sponsorship if not employed

Hi Stefne. This is a tough one.

The best ways to get a residence permit in Bahrain are to either find a job for you here or to be married to your fiancé.

There are a few ways in which you could apply for a residence permit, but too expensive in my view. I will list them out any way so that you have the full picture:

1) Be an investor in a local business.
2) Purchase residential property.
3) Retirement visa for those who have lived and worked in Bahrain for a long time.

These are called "Self Sponsorship Residence Permit".

Option (3) will not be available to you, obviously. There are minimum investment amounts for options (1) and (2).

For more information, please take a look here: http://www.npra.gov.bh/en/services/visa … onsorship/

PS:
If your objective is to be closer to your fiancé, and you are able to get visit visas at the airport on arrival, then you could think of this possibility.

Only hitch is you will have to renew your visit visa each time it expires and also may need to fly out of Bahrain and get back in order to renew the visit visa.

Lot's of people live here on a visit visa but it depends on your nationality. Other than that you need to get married.

thank you so much for the information!  the fiancé is working on getting me listed as a "support" person in his company contract.  I guess we'll see how that goes.  He is going to be in Bahrain this Thursday to look for housing.  Any good ideas for us to live that's safe and beautiful?  I'd be there alone most of the week.

Thank you very much! We definitely will be married.  Just not sure of the place or time as of yet.  Kinda difficult to maneuver that at this point, when we're so far apart. Wasn't sure if that needed to happen pre-move or not.