Oman's investor residency comes in two published durations, five years and ten years, and the ministry currently markets a single minimum investment of OMR 200,000. The permit itself is created by a real, traceable legal instrument. The money figure is not — and that gap explains almost every contradiction you have read.
Two layers, and why every page you have read contradicts itself
There are two separate things going on, and nearly every article about this programme collapses them into one.
The first layer is immigration law. The investor visa and the investor residence permit exist as legal categories, created by a decision that was published in the Official Gazette and that you can read today. It sets the durations, the dependants' rights and the fees. The second layer is the investment threshold — the OMR figure you have to put into Oman to qualify. That layer is set administratively by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion (MoCIIP) and communicated through press releases and a programme website. We could not find it in any decree, ministerial decision or Gazette text.
The immigration decision that creates the category contains no monetary threshold at all. It grants the visa on the strength of "a certificate issued by the competent authority" and leaves the substance to that authority.
The MoCIIP ministerial decisions index on qanoon.om lists nothing on investor or golden residency. The 2024–2025 entries are about licensing fees, commercial companies, corporate governance and laboratory rules.
Ministerial Decision 72/2020, the Executive Regulation of the Foreign Capital Investment Law, contains no residency article. Its 2025 amendment, Ministerial Decision 411/2025, adds only an Omanisation requirement.
A search for the Arabic term for "golden residency" across Oman's legislative databases returns zero Omani hits. The results are all Emirati. The phrase is a marketing label with no standing in Omani law.
omanresidence.gov.om, the government programme portal itself, lists the pathways and publishes no OMR figure, no fee and no processing time.
The legal skeleton that does exist
The governing instrument is Royal Oman Police Decision 234/2021, amending the Executive Regulation of the Foreigners' Residence Law. It was issued on 22 October 2021 and published in Official Gazette 1413 on 24 October 2021. It sits under Royal Decree 60/2021, which amended Articles 14 and 40 of the Foreigners' Residence Law to give the Inspector General power to fix residence types, durations and renewal conditions and, with Ministry of Finance approval, to set fees. The parent statute is the Foreigners' Residence Law, Royal Decree 16/95.
What ROP Decision 234/2021 actually does:
- Article 10, item 9 — creates the investor visa, granted to a foreigner wishing to invest his funds in the country on the strength of a certificate from the competent authority, in two durations: ten years and five years. The visa must be used within one year of issue.
- Article 10, item 5 — extends the one-year multiple-entry visa to the investor category, renewable for like periods.
- Article 19 — creates dependant residency for the investor's spouse and first-degree relatives.
- Article 26 — holders of dependant-of-investor residency, and dependant-of-owner residency, are exempt from the normal age restrictions, on criteria set by the Inspector General.
- Article 29 — sets the fee schedule, including the renewal cycle discussed below.
Read it as a frame with the middle left blank. The law says there is such a thing as an investor residence permit, says how long it lasts, says what it costs and says who else can come. It does not say what makes you an investor. That question is answered by a certificate from MoCIIP, and the rules MoCIIP applies when deciding whether to issue that certificate have never been published as law.
The current position: OMR 200,000, ten years, seven pathways
The programme was relaunched at a forum in Salalah on 31 August 2025. MoCIIP's own account, published on 13 September 2025, gives a minimum of OMR 200,000 for a ten-year renewable residency across seven pathways. Invest Oman's January 2026 review restates the same threshold as approximately USD 520,000 and lists the routes:
- Ownership of a completed real-estate unit inside an Integrated Tourism Complex.
- Establishing a registered Omani company.
- Purchasing government development bonds.
- Investing in securities listed on the Muscat Stock Exchange.
- A fixed-term bank deposit with a minimum five-year term in a licensed Omani bank.
- Owning a company that employs 50 or more Omani nationals.
- Nomination under the Foreign Capital Investment Law.
More granular per-pathway conditions have been reported — a company at least one year old with the applicant's stake in total assets at or above the threshold, bonds with at least two years left to maturity, listed shares measured at market value, the deposit renewable throughout the residency, the 50-Omani company also carrying capital above the threshold. Those details come from Gulf Business, not from a government page, and are consistent with the official line rather than confirmed by it. Treat them as a planning guide, not as rules.
