Residence Permit in Georgia: Types, Requirements, Fees and Deadlines

Getting a residence permit in Georgia looks surprisingly straightforward until you begin trying to understand which particular residence permit actually fits your situation, because by that point somebody will almost certainly have told you that one person received residence after registering a business, another bought an apartment, somebody else applied through a family member, while a fourth person has lived in Georgia for several years without applying for residence at all and genuinely cannot see why everyone else is making life so complicated. Most of these stories may be perfectly true. That does not automatically make them useful to the next person.

I would start not with a list of documents, application fees or the question of where exactly to submit the paperwork, but with something much more basic: what is the legal basis on which you are asking Georgia to grant you residence? Georgia has several residence routes, including work and entrepreneurial activity, study, family relationships, property ownership, investment and a separate route for certain people working in information technology. In ordinary conversation all of these are conveniently described as “a residence permit”, but the requirements for income, documents, property value, timing and the order in which things have to be done depend heavily on the particular route. Current categories, documents, processing times and government fees are published by the Public Service Development Agency of Georgia.

I've been practising law in St Petersburg for more than twenty years, and that left me with a fairly simple professional habit: before collecting documents, I want to understand what fact each of them is supposed to prove. I do not practise Georgian law, so this article is practical guidance based on current official sources rather than individual legal advice on Georgian law.

Article updated in October 2026.

In Short

I help people work out which Georgian residence route may fit their situation, what documents they are likely to need and in what order it makes sense to prepare for the application.

A Georgian residence permit is not something I would choose by asking which option is easiest. The first question is which legal basis actually applies to your situation. In 2026, the most common routes include work and entrepreneurial activity, study, family reunification, marriage to a Georgian citizen, property ownership, investment and a separate permit for certain IT professionals. Each category has its own rules on income, turnover, property value, family relationships, professional experience, documents and filing deadlines, which is why advice from somebody who applied a year or two ago may be entirely true and still be almost useless for your own case.

Start With the Legal Basis

One of the easiest ways to make a residence application more expensive and more confusing than it needs to be is to begin collecting paperwork before deciding which route you are actually using. That is when people start translating certificates, ordering bank statements, registering businesses and asking relatives abroad to find documents that were extremely important in somebody else’s application but may have very little to do with their own. A work residence permit is connected with employment or entrepreneurial activity, a short-term property permit depends on qualifying real estate and its assessed market value, family reunification depends on the relevant relationship with a foreign citizen who already holds Georgian residence, while the spouse of a Georgian citizen has a separate route. Study has its own basis, and certain IT professionals have a separate category as well.

Lawful stay in Georgia and Georgian residence are also not the same thing. A foreign citizen may be lawfully present under a visa, a visa-free regime or another recognised basis without holding a Georgian residence permit. Once residence has been approved, there is another practical distinction: the permit grants the status, while the residence card is obtained separately. Approval is therefore excellent news, but it does not necessarily mean that you have made your final visit to an administrative office.

Work residence is one of the areas where I would be particularly cautious about relying on old articles or the experience of somebody who applied last year. After the 2026 changes, labour migration for foreign citizens covered by the new regime is connected not only with the fact that somebody works or runs a business, but also with the right to work and the requirements applying to the relevant category. For a work residence permit, the Public Service Development Agency currently requires evidence of the activity and the applicable financial indicators; the general annual turnover threshold for an employer or enterprise is at least GEL 50,000 per foreign applicant, while educational and medical institutions are subject to a GEL 35,000 threshold per applicant. This is why the old advice that registering as an individual entrepreneur more or less solves the residence question is considerably less useful in 2026.

An exception now applies to certain newly registered companies. If an enterprise has been registered for no more than three months, employs no more than three foreign workers and is applying for work residence for a foreign employee for the first time, the July 2026 changes allow it to submit information about the number of foreign workers instead of the usual turnover evidence, although residence in that situation may be granted for no more than six months. Transitional deadlines also differed between groups: self-employed foreigners and individual entrepreneurs had to obtain the right to work by 1 May 2026, while labour immigrants with an active registration in the unified database as of 1 March 2026must obtain both the right to work and the appropriate residence permit by 1 January 2027.

The separate IT residence permit also requires considerably more than a laptop and remote work. For qualifying workers and entrepreneurs, the current rules include requirements concerning the type of activity, professional history and income, including at least two years of relevant experience and income from qualifying IT activity during the previous year of at least the equivalent of USD 25,000 in GEL. This category also has its own processing fees: GEL 500 for 30 calendar days, GEL 750 for 20 days and GEL 1,000 for 10 days.

Property, Investment, Family and Study

Property ownership remains one of the best-known routes to Georgian residence, but this is precisely where old articles can become expensive because the threshold changed. As of September 2026, a foreign citizen may apply for short-term residence if they own non-agricultural real estate in Georgia with a market value exceeding the equivalent of USD 150,000 in Georgian lari. The market value has to be established by a certified assessor of an accredited body, and that is the figure that matters for immigration purposes, not the asking price and not necessarily the amount written into the sale contract. The threshold increased from USD 100,000 on 1 March 2026, so older guides may still quote the previous figure. If residence is one of the reasons you are considering buying property in Tbilisi, this is the sort of detail that is far more pleasant to discover before the price of the apartment turns from a number in an advertisement into money transferred to the seller.

Investment residence is a separate route, although property appears there as well, which makes the two categories easy to confuse. The investment route involves a qualifying investment of at least the equivalent of USD 300,000 in GEL or ownership of qualifying non-agricultural real estate of the corresponding market value. Depending on the basis used, the holder may also need to demonstrate the required business turnover in subsequent years, and after five years an indefinite residence permit may become available if the statutory conditions continue to be met. One practical difference is that holders of a valid investment residence permit fall outside the scope of the Georgian Labour Migration Law, so they do not need to obtain a separate right to work under that law. Put simply, USD 150,000 and USD 300,000 belong to different immigration routes; they are not two price levels for the same permit.

Family routes should not be mixed together either. Family reunification is available to qualifying family members of a foreign citizen who already holds Georgian residence, while the spouse of a Georgian citizen has a separate permit. Study is another independent basis for foreign citizens enrolled in qualifying programmes at authorised Georgian educational institutions. “My husband lives in Georgia”, “my husband is Georgian” and “my husband has Georgian residence” may sound very similar over coffee, but for immigration purposes they are three completely different starting points.

Permanent Residence, Timing and Fees

The number of calendar years somebody has spent in Georgia does not by itself answer the question of whether they qualify for permanent residence. One current route is available to a foreign citizen who has lived in Georgia for the previous 10 years on the basis of temporary residence permits, while periods of residence for study or medical treatment are excluded from that calculation. Separate rules apply to certain family situations: the spouse of a Georgian citizen may qualify for permanent residence after five years of living in Georgia on the spouse residence permit, while separate routes are also available to a minor child of a Georgian citizen and to the parent of a minor Georgian citizen. Saying “I have lived in Georgia for ten years” describes a fact about your life. Saying “I have ten qualifying years for permanent residence” is already a legal conclusion.

Timing works in much the same way. For many categories, the general rule is that an application must be filed at least 40 calendar days before the end of lawful stay, but there are direct exceptions. For example, the rule does not apply to short-term residence based on property ownership, investment residence, special residence, indefinite residence or the IT residence permit. I would therefore not memorise “forty days” as a universal rule. First identify the category, then check the timing rule for that category and only after that begin counting backwards. This becomes particularly important when documents have to come from another country, because forty days can disappear with impressive speed once one certificate suddenly needs an apostille, a surname is spelled differently in two documents and the paper that was supposed to be ready on Tuesday turns out to require another paper before anyone will issue it. Immigration procedures have a rather specific understanding of the phrase “we still have plenty of time”.

For several common categories, current processing fees are GEL 300 for 30 calendar days, GEL 450 for 20 days and GEL 600 for 10 days. Some categories have their own fee structure: the IT residence permit costs GEL 500, GEL 750 or GEL 1,000 for processing in 30, 20 or 10 calendar days respectively, while the permit for the spouse of a Georgian citizen is processed within 90 calendar days and costs GEL 500. Fees, processing periods and financial thresholds are exactly the kind of information I would check again immediately before filing even if an article was updated recently, because administrative rules can change considerably faster than search results forget old instructions.

Documents and What Happens After Approval

Most residence applications share a familiar administrative framework, but the decisive documents are those proving the particular legal basis for the application. A property applicant needs to prove ownership and the required market value, a family applicant needs to establish the relevant relationship and financial circumstances, while a work or IT application may raise questions about employment, business activity, income, turnover, professional experience and the right to work. I find administrative applications much easier to understand backwards: first establish the fact that has to be proved, then identify the document capable of proving it. Otherwise a file can become very thick without becoming particularly persuasive. Depending on the category and the document involved, papers issued abroad may also require an apostille or legalisation unless an applicable international agreement provides otherwise.

Once residence has been granted, the process continues with the residence card. At the time of this update, the card can be issued for GEL 60 within ten working days, GEL 80 within five working days, GEL 100 within three, GEL 120 within two or GEL 150 on the same day. You need to apply for the card within one month after the residence permit is granted. A foreign citizen holding Georgian residence must also deal with residential address registration. The permit, the card and the registered address all belong to the same practical process, although unfortunately they do not arrive on one convenient piece of paper.

The Most Common Mistake Is Building Your Application Around Somebody Else’s Experience

Information travels very quickly in Georgia through friends, neighbours, Telegram groups, Facebook discussions and conversations over coffee, which works extremely well when you need to know where to buy something or which entrance to an office is actually open today, but immigration rules are much less forgiving of the phrase “someone told me”. The person giving you advice may have a different citizenship, a different type of lawful stay, a different family situation, a different source of income, a different business structure or an application filed before the 2026 changes, so every word of their story may be true while the conclusion you draw for your own situation is still wrong.

Before paying for translations, registering a business, buying property or ordering documents from another country, I would first identify the basis for residence, check the current requirements for that basis and only then build the application around them. It is not the most dramatic way to deal with immigration paperwork. It is usually the least expensive one.

Need help with a residence permit in Georgia?

If you are trying to understand which residence route fits your situation, I can help you make sense of the available options, current requirements, documents and the practical order in which to prepare for the application. If you already know which route you are using, I can also help you go through the documents and practical questions worth checking in advance. 

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Author Olga Sverchkova

I’m a writer. Before that, I've been practising law in St Petersburg for more than twenty years. I have lived in Tbilisi since 2023 and write about people, cities, relationships and everyday life.

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