Key takeaways
- Oman abolished the No Objection Certificate in January 2021. You no longer need your current employer’s written permission to move to a new one, though you still need proof your contract ended and the new employer’s approval from the authorities.
- Work permit and work practice permit fees were cut by more than 85 percent in 2022 and reissued under Ministerial Resolution 602/2025, now running from around RO 101 for exempt categories up to RO 301 for first-class professions.
- Oman is phasing foreign nationals out of specific professions in stages through 2027, including IT roles, marketing, and several technical trades. Check whether your profession is affected before you accept an offer.
- The minimum sponsor salary for bringing a spouse or children to Oman is reported as RO 600, RO 300, and RO 150 by different sources at different times, and even a rights monitor found Oman’s own channels inconsistent on this in 2023. Confirm the live figure with the Royal Oman Police before you plan around it.
- Health insurance under the Dhamani scheme is compulsory and employer-paid for the employee and most dependants, with a basic package capped at RO 4,500 a year in combined benefits.
- End of service gratuity changed in July 2023 from a declining 15-days-per-year formula to a flat one month’s basic wage per year of service, and is due to be folded into a new Social Protection System by July 2026.
Oman’s labour rules have moved further and faster than most of its neighbours over the past five years, and a lot of what gets repeated about working here, including the old two-year employment ban, no longer describes the current system. This article sets out what actually applies now, what changed and when, and where the remaining gaps in official information are, so you are not relying on a rule that was scrapped years ago.
What changed, and when
Four reforms, in order, explain most of what is different about working in Oman today compared with a decade ago.
2020 to 2021: the NOC is scrapped. Decree 157/2020 removed the requirement for a worker to obtain a No Objection Certificate from their current employer before taking a new job. From January 2021, a worker could transfer their residency to a new employer by showing their previous contract had ended, expired, or been terminated, together with the new employer’s own approval from the authorities. A senior Royal Oman Police official told Oman Observer at the time that “expatriates are free to change their sponsor at the end of their contract.” Some implementation gaps were reported in the weeks after the change, with a few employers still asking for NOC-style paperwork out of habit, but the underlying legal requirement was gone.
2022: permit fees fall sharply. Oman cut work permit fees by more than 85 percent across the board. A first-class profession permit that had cost RO 2,001 fell to RO 301 (or RO 211 for employers meeting their Omanisation targets). The move was aimed at making it cheaper for compliant employers to hire legally rather than leave workers in informal arrangements.
2023: a new labour law. Royal Decree 53/2023 replaced large parts of Oman’s labour framework from 31 July 2023. It shortened the maximum working day, extended rest breaks, raised sick leave to 182 days a year, introduced a 7-day paternity leave entitlement, and replaced the old declining-rate gratuity formula with a flat one month’s wage per year of service.
2024 to 2027: profession restrictions phase in. Ministerial Decision 452/2024 and Ministerial Decree 501/2024 began barring new work permits for foreign nationals in a growing list of professions. Marketing specialists, travel agents, quality officers, and mechanical technicians lost eligibility from September 2024; systems analysts, IT network specialists, and computer maintenance technicians from January 2025; computer programmers and electronic computer engineers from January 2026; website designers and operations analysts are due to follow from January 2027. A separate six-month pause on new permits for construction workers, chefs, electricians, and tailors also began in September 2024, though renewals and transfers for people already in those roles kept moving.
Who needs a work permit, and who cannot get one right now
Oman’s Ministry of Labour issues two separate documents that often get conflated. The Work Permit is held by the employer and authorises them to bring in foreign staff for a named profession; it runs for 24 months and is not renewable in that form. The Work Practice Permit belongs to the individual worker and authorises them to practise a specific profession; it also runs up to 24 months but can be renewed.
Before accepting an offer, check your intended profession against the phased restrictions above. If your role falls into one of the barred categories and you are not already working in Oman in that capacity, a new permit application is likely to be refused regardless of how qualified you are.