Four versions in circulation, and what each one actually is
| Version you will see | What it claims | Where it actually comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Two tiers: OMR 500,000 and OMR 250,000 | Ten years at OMR 500,000 in a joint-stock company, government bonds or property, or 50 Omani employees; five years at OMR 250,000 in assets | The 2021 programme, as announced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 29 September 2021. Still presented as current by UNCTAD's investment policy monitor and by Deloitte, which gives an effective date of 31 August 2025 |
| A unified OMR 200,000 | Ten years, seven pathways, from 31 August 2025 | MoCIIP's own release of 13 September 2025 and Invest Oman. Gulf News, quoting the Director General of the Investor Services Centre, describes it explicitly as a reduction from the previous OMR 250,000. This is the only version with direct Omani government backing |
| OMR 200,000 plus a separate OMR 100,000 property route | A two-year residency for buying property at OMR 100,000 | No Omani source of any kind. The two-year owner residency is real and is covered in our property residency guide, but it carries no published minimum value. The nearest real figure in circulation is the UAE's dirham property visa |
| OMR 200,000 to OMR 500,000 by tier | A sliding scale of amounts and durations | An artefact of the 2021 and 2025 schemes being described side by side, sometimes within a single article |
One further wrinkle worth knowing about, because it is a genuine conflict between two respectable secondary sources published days apart. On 1 September 2025 Gulf News reported the Investor Services Centre describing OMR 200,000 as a reduction. Around the same period Gulf News also carried a piece quoting a consultancy saying "the categories and criteria remain unchanged" at OMR 500,000 and half that for five years. Both are Gulf News. Only one is quoting the ministry.
The five-year tier has not been repealed
This is the point nobody makes, and it matters if you are budgeting. MoCIIP now markets a single ten-year product. But the five-year investor visa and the five-year investor residence permit remain in force in the Executive Regulation — they are in Article 10, item 9 of ROP Decision 234/2021, they have their own line in the Article 29 fee table, and the government's own service page on gov.om still offers both durations with separate fees.
So the honest statement is: the five-year tier was dropped from the marketing, not from the law. Whether MoCIIP will still certify an applicant into it is a question for MoCIIP, and no published document answers it. If a five-year route suits you better, ask rather than assume it is gone.
Fees, and two official sources that disagree
| Item | Fee | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Investor entry visa, ten years | OMR 500 | gov.om service page and ROP Decision 234/2021, Article 29 — these agree |
| Investor entry visa, five years | OMR 250 or OMR 300 | gov.om says OMR 250; ROP Decision 234/2021, Article 29 says OMR 300. Two official sources, unreconciled |
| Investor residency renewal, ten-year permit | OMR 500 every three years | ROP Decision 234/2021, Article 29 |
| Investor residency renewal, five-year permit | OMR 300 every three years | ROP Decision 234/2021, Article 29 |
| Dependant entry visa | OMR 100 (ten-year) / OMR 50 (five-year) | ROP Decision 234/2021, Article 29 |
| Dependant residency renewal | OMR 100 or OMR 50 every three years | ROP Decision 234/2021, Article 29 |
| Golden Residency application fee | Not published | No government source publishes one |
The gov.om page also gives the conditions attaching to the visa: the applicant must be at least 21 years old, and the application is submitted through MoCIIP after meeting the investment conditions. The documents listed are a valid passport and a digital photograph. The "approximately 10 minutes" shown against the service is the portal transaction time, not the time it takes to be assessed.
The permit is described everywhere as five or ten years. The fee table in Article 29 tells a different operational story: the investor residency line reads OMR 500 every three years for the ten-year permit and OMR 300 every three years for the five-year one, with the dependant lines on the same three-year rhythm.
In practice that means the residence card is re-issued on a three-year cycle with a fee each time, inside a five- or ten-year entitlement. Budget for it, and diarise it — under the Foreigners' Residence Law, renewal must be requested 15 days before expiry, and it may be refused without reasons being given.
The six-month absence rule cuts across all of it
Marketing for long-term Gulf residencies routinely promises "no minimum stay". For Oman, check that against Article 18 of the Foreigners' Residence Law, which provides that a foreigner loses the right of residence on absence from Oman exceeding six consecutive months without an accepted excuse, or eight non-consecutive months within one year, or eighteen months within three years.
That article is in the consolidated law as published. We looked for a provision disapplying it to investor or owner residency and did not find one — not in ROP Decision 234/2021, not in Royal Decree 60/2021, not in the programme's own material.
We are not saying an exemption does not exist in practice; discretionary treatment is possible and the Inspector General has wide latitude under Article 14. We are saying that no published Omani source exempts investor residency from Article 18, so the statute as published applies until something says otherwise.
If your plan is to hold the residency while living elsewhere and visiting occasionally, get that confirmed in writing before you commit capital. It is the single most likely way to lose a permit you have paid for.
How you apply, and who is in the chain
The sequence is: MoCIIP, through the Investor Services Centre, assesses whether your investment qualifies and issues the certificate; the Royal Oman Police then issues the visa and the residence card. That split is visible on the gov.om service page, which routes the application through MoCIIP and lists the ROP as the service provider. Applications are made online through the programme portal at omanresidence.gov.om.
There is a private company in the middle. Migrate World, a firm based outside Oman, is named on the government portal itself as the programme's operational partner, and Invest Oman's launch release says the same. The firm states it was appointed by MoCIIP in 2023 as the official Golden Residency programme operator; that appointment date is the firm's own claim and we did not find a government page confirming it.
It is operated by Migrate World, the appointed private partner. It presents itself in official-sounding terms, and it is not lying about its role — but it is a commercial operator's site, not a ministry's.
