Redomiciliation to the UAE
Four UAE registers accept a foreign company as the same legal entity, and each writes its own rulebook. We check the exit side first, then file where your structure actually fits.
Solvency statement
Платёжеспособность
14 days before filing
14 дней до подачи
DMCC discontinuation
Справка в DMCC
90 days
90 дней
DIFC inbound review
Срок в DIFC
5 working days
5 рабочих дней
RAK ICC transfer out
Выход из RAK ICC
AED 5,500
5 500 AED
When you need redomiciliation to the UAE
The register is in the wrong country
Office, residence permits and the people who decide things are all in the Emirates. The company meanwhile answers to a register nobody in the business has visited this year.
Only four doors are open
Four Emirates registers admit arriving companies, each on terms of its own. One legal form can be welcome at the first and impossible at the second.
Starting again would cost the record
A fresh incorporation is a different company. Its bank file begins empty, its contracts need novation, and its litigation cannot simply be handed across.
The old registrar sets the pace
Nothing is filed in the Emirates until the departing authority confirms it will let go. That confirmation has its own queue, and it is the part you cannot hurry.
You might need to leave again
A register that prices an exit has thought about letting companies go. One that never mentions it can turn a later move into a liquidation.
What you get
- A yes or no on whether this legal form may leave at all
- The receiving register chosen on activity, office and regulator
- The departing authority's consent in hand before anything is filed
- The certificate of continuation, and the foreign entry closed
- Licence, tax registration and staff settled after the move
What is required to redomicile to the UAE
A continued company is never re-founded. It keeps the same legal personality and, from the day the certificate issues, answers to a different statute. Property, debts and pending proceedings travel with it because the entity throughout is one and the same.
What makes the Emirates unusual is that four separate registers offer that door and none of them copies another. The same service with no country in it sits at redomiciliation; our UAE page carries the rest of what we handle here.
Which UAE registers take a foreign company
Abu Dhabi Global Market — continuance
Runs under the Companies Regulations 2020. Your home jurisdiction must authorise the application; each director then signs a solvency statement dated within fourteen days of filing and looking twelve months forward.
Dubai International Financial Centre — transfer of incorporation
Priced identically in both directions, with a published service standard of five working days inbound and ten outbound. A regulated firm settles its consent separately.
DMCC — certificate of continuation
Granted first and held on a condition: the discontinuation abroad must reach the registrar within ninety days. Seventy-five per cent of the votes approve the application, and the licence issues with the same decision.
RAK ICC — transfer of domicile
Filed only through a registered agent. Its published inbound line covers moves within the country, so a company arriving from abroad is quoted by the registrar when the file goes in.
What the mainland can and cannot do yet
Article 15 bis of the Commercial Companies Law, added by Federal Decree-Law 20 of 2025, lets commercial registration pass between competent authorities inside the country — emirate to emirate, free zone to mainland — with legal personality intact.
It is an internal mechanism whose procedure still waits on implementing regulations issued only in part. A company arriving from abroad therefore lands in one of the four registers above first.
What the registers publish
| Register | Arriving | Leaving |
|---|---|---|
| Abu Dhabi Global Market | $7,500 | $7,500 |
| Dubai International Financial Centre | $8,000 | $8,000 |
| RAK ICC | quoted at filing | AED 5,500 |
RAK ICC adds AED 1,750 where a trust sits in the ownership chain, and AED 1,250 or AED 1,750 for two or more layers of corporate shareholders.
The registrar's charge is the smallest part of the bill. The departing register bills its own exit, while notarised copies, legalisation and sworn translation are priced per document.
The licence and the people
No licence travels with a company. DMCC issues one to the arriving entity as part of the continuation decision; in Abu Dhabi Global Market it is billed apart — $200 a year, with a business activity fee of $900 to $16,000 by category.
Employment law changes with the register. The Employment Regulations 2024 have governed Abu Dhabi Global Market since 1 April 2025, and the DIFC applies Employment Law No. 2 of 2019. Contracts drafted elsewhere are re-read against whichever regime receives them.
Sources: eligibility, solvency and the outbound creditor rules — ADGM Companies Regulations 2020, ss. 100–114; published charges — ADGM Overview of Fees, DIFC Table of Fees and the RAK ICC Fee Schedule 2026; the ninety-day condition — DMCCA Company Regulations, arts 18–19.
Stages of work
Measuring the four against your entity.
Legal form, activity, office plan and regulator go against the admission rules of all four. Two usually fall away on form alone, and that happens before anybody pays a filing charge.
Confirming the exit is lawful.
The statute holding the company today has to permit an outbound continuation for this form. Where it does not, we scope a holding structure or a share transfer instead and put that answer in writing.
Resolutions and the consent abroad.
Members approve at whatever majority the departing statute demands — seventy-five per cent where DMCC receives the company. The departing authority's no-objection is requested early, because its date governs everything after it.
Assembling evidence inside its shelf life.
Good standing, incumbency, certified constitutional documents, legalisation and translation all expire. We sequence them around the solvency statement, which at Abu Dhabi Global Market holds for only fourteen days before filing.
Filing, then closing the foreign entry.
The receiving registrar issues its certificate. Where that certificate is conditional — ninety days at DMCC — we run the discontinuation abroad inside the window and return the proof before it lapses.
Becoming a UAE company in practice.
Corporate tax registration with the Federal Tax Authority, the licence and establishment file, employees moved onto the receiving centre's employment rules, and every bank and counterparty told before they discover it themselves.
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