Where to live in Kuwait
We track one city in Kuwait: Kuwait City. It averages 27°C over the year. We estimate a couple needs €2,776 a month to live centrally. Kuwait sits in our zero or very low tax tier. For citizens from outside the Gulf Cooperation Council states, long-term residency is hard to obtain.
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- Tax tier
- Zero or very low
- Little to no personal income tax
- Languages
- Arabic
- Some English
- Safety
- 78/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 70/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~120 Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The city we track
| City | Size | Setting | Avg temp | Rain a year | Est. cost a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kuwait City | smaller | coastal | 27°C | 130 mm | €2,776 |
Source: City size from GeoNames, temperature from the Open-Meteo archive (2019 to 2023 averages), rainfall from TerraClimate (1991 to 2020 normals), coast distance from Natural Earth. Cost is our model estimate for a couple living centrally.
Taxes
Kuwait sits in our zero or very low tax tier: little to no personal income tax. The tier applies to every city here, and couples who cap tax below it will not see these cities in their results.
Source: OurNextCity tax tiers, assigned by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation, with no fixed rate cut-offs. Coarse by design; not tax advice.
Residency and visas
Hard to obtain, for people from outside the Gulf Cooperation Council states. Residency is overwhelmingly sponsor-tied (kafala); the only self-funded long-term routes are a discretionary investor permit (KDIPA-licensed business), a property-owner permit, and a new self-sponsored category, with no permanent residency or realistic citizenship.
Citizens of the Gulf Cooperation Council states have freedom-of-movement or simplified residency rights here.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Kuwait:
- Investment: about $650k (Kuwait property-owner 10-year residency (effective 23 Dec 2025); no fixed statutory minimum, case-by-case, but a qualifying private home runs ~KD 200,000-300,000, with KD 200,000 the practical low end (1 KWD = ~3.26 USD); foreign individual ownership is itself tightly restricted (10-year prior residency, one home, 1,000 sqm cap); as of June 2026)
For short visits, 5 of 198 passports can enter visa-free, 53 can get an e-visa or visa on arrival and 140 need a visa in advance.
Source: OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed approximations researched against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. Not legal advice: check the official source before you apply. Short-stay entry from the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT).