Saudi 1-Year Multiple Entry Visa for UAE Residents

Can you travel to Saudi Arabia with your Emirates ID?

Not on the Emirates ID alone. You still need a visa, but your Emirates ID is what qualifies you to get one online instead of queuing at an embassy. Saudi Arabia treats GCC residency as a route in its own right, so a resident of the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain or Oman can apply through the residency channel even when their passport does not appear on the 66-country eVisa list.

This matters more than most guides admit. A Filipino accountant in Dubai and a British engineer in Dubai reach the same visa by two different doors, and the door you use changes which documents you need and how long the decision takes. Your residency must be valid, and it needs enough time left on it to cover your trip. An expired or nearly expired Emirates ID is one of the most common reasons an otherwise sound application fails.

If you want the residency route explained on its own terms, our guide to the Saudi visa for GCC residents covers each of the five countries in turn.

How do you get a multiple entry visa for Saudi Arabia?

You apply online, upload three things, and wait for the decision by email. There is no interview, no appointment and no embassy visit for the residency route. Most decisions land in about five working days, though timing shifts with your nationality and with how busy the season is.

The sequence is short. You confirm your nationality and residency, upload your passport and photo, pay, and receive the approved visa as a PDF. You print it or keep it on your phone. Nothing is stamped into your passport in advance, and nothing needs collecting.

What genuinely slows applications down is small and avoidable: a passport with under six months left, a photo that is not square or not on a white background, or a name spelled differently on the passport and the application. Getting those three right the first time is worth more than any expedited service.

Is the multiple entry visa stopped in Saudi Arabia?

For most nationalities, no. For fourteen, yes, and this is where almost every published guide gets it wrong.

Two separate restrictions arrived in 2025 and the internet has merged them into one. Untangling them is the only way to know where you stand.

The first came in February 2025, when Saudi Arabia suspended 1-year multiple entry visas for business, tourism and family visits for nationals of Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Tunisia and Yemen. Single entry visas stayed available to them (Fragomen, 12 February 2025).

The second came in April 2025 and was much broader but explicitly temporary. Ahead of Hajj, Saudi Arabia paused business, tourist and family visit visas for the same group of countries, this time covering both single and multiple entries, with issuance expected to resume after Dhul Hijjah in mid-June (EY Tax Alert 2025-0960, published 29 April 2025, effective 13 April 2025).

That second, temporary blackout was lifted at the end of June 2025. The first was not. So visit visas resumed for these nationalities, but as single entry. When a guide tells you multiple entry visas have simply been “paused since 2025” with no date and no list, it has flattened two different rules into one and lost the part that actually affects you.

One caution we would rather state than leave out. The most recent confirmation we can point to is from June 2025. Policy in this area moves with the Hajj calendar and is not always announced in advance, so treat the position above as the last confirmed picture rather than a guarantee, and have your eligibility checked against your specific passport when you apply.

What happens if your nationality is restricted?

You are not shut out of Saudi Arabia. You are routed differently.

Nationals of the fourteen countries above can still apply for a single entry visa, which permits a stay of up to 90 days. Fragomen notes that processing can run longer for these applications and that refusals become more likely as Hajj approaches, so applying well ahead of your travel dates is worth doing.

Here is what we see from our own processing, which is the part no published source covers. Outcomes for these passports are not uniform. Some applications are approved as expected, others come back restricted to single entry, and the pattern shifts through the year, tightening noticeably as Hajj nears. Two people of the same nationality applying two months apart can get different answers.

We will not promise a 1-year multiple entry visa to anyone holding one of those fourteen passports, and we would treat any service that does promise one with caution. What we do instead is check your nationality against the current position before your application goes anywhere, and tell you which visa you can realistically be issued.

Single entry, 90 day and 1 year: what is the difference?

Three products get called “the Saudi visa” and they are not interchangeable. Confusing them is behind a good share of the questions we receive.

A single entry visa admits you once. Leave the Kingdom and the visa is finished, whatever time remains on it. It suits one trip and nothing more.

A 90-day multiple entry visa lets you come and go within a 90-day window. Some agencies sell this to nationalities that cannot obtain the longer version, which is why you may see it advertised at a lower price to Indian or Pakistani passport holders.

A 1-year multiple entry visa, the one this page covers, stays valid for twelve months from issue and admits you as many times as you need within it. The stay allowance is separate from the validity, and that distinction is where people come unstuck.

How long can you actually stay?

Up to 90 days in total across the year, not 90 days on each trip.

This is the single most misreported fact about this visa. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office puts it in one sentence: the eVisa is “valid for multiple entries, but only for 90 days in total across the 365 day period” (UK FCDO, retrieved 8 September 2026). Saudi Arabia’s own portal says only that the visa allows up to 90 days in the country, without spelling out how the days are counted, which is precisely how the confusion took hold.

The practical consequence is worth sitting with. If you read it as 90 days per visit and take four two-week trips plus a long stay, you may believe you are comfortably inside your allowance while you have in fact exhausted it. Overstaying carries penalties, so count your days cumulatively across the full year and keep a margin.

We take the cautious reading throughout our own guidance, because the cost of being wrong falls on the traveller rather than on the website that told them.

Can you perform Umrah on this visa?

Yes, outside the Hajj season, and you do not need a separate Umrah visa to do it.

The tourist visa permits Umrah, which is why we offer it both with and without the Umrah option depending on what you are travelling for. You can visit Makkah and perform Umrah more than once during the year, subject to the same cumulative 90-day allowance as any other trip. During Hajj, the position changes and the tourist route does not cover pilgrimage.

Because the rules around the Hajj window shift and are the reason behind the nationality restrictions above, plan pilgrimage travel with more lead time than an ordinary trip. Our guide to performing Umrah on a Saudi tourist visa covers the seasonal detail.

What documents do UAE residents need?

Three things, and they are the same three whichever GCC country you live in.

You need a passport with at least six months of validity remaining from your intended date of entry, a recent passport-style photograph on a white background sized two inches by two inches, and a credit or debit card for payment. Your Emirates ID or equivalent residency must be valid and current.

That is genuinely the whole list for the residency route. There is no bank statement, no hotel booking requirement and no letter of invitation. Where applications fail, it is almost always the photograph or the passport validity rather than anything missing, which is why we check both before submission rather than after a refusal.

What does it cost, and is it refundable?

The amount depends on your nationality and on which visa you can be issued, so we show you the exact figure before you pay rather than advertising a single number that would be wrong for most people.

What you pay covers the Saudi government visa fee, the travel insurance element that forms part of the visa, and our service fee for preparing, checking and submitting the application. That insurance element is not full medical cover and we do not issue a separate insurance certificate, because what we deliver is the visa itself. If you want comprehensive medical or travel cover for your trip, arrange it separately with an insurer.

On refunds, the position is straightforward and matches our terms. If the Saudi authority refuses your application, the government visa fee is refunded to you. Our service fee is not, because the preparation and submission work has already been carried out. When you are ready, you can start your application and see the exact amount before committing to anything.