The standard golden visa bargain was simple: residency in exchange for money. Wealthy foreigners put hundreds of thousands of dollars into real estate or businesses, and governments gave them a foothold abroad.
But the United Arab Emirates stretched that model further. When the Gulf state launched its golden visa in 2019, the government offered 10-year residency to people who could invest at least $545,000 into property as well as to researchers, teachers and specialized talent. It expanded again in 2020 and 2022 to include doctors, nurses, engineers, tech workers, and e-sports gamers.
It’s part of the country’s effort to organize talent into needed industries without having to fully assimilate foreigners as citizens—expats make up 90% of the UAE’s population. And that community has grown even after Iran launched thousands of missiles and drones at the UAE during its war with the U.S.
In essence, the UAE took a visa status normally associated with the rich and powerful and turned it into an umbrella program for both capital and talent, blending labor and industrial policies, according to Kristin Surak, a professor of political sociology at the London School of Economics and author of The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires.
Indeed, Dubai has used golden visas to build up specific sectors. It gave more than 1,400 nurses and midwives golden visas and over 223 educators from private schools, universities, and early childhood centers. The city has also made long-term residency one part of a push to build up its gaming industry by 2033, giving e-sports professionals a chance to apply for the golden visa in an effort to create 30,000 gaming jobs and add about $1 billion to GDP, now being home to over 350 gaming companies.
“It’s not a traditional golden visa,” Surak told Fortune. “Gold sounds cooler. You want a lead scientist? You call [the visa] gold.”
That branding taps into the language of a wider market for second residences, with around 100 countries having golden visa programs, including Portugal, Australia, Canada, Greece and, more recently, the U.S. with Trump’s “gold card” in 2025.
Golden visas are not the only way to put down roots in another country. For those looking to go beyond obtaining residency, golden passports go further by granting citizenship. Both have become tools for wealthy families seeking easier travel or a fallback if political and economic conditions worsen at home.
Demand for both has climbed among Americans too, with investment migration firm Henley & Partners finding in its 2026 report that applications from U.S. nationals doubled last year and stayed elevated this year. In June, Apex Capital Partners, another citizenship-by-investment advisory firm, surveyed 1,733 Americans earning more than $200,000 and found that six in 10 would consider leaving the U.S. within five years.
Selling more than a visa
The UAE adds another incentive for skilled workers and investors pondering a move: the country doesn’t levy income taxes, though some business activity is subject to a corporate tax.
Vladlena Baranova, head of legal at Immigrant Invest, a consulting firm that advises on citizenship-by-investment and golden visa programs, told Fortune that clients who choose the UAE over competing programs often do so for safety, lifestyle, and business reasons.
“So many of them just want to live there,” Baranova said, noting that her firm’s clients from the Gulf region value Dubai’s safety—it scored highly on perceptions of public safety and quality of life last year—while its European ones seek out its tax environment and real estate opportunities.
But since the Iran war, Dubai and the rest of the Gulf region are seen as less safe. Iranian missiles and drones struck several Gulf states repeatedly including the UAE, hitting five star hotels and Dubai’s airport. Official figures cited by The National show Dubai lost 61,000 residents in March, a 1.3% drop that brought the population to 4.65 million, though it rebounded to 4.74 million by the end of June and has added 157,000 residents in the year to date. That’s despite the UAE revoking visas or residency permits for some Iranian expats during the conflict.
“We have certainly seen a slowdown in enquiries and applications for UAE residence in recent months, with geopolitical uncertainty influencing sentiment,” Dominic Volek, who advises wealthy families on residence and citizenship planning at Henley & Partners, told Fortune. “We see this as a moderation in demand rather than a fundamental shift in the UAE’s appeal.”
The UAE has not publicly changed the golden visa’s eligibility rules since the Iran war, but it did take steps to return foreign residents who were affected by the war to the country. On March 15, authorities said they helped 500 golden visa holders and residents return after airspace closures and flight disruptions stranded them abroad. Immigration officials also let stranded residents whose permits expired while overseas return without applying for a new entry visa and waived overstay fines. At the end of March, Dubai approved a roughly $272 million relief package that included faster issuance and renewal of residency permits, which the government said would make it “easier for talent to live and work in Dubai.”
Surak said before the golden visa program, foreigners relied on two-year, employment-linked visas. For a government overseeing a population dominated by mobile expats, that created a lot of uncertainty in terms of establishing an economic base that can support a welfare system and basic state infrastructure. But the 10-year residency system made it possible for foreigners to stay without tying their status to one job by issuing it directly to the person instead of the employer.
Dubai’s media and residency authorities and the UAE’s federal immigration authority did not respond to Fortune’s multiple requests for comment.
A visa that doesn’t belong to your boss
For Swanand Pagnis, co-founder of enterprise AI engineering firm Superlinear Insights, this independence was the golden visa’s biggest attraction.
Pagnis moved to the UAE in 2022 on an employer-sponsored visa before securing a golden visa in 2023. He has a wife and daughter, and the possibility that losing his job could also jeopardize their ability to stay in the country weighed on him.
“When you’re in a foreign country, one of the levers a company has on you is the visa, and there’s always a little bit of this tension where if you lose your job, you have to leave the country, leave everything behind,” Pagnis told Fortune. “The golden visa allows me to sponsor my family on my own.”
Iran’s attacks on the UAE made his daughter’s school announce an early term break, and so his family temporarily relocated to India, then came back when flights to the UAE resumed and were declared safe, he said. Pagnis didn’t consider moving out of the UAE altogether because he had his daughter’s schooling to consider.
“We were in the middle of the school year and did not want to change in haste,” Pagnis said.