The two government addresses are omanresidence.gov.om for the programme and gov.om for the underlying visa service. If a site is asking you for a consultation fee before MoCIIP has certified anything, you are paying an intermediary, not the state.
The operational reality: about 56,000 applications, and no approvals reported
This is the most useful thing on this page, and it is the thing the consultancy blogs leave out. Reporting from June 2026 puts roughly 56,000 applications received since the August 2025 relaunch, averaging about 5,500 a month through the first five months of 2026, with around 70% of applicants already living in Oman and India, the United Kingdom and Egypt the top three source countries.
The same reporting says processing was scheduled to begin only in the third quarter of 2026, with approvals expected within roughly three months after that — and that no approvals had been issued at the time of writing in June 2026.
Label that honestly: it comes from AGBI and IMI Daily, both specialist secondary sources quoting programme figures, and no Omani government page confirms the backlog or the position on approvals. But it is well sourced, it is consistent between two independent outlets, and if you are deciding whether to move capital now, it is more relevant than any threshold table.
Family members and dependants
The legal position is that the investor's spouse and first-degree relatives get dependant residency under Article 19, and that dependants of investors are exempt from the normal age restrictions under Article 26 as amended. That exemption is the real basis for the widely repeated claim that adult children can be included.
MoCIIP's own wording goes further, describing family inclusion without age or number restrictions, along with the ability to employ up to three domestic workers and to obtain extended visit visas for relatives. Note that "first-degree relatives" is not defined anywhere in the published material for this purpose; Deloitte's summary includes dependent parents, but no Omani government source says so. If parents matter to your plan, treat their inclusion as unconfirmed.
What the programme does not give you
- No published path to citizenship. Naturalisation runs under the Omani Citizenship Law, Royal Decree 38/2014, which is a separate track with its own residence requirements and discretion. Nothing in ROP Decision 234/2021, in Royal Decree 60/2021 or in any MoCIIP release links investor residency to nationality.
- No published application fee for the Golden Residency programme itself, as distinct from the ROP visa fee.
- No published statutory processing time, no published renewal criteria beyond the general 15-day rule, and no published appeal route if you are refused. Article 14 of the Foreigners' Residence Law expressly permits refusal of renewal without reasons.
- No published rule on whether the investment must be held for the whole period. Only the bank deposit route has a stated term, and that comes from the programme descriptions rather than an instrument. Nothing published says the permit is withdrawn if you sell your shares or your bonds mature — but nothing published says it survives, either.
- No general right to take salaried employment with an unrelated employer. The residency is tied to the investment and removes the need for a sponsor; a work permit under the Labour Law is a separate matter and no official source addresses the interaction.
On cancellation, the general law applies. Article 31 of the Foreigners' Residence Law lets the Inspector General cancel residence and order deportation where the holder acts against the security or stability of the Sultanate, damages Oman's relations with other states, belongs to or supports an unwanted political party, has borne arms against Omani forces or cooperated with an enemy, or has no visible lawful means of subsistence. A deportation order extends to the spouse and to foreign children in the holder's care.
A warning about UAE content bleeding into Omani articles
This is the dominant failure mode in Gulf residency writing, and it is worth naming. The UAE Golden Visa is vastly better documented than anything Omani, so Emirati structures and figures get re-labelled as Omani and repeated until they look established.
- The term "golden visa" or "golden residency" has no basis in Omani legislation. Oman's statutory categories are the investor visa and investor residency, and the owner visa and owner residency. If a page cites an Omani "golden visa law", ask which decree.
- Any source mentioning ICP, GDRFA, the Dubai Land Department, or thresholds in dirhams is describing the UAE. Discard it for Omani purposes rather than trying to convert it.
- The OMR 100,000 two-year property visa that circulates in Omani articles has no Omani source we could find. The closest real instrument is the UAE's two-year self-sponsored property visa at a dirham threshold.
- Consultancy and developer pages carrying confident OMR figures with no instrument cited are the main vector. A number without a decree number behind it should be treated as advertising.
Is there an Omani law that sets the golden visa investment amount?
Is Oman's investor residency five years or ten years?
How much does the Oman investor visa cost?
Do I have to live in Oman to keep an investor residency?
How long does the Oman golden residency take to process?
Does Oman's investor residency lead to citizenship?
Where this leaves you
If you want one sentence to carry away: the permit is real and traceable, the price of entry is not written down anywhere you can hold anyone to, and as of the most recent reporting the queue had not started moving. That is not a reason to avoid the programme. It is a reason to get MoCIIP's certification position confirmed for your specific asset before you buy the asset.
We are a Sanad office in Al Ghubra and we handle the ROP-side paperwork — visa and residence card applications, dependants, renewals and the documents that go with them — which is the part with published fees and published rules. The MoCIIP certification that has to come first is the part where we would tell you to get the ministry's answer in writing.