Dubai (UAE) Visa for British Citizens

Here is the honest version first, because it will save you reading the rest: for a two-week holiday you do not need us. A British passport gets you into the UAE on arrival, for a stay of up to 90 days according to both of the sources we check, with nothing to apply for, nothing to upload and nothing to pay us. Most people who land on this page can close it there and go and book the flights instead.

The ones who come back are usually staying past that on-arrival allowance. Remote workers who set up in Dubai for a season rather than a fortnight. Parents visiting an adult child who moved out there for work, and discovering that three months is not very long once you are actually in it. Retired couples who have decided a British January is optional. Once a trip runs past the 90 days it stops being something you can buy off a page like this one — longer-stay options are a separate service, so message us on WhatsApp and we will talk through what is open to you.

The second group are the ones who will step out of the country and come back inside the same trip. Oman is within easy reach, and a couple of nights in Muscat or up at Musandam is a common addition to a longer stay; so are the cruises that sail out of Dubai, call somewhere else along the Gulf, and come back again. None of that obliges you to buy anything from us, though some travellers prefer the certainty of a multiple-entry visa arranged in advance to leaving the return leg until the day itself.

One case does bring British travellers to us, and it is the dual-national one. Plenty of people hold a British passport alongside another, and the requirement follows whichever passport you actually check in and travel on — not the one left in a drawer at home. If that second passport is Indian, Pakistani, Nigerian, Sri Lankan or one of the others listed further down this page, a visa does have to be arranged before you fly, and that part is work we can do. Otherwise: if what you are planning is a fortnight in a hotel by the beach on your British passport, we would rather say plainly that there is nothing here for you to buy.