited Duration and Limited Duration
The two original tiers created by the Premium Residency Permit Law (2019) and still the core of the programme. Article 3 of the Law establishes only two legal types — Permanent and Fixed-term; the newer 2024 'categories' are products sitting beneath them. Critically, Article 3(2) provides that products and their fees are proposed by the Board and approved by decision of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs (CEDA) — the price is set administratively, not by statute.
SAR 800,000 buys the only permanent, presence-free, sponsor-free status in the Gulf, and it is the only regional programme that statutorily includes parents. It removes you from the kafala system entirely — you own property, run a business and use national immigration lanes without an employer.
Qualifying routes
One-time fee of SAR 800,000 (roughly USD 213,000). Permanent, no renewal, no further payment.
SAR 100,000 per year (roughly USD 26,700), renewable annually for up to 5 years. Not a path to the permanent tier — it is a separate product.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- 100k SAR
- Total landed cost
- SAR 800,000 one-time for the permanent tier, or SAR 100,000 per year; plus medical, background check and translation costs of roughly SAR 10–20k
- Timeline
- 1–3 months — Typically 30–90 days; simple tracks 4–8 weeks. Confidence medium — drawn from advisory sources rather than a published PRC service standard.
- Physical presence
- None to obtain or maintain
- Family
- spousechildren (to 25; unmarried daughters over 25 and children with special needs may also qualify)parents — unusually, the Law defines Family at Article 1 to include parents
- Permanent residency
- The Unlimited Duration permit IS permanent residency from day one — the only such product in the Gulf
- Citizenship
- Effectively none. Naturalisation requires roughly 10 years' residence, Arabic fluency and exceptional contribution, and is wholly discretionary.
- Language test
- Arabic fluency required for the discretionary naturalisation route
- Dual citizenship
- Not permitted — you would have to renounce
- Requirements
- valid passportproof of financial solvencyclean criminal recordmedical report no older than 6 monthslegal residence if applying from inside the Kingdomaged 21 or over
- The SAR 800,000 price is not protected by statute — Article 3(2) lets CEDA reprice products by administrative decision with no legislative process. Do not model it as a locked-in cost.
- This buys residency. It is not a passport, not a citizenship pathway, and not tax residency in any treaty sense.
- Article 5 preserves discretion: issuance remains subject to 'public interest', with no stated appeal against refusal.
- The annual SAR 100,000 tier is a separate product, not a staircase to the permanent one. Paying it for five years costs SAR 500,000 and leaves you with nothing permanent.
- Uptake data tells the real story: of 8,074 permits issued in 2024, 5,578 went to 'Exceptional Competence' salaried professionals and only 348 to 'Talent'. The investor tracks are statistically near-invisible. This is a professional-retention tool that happens to have investor doors.
- Dual citizenship is generally not permitted in Saudi Arabia — irrelevant while you hold PR, but fatal to any citizenship fantasy.