Panama Residency From the UAE: What Your Passport Allows

Most people who live in the UAE cannot use Panama's best-known residency route. The Friendly Nations visa is limited to a list of mostly European and American nationalities, and India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Egypt and Russia are not on it.

For those passports, the practical route is the Qualified Investor visa: $300,000 in a new home bought from the developer, held for five years.

Executive Decree 16, published in the Gaceta Oficial on 31 August 2026, sets the current Friendly Nations list, and Panama's immigration service, the Servicio Nacional de Migración (SNM), lists which passports need an entry visa in a table dated 2 October 2026. Both were read for this guide on 2 November 2026.

Find your passport

The table covers the nationalities most common among UAE residents. Every passport here can use the Qualified Investor visa, and anyone with a lifetime pension of at least $1,000 a month can use the Pensionado visa. Only the last four rows can use Friendly Nations.

Entry visas are from the SNM table of 2 October 2026, Friendly Nations from Decree 16, and apostilles from the Hague Conference's status table, retrieved 2 November 2026. "Apostille at home" means your passport country can apostille its own documents, such as a birth certificate or a police record.

Friendly Nations is no longer instant permanent residency: Decree 16 grants two years of provisional residence first, and says the status does not replace a work permit from the Labor Ministry, MITRADEL. It needs a $200,000 property or bank deposit, or a job offer in Panama.

A Pakistani reader asked on expat.com's Panama forum in 2018 how to apply from Pakistan, and was told the country was not on the list. Under the 2026 decree it still is not.

Your US or UK visa counts, your UAE visa does not

Ten of the passports in the table need a visa just to land in Panama. There is a shortcut, and the Panama visa pages that rank in the UAE leave it out.

Under Executive Decree 521 of 2018, holders of a valid visa from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Singapore or any European Union country can enter without a Panama visa. Executive Decree 196 of 28 October 2024 rewrote the condition: the visa only has to be valid when you arrive.

A UAE residence visa is not on that list. An Indian passport holder in Dubai with no other visa applies at a Panamanian consulate, which the Embassy of Panama in Washington says takes up to 30 business days. For Pakistani, Egyptian and Nigerian nationals it quotes up to 60.

"I am receiving conflicting information from the web and cannot be very certain," an Indian passport holder with a US green card wrote on TripAdvisor's Panama forum in 2023. The 2024 decree's text names visas only, not residence cards.

$300,000 or $500,000: what Decree 17 says

The minimum is $300,000 for a new home and $500,000 for everything else. Executive Decree 17, signed 8 September 2026 and published in Gaceta Oficial No. 30613 on 16 September, draws the line in Article 4.

The $300,000 figure applies only to the first sale of a new, never-occupied unit transferred by the developer. A unit that has already been sold, occupied or rented counts as resale and needs $500,000.

Some advisers in Dubai still say otherwise. One immigration consultancy whose page ranks at the top of Google in the UAE tells readers the $300,000 rate was transitional and to plan for $500,000, citing the 2021 Friendly Nations decree that Decree 16 has since amended.

The investment has to stay in place for five years. The money must come from outside Panama, be your own and be traceable through banks, so a gift does not count.

Buying off-plan carries a new condition. A pre-construction buyer pays into a bank trust, a fideicomiso, or the developer backs the payment with a bank guarantee renewed every year until the unit is registered, under Article 7.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industries certifies the investment within 15 business days, and SNM then has 30 business days to decide. Our breakdown of Decree 17 covers the securities and bank-deposit options.

Viewers under a YouTube explainer on the decree in October read it as a rise for everyone: "This should pretty much take Panama out of the running," one wrote. For a new build, the price did not move.

What it costs on a $300,000 new apartment

Panama's 2% transfer tax is the seller's to pay. Law 546 of 31 August 2026 voids any clause that shifts it onto the buyer in the first sale of a new home, and exempts that sale's first $120,000 when the deed is signed within two years of the occupancy permit.

That puts the fixed cost for one applicant at $310,910 before legal fees. A spouse adds $2,000.

Firms quote legal fees per file, so get the quote in writing and check whether it covers one person or the family. Our buying guide explains how to check that a lawyer is not also working for the developer.

Papers from the UAE: legalization, not an apostille

The UAE is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, the Hague Conference's status table shows, while Panama has been one since 1991. A document issued in the UAE therefore cannot be apostilled for use in Panama.

It goes through consular legalization instead: attestation by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then legalization by a Panamanian consulate, then a Spanish translation.

Documents from your passport country follow that country's rules. India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Russia, Ukraine, the UK, the US, Canada and South Africa issue apostilles. Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Iran do not, so their papers need legalization too.

The paper that catches people out is the police certificate. SNM asks for a criminal record certificate with each residency application, and an applicant living in the UAE needs one from the UAE as well as one from home.

Tax for a UAE resident who owns in Panama

Residency and tax residency are separate in Panama. You become tax resident by spending more than 183 days a year in the country, Deloitte's 2026 Panama tax guide notes, and even then Panama taxes only income earned in Panama.

Rent from a Panama apartment is Panama-source income. A sale is taxed at 10% of the gain, and the buyer withholds 3% of the sale price or the cadastral value, whichever is higher, as an advance that the seller can elect to treat as the final tax.

Annual property tax on a home that is not your registered primary residence is 0% up to $30,000 of cadastral value, 0.6% to $250,000, 0.8% to $500,000 and 1% above, under Law 66 of 2017.

The UAE and Panama signed a double tax agreement in Tokyo on 13 October 2012. The UAE ratified it by Federal Decree 53 of 2013, and it has been in force since 23 October 2013.

Residency is not a passport

Panama does not sell citizenship. Article 10 of the Constitution requires five years of permanent residence, a declared intent to naturalize, renunciation of your current nationality, and a test of Spanish and of Panama's geography, history and political organization.

Decree 17 confirms the five years for Qualified Investor holders in Article 14. The renunciation matters most for Indian citizens: under Section 9 of India's Citizenship Act of 1955, Indian citizenship ends when another is acquired voluntarily. Holding Panamanian residency does not trigger it.

Getting there from Dubai and Abu Dhabi

No airline flies nonstop between the UAE and Panama City. Turkish Airlines, Air France, KLM, Iberia and Air Europa fly to Tocumen International from Istanbul, Paris, Amsterdam and Madrid, so every trip has at least one stop.