How to transfer your iqama to a new employer in Saudi Arabia

Can you move without your employer’s approval?

For most expat workers in the Saudi private sector, yes — and it has been that way since 14 March 2021, when the Labour Reform Initiative took effect. The initiative changed who controls a job move. The new employer applies, the request runs through the Qiwa platform, and a release letter from your current employer is no longer the thing that decides it.

What still matters is when you move. The table below is the short version; the sections after it explain each case.

When approval is not needed at all

There is a short list of situations where a transfer is allowed regardless of what your current employer wants. The most common are:

• Your work contract has expired and has not been renewed.
• Your wages have gone unpaid for three consecutive months.
• You arrived in the Kingdom and no work permit was issued for you within 90 days.
• Your employer’s establishment file or licence is not valid.
• Your employer has reported you absent from work without cause, or the establishment is subject to a concealment case.
• You have a labour dispute in which the Ministry has ruled in your favour.

These are exceptions, not a general escape route, and each one has to be visible in the system. An unpaid-wages case, for example, is judged on what the Wage Protection System shows — not on what you tell the new employer.

Moving part-way through a contract

This is where most people get stuck, and where advice from colleagues is least reliable.

Two things have to line up: how long you have been with the employer, and the notice you give. As the reform was published, a worker who has completed a year can move before the contract ends, provided proper notice is served. Notice in Saudi contracts commonly runs from 30 to 90 days, and the figure that binds you is the one in your own contract.

The notice clause is the one line worth reading twice before you resign.

Read the clause itself rather than relying on what a colleague was told. Notice periods across the GCC sets out how the six countries differ.

One prerequisite catches people out more than any rule: your contract has to be documented on Qiwa. If it was never uploaded and authenticated, the system has nothing to transfer, and the request will not move however willing both employers are.

What the transfer looks like on Qiwa

The request is started by the employer you are moving to, not by you. In practice it runs in five steps:

1. The new employer submits a transfer request for you on Qiwa, with the job offer attached.
2. You review the offer and accept it from your own Qiwa account. There is a time limit on your response.
3. Your current employer is notified and has a window in which to respond.
4. Any notice period in your current contract runs its course.
5. The transfer completes and your iqama moves to the new employer.

You can follow every stage from your own Qiwa account, which is worth doing rather than waiting to be told.

Who pays

The new employer pays the transfer fee. It is a cost of hiring you, not a cost of leaving.

If anyone — your current employer, a middleman, someone acting informally as a PRO — asks you for money to be "released", that is not how the process works. It is worth reporting rather than paying.

Before you resign

• Check the end date and the notice clause on your Qiwa contract, not on the paper copy you were handed.
• Confirm the new employer has a valid establishment file and can actually issue a work permit.
• Get the offer in writing and accept it on Qiwa, not over WhatsApp.
• Do not cancel anything — a lease, a school place, a car — until the transfer shows as complete.