Commercial immigration guides also describe an Investor Residency and a Talented Residency track for self-sponsored long-term stays of five to ten years, plus free zone visas tied to Duqm, Sohar, and Salalah. None of this was confirmed against an official government listing in researching this article, so treat it as a lead to ask a licensed Omani agent about rather than a confirmed product.
Documents and the attestation step
Alongside the standard passport copy, photographs, and qualification certificates, nationals of a specific set of countries, including India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Syria, and Nepal, are required to have medical certificates attested by Oman’s Ministry of Health before arrival, according to immigration-sector guidance. No official checklist setting out the full attestation process for educational certificates through Oman’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was available at the time of writing. If this applies to you, confirm the current requirement with an Omani embassy or consulate in your home country rather than relying on a general guide, since attestation rules are one of the more frequently updated parts of any Gulf visa process.
The process, step by step
No single official flowchart from the Ministry of Labour or Royal Oman Police was accessible while researching this article, so the sequence below is reconstructed from how licensed agents describe it and should be treated as indicative rather than a verbatim government procedure.
- The employer secures Omanisation clearance for the role and applies for the Work Permit through the Ministry of Labour.
- The employer issues a formal offer and the worker compiles supporting documents.
- A visa application goes to Royal Oman Police Immigration, which can be done online in many cases.
- The worker completes a medical fitness test, either before travel or shortly after arrival depending on nationality.
- Royal Oman Police processes and stamps the residence visa.
- The worker registers for a Resident Card. One licensed-agent source puts this at within 30 days of entry at a Civil Status office; another describes a two-to-four-week window after arrival.
Total timeframes vary widely between sources, from roughly one to three weeks on one estimate to thirty to ninety days on another, with no dated official figure to settle the difference. If your move depends on a hard deadline, build in more time than any single source promises.
The medical fitness test
The Ministry of Health digitised this process in 2024 through an electronic Medical Fitness Service. The test screens against Gulf Health Council standards, including an interferon-gamma release assay blood test for tuberculosis that replaced the older chest X-ray requirement, along with biometric capture of a fingerprint and photograph. To use the service, you link a PKI-enabled SIM to your resident card at a Sanad service centre, register on the medical certificate portal, pay online, attend an approved medical centre, and have the result verified through the Wafid platform. No official fee figure for the test was available; one commercial source cites an unverified range of RO 20 to RO 50, which should not be treated as a reliable quote.
What it costs
The clearest current figures come from Ministerial Resolution 602/2025, reported by Oman Observer in October 2025, which sets Work Practice Permit fees by profession class:
| Category | Fee |
|---|---|
| First-class professions | RO 301 |
| Second-class professions | RO 251 |
| Third-class professions | RO 201 |
| Investor professions | RO 301 |
| Domestic workers, nannies, drivers (up to 3 per household) | RO 101 |
| Domestic workers, nannies, drivers (4 or more) | RO 141 |
| Agricultural workers (up to 3) | RO 141 |
| Agricultural workers (4 or more) | RO 241 |
| Sailors and ship mechanics | RO 201 |
Employers meeting their Omanisation targets get a 30 percent discount on these fees; non-compliant employers pay double. Domestic workers, nannies, private drivers, carers for the disabled or elderly, and recipients of family income benefits are exempt from the fee entirely, capped at one worker per household. Late renewal brings a penalty of RO 10 a month up to RO 500, and a status-correction delay costs RO 15 to 20 a month up to the same cap.
These figures sit close to the 2022 fee cut levels, which suggests the 2025 resolution mostly formalised the existing reduced rates rather than introducing a fresh increase. Separately, a commercial source quotes an Employment Work Visa fee of RO 20 and a Family Joining Visa fee of RO 30, which do not obviously map onto the permit fees above. These are most likely a different line item, a Royal Oman Police visa charge rather than the Ministry of Labour’s permit fee, but no official schedule was found to confirm this, so the two sets of figures should not be added together as if they describe the same charge. No official source states definitively whether the employer or the worker pays each fee; the common convention described by agents is that the employer carries the work and work practice permit cost as the licence holder, but this is not a stated legal rule.
