From 1 September the Ministry of Interior stops automatically extending visit visas and leave-of-absence permits, and the statutory periods and usual procedures come back into force.
The decision affects two entirely different groups: people visiting Kuwait on a visa, and residents who are currently outside the country.
What had been happening
Over the past period, visit visas and absence permits were extended automatically, without review and without the holder applying. That exception ends.
After 1 September every case returns to its prescribed period, and the holder has to keep track of it themselves.
Visit visas
The end of automatic extension applies to visit visas of all categories, not to one type.
In practice that means the expiry date on the visa is now an actual date rather than a number that rolls forward on its own. Anyone hosting a relative or a guest on a visit visa needs to recalculate.
The absence permit
This is the part that matters most to residents, and specifically to anyone outside the country right now.
The absence permit is the period a resident may stay outside Kuwait without losing their residency. It had been extended automatically, and will not be extended after 1 September.
There is an important exception: anyone who left Kuwait on 31 August or before remains covered by the exceptional extension under the rules in force. Anyone leaving after that has their period counted normally.
How to find your own date
Here the number you think is right matters less than the number officially recorded.
Published coverage indicates that the residency status certificate in the Sahel app is the approved reference for the absence permit’s expiry date. In any case it is the fastest way to check: open the app and read the date rather than estimating it.
For a resident reading this from outside Kuwait, that is the first step before booking a return ticket.
What has not been announced
At the time of writing no decision number had been published, no named official appeared in the coverage, no fee schedules were published for the periods coming back into force, and no transitional grace period was set for anyone in the middle of an existing extension.
Those are details that matter a great deal to anyone whose period ends in the first days of September.
Photo: a Kuwait Airways aircraft — by CAPTAIN RAJU via Wikimedia Commons, CC0
Further reading: the Ministry of Interior · Kuwait’s official e-government portal
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