How long can you stay in Dubai on a tourist visa?

The number most people are looking for is 90. On the multiple entry 5-year tourist visa you may remain in the UAE for 90 days on each visit, and that visit can be extended by 90 more days.

The number is the easy part. The part that decides whether it applies to you comes first.

A tourist visa is not what most Dubai visitors arrive on

The UAE government portal defines it narrowly: A tourist visa is for those who are not eligible for visa on arrival or a visa-free entry to the UAE.

That sentence does a lot of work. If your passport already gets visa on arrival or visa-free entry, you are not on a tourist visa and the 90-day figure is not your figure — your stay is whatever your own entry category grants, decided at the counter when you land. Sites that answer “how long can I stay in Dubai” with a single number usually skip this line, and that is where the answer goes wrong. The same entry categories decide whether you can leave the airport on a layover.

So there are two different questions hiding in one, and only the second one is on this page:

The 5-year multiple entry visa, as published

This type of tourist visa can be issued for all nationalities — so there is no per-country version of this visa to look up, and anyone telling you the requirements differ by passport is describing something else.

It also lets you enter the UAE multiple times on self-sponsorship. That word matters more than it looks. Most UAE visit routes are sponsored — a hotel, an employer or a relative applies on your behalf and carries the obligation. Self-sponsorship means the application stands on your own documents, which is why the portal attaches financial conditions to it and not to the sponsored routes.

To obtain it, the portal states the applicant must have:

Two things the portal does not say, and we are not going to fill in: it does not name a fee, and it does not say how many times the 90-day extension can be taken. If you see either figure quoted confidently elsewhere, it did not come from this source.

Where you apply — and where you cannot

You apply through airlines, licensed travel agents and hotels, or online through ICP or GDRFA Dubai.

The exclusion is worth stating plainly because it is the first thing many travellers try: The UAE's embassies do not issue tourist visas. An embassy can verify that a tour operator is genuine, which is a different service.

The airline route has a catch that is easy to miss when you are comparing options: Each airline has conditions that must be met, and one of them is flying with them. So an airline visa is not a standalone product you can shop for — it is attached to a ticket you have already decided to buy. The same logic applies to hotels and agents: the portal ties their visa service to booking with them.

On agents, the portal publishes its own warning rather than leaving it to travellers to work out — it says to refrain from paying or sending copies of your official documents until you are sure the tour operator is genuine.

If you are a resident of another GCC country

This is a separate route with its own clock. A GCC resident applies online before travelling, and the entry permit allows a stay of 30 days from the date of entry. It is extendable once, for 30 more days. Your GCC residency has to be valid for at least a year from the arrival date, and the profession on your application has to be on the approved list.

How this page is kept current

The source page carries its own last-updated stamp, currently 10 Aug 2026. We check that stamp on a short cycle and re-read every value above whenever it moves, rather than re-reading all of them on a fixed date. If the stamp has not moved, the figures on this page are the ones the portal is publishing.