Health insurance: Dhamani
Oman’s mandatory health insurance scheme, Dhamani, began rolling out to private-sector employees and their dependants from 2023. Employers are required to provide and pay for cover for the employee and for dependants residing in Oman, meaning a spouse, children under 21, and other dependent residents. The basic package caps combined annual benefits at RO 4,500, with inpatient treatment capped at RO 3,000 per admission over 30 days, outpatient care at RO 500, and repatriation of a deceased person’s remains at RO 1,000. Maternity cover is excluded from the basic package. Small and medium enterprises were exempt during the scheme’s first phase. These limits come from an insurance-sector source rather than a government regulator’s own page, so if the exact figures matter to your decision, it is worth checking directly with Oman’s Financial Services Authority or your employer’s insurer.
Your contract: probation, hours, and notice
Under the 2023 labour law, probation runs for a maximum of three months if you are paid monthly, or two months if you are paid by another method such as weekly or piece rate. You can only be put on probation once with a given employer. Either side can end the arrangement during probation with seven days’ notice. Outside probation, notice periods for an indefinite contract are 30 days if you are paid monthly and 15 days otherwise, unless your contract specifies something longer. Fixed-term contracts no longer convert automatically to indefinite status on renewal, though continuous service past five years does become indefinite regardless of contract type. The maximum working day fell from nine hours to eight, and the daily rest break doubled from 30 minutes to a full hour.
Changing employers without an NOC
This is the area where outdated information causes the most confusion. Older guides, some still circulating, describe a two-year ban that could follow a worker who left an employer without that employer’s consent. That rule and the NOC document behind it were formally abolished from January 2021. What exists instead is a documentary requirement: you need evidence that your previous contract ended, expired, or was terminated, plus the new employer’s own government-authorised approval to hire you. There is no employer veto built into this process. A further easing in 2024 lets a worker whose employer failed to properly register their contract after a permit renewal transfer to a new employer after a 30-day waiting period.
Separately, a December 2024 rule created a temporary secondment scheme letting private employers lend staff to each other for up to six months a year, with the worker’s consent required and wages protected at no less than their existing level. This is a loan arrangement between employers, not a route for a worker to permanently change jobs, and should not be confused with the NOC-free transfer process above.
No Ministry of Labour or Royal Oman Police page stating this in primary-source language was accessible while researching this article. If a current employer tells you an NOC or a multi-year ban still applies, that claim is worth checking against a recent, dated official source before you accept it.
Gratuity, and the system that is replacing it
For service that falls before 31 July 2023, the old formula applies: 15 days’ basic wage for each of the first three years, then a full month’s wage for every year after that. For service from 31 July 2023 onward, the new flat rate applies: one full month’s basic wage for every year of service, a significant increase on the old formula. Where your employment spans both periods, each portion of your service is calculated under the rules that applied at the time. Gratuity is intended to eventually be replaced by a mandatory Social Protection System, a savings and pension scheme under Royal Decree 52/2023, with integration due by July 2026. Given that date, it is worth checking the current status of this transition closer to when you need the figure, since the rules in this section are more likely than most in this article to have moved on by the time you read it.
Bringing your family to Oman
This is the single most inconsistent figure found anywhere in Oman’s visa rules, and it is worth being direct about that rather than quoting one number as settled. Three different minimum sponsor salaries have been reported as the threshold for bringing a spouse or children to Oman:
- RO 600 a month, the figure established in 2013 and the one a rights monitor found still listed on the Royal Oman Police’s own website as of June 2023.
- RO 300 a month, announced by a Shura Council member and confirmed to Oman Observer by Royal Oman Police in October 2017.
- RO 150 a month, reported via Times of Oman citing a senior Royal Oman Police official, in reporting from early to mid 2023.
The rights organisation that documented this conflict in June 2023, Migrant-Rights.org, stated plainly that the Royal Oman Police “has not released any official statements regarding the recent reduction” and that the force’s own website still showed RO 600 at the time of their review, even as press reports quoted officials citing a lower number. Two more recent commercial guides both cite RO 600 as the current figure, which may mean the lower numbers were never formally adopted, but neither guide is an official source. Given that even a dedicated rights monitor could not resolve this discrepancy against Oman’s own published position, confirm the live threshold directly with Royal Oman Police or your employer’s government-relations officer before you plan a family move around any of these three numbers.
What is better documented: the family joining visa is typically valid for two years and multi-entry, covers a spouse and children under 21, and sponsors are commonly asked for a three-month bank statement alongside proof of a suitable residence. The sponsor is also expected to hold what Oman’s rules describe as a senior position under Gulf Cooperation Council standards, though the precise definition of that term in current practice was not confirmed from an official source.
Leaving Oman: exit, re-entry, and cancellation
Reliable, recent official detail on Oman’s current exit and visa cancellation procedure was not available while researching this article. The clearest documented rule, from a 2018 report, is that cancelling your visa is required before any re-entry under a new sponsor, regardless of how long you have been away, but that reporting predates the 2021 NOC reform and may no longer fully describe today’s process. If you are planning an exit and return to Oman under a different employer, confirm the current procedure directly with Royal Oman Police rather than relying on older reporting.
If something goes wrong: where to complain
Oman’s Ministry of Manpower runs a Dispute Settlement Department reachable on a toll-free line, 800 77000, and your embassy or consulate can also assist. An online complaints portal has existed in at least a trial form, though its current scope and language coverage were not confirmed in researching this article. Under the 2023 labour law, a worker can remain in Oman while a labour claim is resolved, though the costs of staying are borne by the worker, and the rules governing whether you can work during that period are not clearly set out even by rights monitors who track this closely.
Recognising a fake offer
Scam patterns reported around Oman follow the same shape seen across the Gulf: unsolicited approaches promising above-market salaries, requests for an upfront “refundable” visa or permit fee, correspondence from a personal email address rather than a company domain, and pressure to decide quickly. A documented case involved a Muscat-based chef targeted with a fraudulent Toronto hotel offer requiring an advance payment. A legitimate Omani employer does not ask a candidate to pay for their own visa, permit, or medical processing upfront. Egypt’s embassy in Oman has separately warned its citizens about offers that route people in on a tourist visa rather than a genuine work visa, which leaves them without legal authorisation to work at all.
Frequently asked questions
Do I still need my employer’s permission to change jobs in Oman?
No. The No Objection Certificate was abolished from January 2021. You need proof your previous contract ended and your new employer’s own approval, not a letter from your old employer.
Is there still a two-year ban on changing jobs?
No. That rule was tied to the NOC system and was scrapped along with it. If you see this claim in an older guide, treat it as out of date.
How much does a work permit cost in Oman?
Under the current fee schedule, Work Practice Permits range from RO 101 for some exempt categories to RO 301 for first-class and investor professions, with discounts for employers meeting Omanisation targets.
Is health insurance compulsory for expats in Oman?
Yes, under the Dhamani scheme, and your employer is required to pay for your cover and for most resident dependants.
What salary do I need to bring my family to Oman?
Sources disagree significantly, citing RO 600, RO 300, and RO 150 at different points. Confirm the current figure directly with Royal Oman Police before relying on it.
Is gratuity still calculated the old way?
Only for service completed before 31 July 2023. Service after that date uses a flat one month’s wage per year, and the whole system is due to be folded into a new Social Protection scheme by July 2026.
What this means for your move
Oman’s system has changed more substantially, and more recently, than its reputation suggests. If you are weighing an Omani offer against one elsewhere in the Gulf, the genuine advantage here is the freedom to leave a bad employer without their sign-off, something several neighbouring countries still condition on notice periods or partial employer consent. The genuine caution is that several of the numbers that matter most to a decision, the family sponsorship threshold above all, are not settled even in Oman’s own official channels. Get the current figure in writing from the employer or agency handling your move rather than from any single published guide, including this one.
