Moving to Qatar from the UK

Our residency index: 60/100, possible, with conditions. It is our own rating of how realistic long-term residency in Qatar is for UK citizens, based on the routes Qatar publishes. Long-term residency is realistic either through an employer-sponsored work permit or by buying real estate worth QAR 730,000 for a renewable residence permit, with a higher property tier granting capped permanent residency; there is no self-funded passive-income or retirement route.

The cheapest self-funded routes we track:

• Investment: about $200k (Qatar real-estate investor residency, QAR 730,000 (~USD 200,000) for a renewable residence permit tied to the property; USD/QAR pegged at 3.65. A QAR 3.65M (~USD 1M) tier grants permanent residency, capped at 100/year.; as of June 2026)

Check the official requirements before you apply: amounts, conditions and exchange rates change, and what a couple needs can differ from a single applicant's threshold.

For short visits, UK passport holders can get a visa on arrival for a visit, according to the passport-index dataset. Short-stay entry covers visits; living there takes a residence permit.

Ranked by our match model for a typical couple who both hold UK passports, using the preset answers of our best places to live list. Your own answers would change the order. We pick the cities, up to five, by how often English Wikipedia readers looked them up over the past year.

1. 1

   1. Doha

   59% match

   Est. cost

   €3,264/mo

   Avg temp

   28°C

   Safety index

   88/100

Our estimate for a couple living centrally in Doha is €3,264 a month. For comparison, we estimate €4,315 a month in London. Use these figures to compare places rather than to set a budget.

Qatar is in our zero or very low tax tier (little to no personal income tax); the UK is in our high tax tier (high personal income tax). Tiers describe each country's own income tax. They do not cover tax you may still owe in the UK after you leave, or the treaty between the two countries, so check both with a tax adviser before you move.

• Best warm, dry cities to live in
• Best places to live in the Middle East and North Africa
• Best cities to live in with zero or very low income tax
• Warm, affordable cities to live abroad

• Moving to Qatar from the US
• Moving to Qatar from Canada
• Moving to Qatar from Australia
• Moving to Qatar from Ireland
• Moving to Qatar from New Zealand

Every country and origin we cover

Every figure here comes from the datasets behind our city and country pages:

• Short-stay entry: the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT license), which records the entry rule for short visits on each passport.
• Residency index, routes and thresholds: the OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. It is a summary, not legal advice.
• City ranking: our match model, the one behind the quiz, run with a typical couple's preset answers and both partners holding UK passports. It ranks up to five of the country's best-known cities: of the cities in our quiz (100,000 people or more, capitals and a few towns movers seek out, such as Faro), the five most read about on English Wikipedia over the past year. It folds suburbs into their main city and leaves out countries with a residency index under 40 and areas under a US State Department Level 4 advisory, as our best-cities lists do.
• Costs: our cost model, a country-level cost-of-living index scaled for city size, from our city dataset (last rebuilt June 2026).
• Tax tiers: three coarse bands we assign by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation.