Schengen-style GCC Visa To Launch To Ease Travel For UAE Residents

Amazing news for UAE residents!

Nationals from the GCC (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) are already free to travel visa-free across the region. In effect, it makes the GCC border-free for nationals from the six states concerned.

It could also be extended to GCC residents, meaning expats living in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and beyond would be able to travel visa-free in exactly the same way.

The proposal would mirror Europe’s Schengen zone, which is a border control-free travel area for people that complements the free movement of goods and services within the European Union.

So, in the same way that an expat living in Poland could cross the border into Germany without a visa, a British national living in the UAE could cross the border into Saudi Arabia visa-free under the new proposals.

The idea was discussed during this year’s Arabian Travel Market. All panellists responded positively to a suggestion from the moderator about the GCC potentially mimicking the Schengen zone.

The UAE’s Al Saleh said that easy travel across the Gulf would boost tourism for everyone.

He explained: “If long distance travellers come to this region, having a programme to maximise their visit to more than one country is amazing. The visitor will be happier with visiting several countries, without restrictions crossing borders.”

Bahrain’s minister of tourism said: “We have huge opportunity; the effort is in how to unify all the countries in the GCC.

“We had 9.9 million visitors in 2022. How? There was one key initiative that year, we started to co-promote Bahrain as a unified destination with the GCC. If all the GCC countries unified their efforts in promotion, the opportunities are incredible.”