Who can file here from 31 August 2026
The consulate serves the UAE and describes its own district on the site as Dubai and the Northern Emirates; the same country is served by the embassy in Abu Dhabi. The e-Visa page has not changed since 6 January 2025, and the 31 August rule is not reflected on it: it still carries the old pairing — a document showing current location, that is, a valid UAE residence visa or an Emirates ID. In the consulate’s announcement feed there is nothing about the DTV at all.
Formally, permanent residence does not exist as a category for a foreigner in the UAE: even the Golden Visa is a residence visa. Which means an Emirates ID and a residence visa are the only possible answer to the new field in the form. But the post has not confirmed that, and we have not seen a single completed filing through Dubai after 31 August. We say so honestly rather than selling the old rule as the current one.
How filing works
- You can file only while in the UAE: applications from Thailand or any other country “will not be considered and will be rejected”. That is the post’s wording, not a recommendation.
- A return ticket from the UAE specifically and from the airline specifically: agency bookings and confirmations by letter are not accepted. The accommodation booking in Thailand has to match the dates on the ticket.
- Timeline: “up to 5–20 days”, no express service; the post advises planning 20–30 days before the trip.
- The fee is not published on the current page. The consulate’s archived checklist of August 2024 gives AED 1,500 — there is no recent confirmation, so treat it as a guide, not a price.
- Finances: 500,000 THB is about AED 55,669 on 3 September. The form accepts three months of statements from one or several banks, or a sponsorship letter. The archived checklist demands an original statement with the bank’s stamp no older than 15 days and a residence visa valid for at least three months from the date of entry into Thailand: both are stricter than the form and neither has been publicly withdrawn.
- The consulate reserves the right to call an applicant in for an interview in person.
The criminal record certificate
The post does not mention it; the e-Visa form has required it since 31 August. The UAE police clearance certificate is available to a foreign resident as a matter of course: in the MOI service card the recipient is listed as “Citizen, Resident”, you need an Emirates ID and a UAE PASS login, the document is issued in Arabic and English, and the stated time is from 5 minutes to 9 hours.
Two numbers wreck people’s plans. For use abroad the fee is AED 100, not AED 50 — fifty is the domestic rate; on top of that comes compulsory attestation at the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs for AED 300, about AED 400 in all. And the certificate itself is valid for 30 days from the date of issue, against a processing time of 5–20 days. The window is almost nil: you order the certificate right up against the filing, not in advance.
For documents from the UAE the route is consular legalisation through the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For Thailand an apostille does not work until 28 February 2027 in any case.
A separate case is a Briton in the UAE: ACRO does not post paper certificates to the Emirates and asks for a mailing address in another country. The form, meanwhile, allows the certificate of the country of citizenship instead of the country of filing.
What else matters
In four cases from before the rule, decisions in Dubai took from two weeks to three months; in one it was about 59 days and two rounds of document requests. There is also a recorded refusal on a workation application in May 2026. Since 31 August the chats have gone quiet: to the direct question of whether anyone had received a DTV in Dubai, the answer was “nobody”.
Whether a dependant needs an Emirates ID of their own has no single answer: three mutually exclusive claims and not one confirmed case. From 15 September 2026 visa-free entry for UAE citizens drops from 60 to 30 days.
What we track here
Whether an Emirates ID closes the new field in the form. Whether the post will ask for the certificate. Whether the archived requirements about 15 days and three months are still alive. And the first decision after 31 August — until then any promise about Dubai is premature.
A package you have assembled yourself we check before filing — the Preflight Check: $300, a written report within two working days. Full support all the way to the visa is the Solo Route and Family Route.
The state of every consulate is on the live board, and the consulate assigned to your country is on the map.