Notice periods in the GCC: the rules in all six countries

The short answer, country by country

These are the statutory defaults for private-sector work. The figure that actually binds you is the one written into your own contract, which can be longer than the law but never shorter.

Three things the table does not tell you

Your contract can lengthen it, not shorten it. Every figure above is a floor. A Bahraini or Kuwaiti contract that gives you 90 days is valid; one that gives you 14 days is not. The UAE is the exception with a ceiling as well as a floor: 90 days is the statutory maximum.

A fixed-term contract may carry no notice at all. In Kuwait, a fixed-term contract simply runs to its end date; ending it early triggers compensation rather than notice. Read which kind of contract you are on before you read the notice clause.

Saudi Arabia is the one most guides get wrong. Article 75 — the 30/60-day rule in the table — governs indefinite-term contracts. Most expat workers in the Kingdom are on fixed-term contracts, so Article 75 never applies to them. Their route out is the resignation procedure introduced in 2025: you submit the resignation on Qiwa, and your employer has 30 days to accept, reject or defer it. Silence counts as acceptance after 30 days. A deferral has to be justified in writing and cannot push the end date beyond 60 days. You can withdraw the resignation within seven days.

There is a second Saudi trap worth knowing: the Ministry''s own website still displays the pre-2025 text of Article 75, with the old symmetrical 60/30 figures. If you fact-check yourself against it, you will find the wrong number.

Probation is a separate rule

Probation rarely follows the notice period in the main contract, and in two countries it carries consequences that outlast the job.

• UAE — maximum six months. The employer gives 14 days. If you resign to join another UAE employer you owe one month, and your new employer may have to reimburse the old one''s recruitment costs. If you resign to leave the country you owe 14 days. Leaving without giving the required notice can cost you a one-year ban on a new work permit.
• Qatar — maximum six months. Either side gives one month. If you move to another Qatari employer, the new one compensates the old for recruitment costs and the flight, capped at two months of your basic wage. Leaving the country without honouring the notice carries a one-year ban too.
• Saudi Arabia — up to 90 days, extendable to 180. Either side may end it, with no notice period set and no end-of-service award for the probation period.
• Kuwait — up to 100 working days, ended by either side without notice. If the employer ends it, you still earn indemnity for the time worked.
• Bahrain — up to three months, six for certain occupations. One day''s notice.
• Oman — three months for monthly-paid workers, two for others. Seven days'' notice.

Pay in lieu of notice

Every one of the six allows the notice to be bought out: the side that does not serve it pays the other the wage for the period it skipped. Two details differ and both matter to the amount.

• Qatar calculates it on your basic wage.
• Oman calculates it on your final gross wage.

Elsewhere it is your wage for the notice period, which in practice means the full contractual wage rather than basic alone. If your package is mostly allowances, that difference is large.

Leaving without serving it

In the UAE and Qatar, walking away from a job without serving notice is not only a money question. Both attach a one-year bar on a new work permit to particular cases — leaving the country during probation without notice in the UAE, and departing without honouring Article 49 or Article 39 in Qatar.

In Kuwait there is a separate practical block since July 2025: a non-Kuwaiti private-sector employee needs an employer-approved exit permit to leave the country at all.

Before you hand in your resignation

• Find out whether your contract is fixed-term or indefinite. It changes which rule applies.
• Read the notice clause itself, not the statutory figure. Yours may be longer.
• Check whether you are still inside probation. The rules there are different and, in the UAE and Qatar, harsher.
• Put the resignation in writing, and in Saudi Arabia submit it through Qiwa so the 30-day clock starts.
• If you are being asked to leave early, work out the pay in lieu yourself before you agree to a figure.

A note on how current this is

Labour law in the Gulf has moved a great deal recently. Oman replaced its entire labour law in July 2023, Saudi Arabia amended Article 75 in February 2025, and Qatar passed a substantial amendment in June 2026 whose implementing decisions were still being issued at the time of writing. Anything you read that predates those dates may be describing a law that no longer exists.