A baby born in the UAE to expatriate parents arrives with no legal status of any kind. Not the
parents’ nationality, not residency, not an identity record. Everything has to be created from scratch,
in a specific order, against two deadlines — and the second one carries a daily charge.
This is the sequence for registering a birth in the UAE, from the notification the
hospital hands you to the residence visa that finally makes your child a legal resident of the country
they were born in.
The two deadlines
These are the numbers everything else hangs on. Both are quoted here from the UAE Government portal
as published, because they are the two figures that most often appear wrong elsewhere.
| What | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Register the birth | “Residents have a maximum period of 30 days to register their child’s birth in the UAE.” |
| Complete all documents — birth certificate, passport, Emirates ID and visa | “Residents have 120 days from the birth of their child to arrange the formal documents.” |
| If the residence visa is late | “A fee of AED 100 per day would be charged for each day over the 120-day period.” |
One hundred and twenty days sounds generous. It is not, once you account for a document that has to
travel to your home country’s embassy and back. Start in week one.
Step 1: the hospital notification
After the birth, the hospital issues a stamped and signed birth notification. This is not the birth
certificate — it is the document that lets you apply for one, and it is the only thing you cannot obtain
later, so check the spelling of every name on it before you leave.
Where you go next depends on where the birth took place. For a birth in a private hospital, parents
apply to the Ministry of Health and Prevention or to the health authority of their emirate.
Step 2: the birth certificate
In Abu Dhabi, this is now a digital process. The Department of Health moved birth
certificate issuance onto the TAMM platform, and the flow is designed around the hospital: parents
receive a notification from the healthcare facility, are then prompted with registration and login
instructions, upload the required documents and pay the fee online. The Department restates the emirate
rule plainly — newborn birth certificates must be issued within 30 days of the date of birth. Our guide
to how TAMM works covers
the platform itself if you have not used it before.
Federally, the Ministry of Health and Prevention runs an electronic birth and death registration
system. It provides electronic reports of births in both government and private hospitals, handles
requests to issue, reissue or replace certificates, and produces an electronic copy of the certificate.
Usefully, it is connected to the identity authority, so the population register is updated directly.
One thing to be clear about: you may read about “Mabrouk Ma Yak”, the service that
bundles birth certificate, Emirates ID, passport and family book into a single request and cuts parents
from seven visits to one. It is excellent — and it is for Emirati newborns only. It is not available to
expatriate parents, and guides that suggest otherwise are wrong.
We are not quoting a certificate fee. The figures circulating come from press coverage rather than the
authorities themselves, which say only that the required fee is payable. Check the current amount on the
service page when you apply.
Step 3: attestation and translation
This is the step expatriate parents underestimate, and it is where the 120 days go.
The birth certificate must be attested by the Ministry of Health and Prevention and by the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. There is a shortcut worth knowing: a certificate stamped by the Department of Health –
Abu Dhabi or by the Dubai Health Authority is treated as equivalent to the Ministry of Health seal, so an
Abu Dhabi or Dubai stamp substitutes for that stage.
You will also need an attested copy of your marriage certificate, translated into Arabic if it is in
any other language, along with originals and copies of both parents’ passports and residence visas. If
you married here, our guide to
civil and court marriage in the
UAE covers where that certificate comes from; if you married abroad, our guide to
document attestation through
MoFA covers the chain it has to go through first. Parents who have not yet dealt with attestation
should read that one before the baby arrives, not after.
Step 4: the passport
Your child’s first passport comes from your own country’s embassy or consulate in the UAE, not from
any UAE authority. Every mission has its own requirements, forms, fees and turnaround times, and they
differ enough that no general guide can usefully summarise them — contact yours directly, and do it
early, because the residence visa cannot be issued without the passport.
Parents of different nationalities should ask both missions, since which passport the child is
entitled to is a question of each country’s nationality law, not UAE law.
Step 5: Emirates ID and the residence visa
An Emirates ID is mandatory for all UAE citizens and residents, including newborns. It is issued by
the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Ports Security, and you apply either through
the authority’s website or through an accredited typing centre; you may need to attend a service centre
for biometric details. Our guide to
applying for and renewing
an Emirates ID covers the process in full.
The residence visa is the last piece, and it works as a sponsorship — the child is added to a parent’s
sponsorship in the same way any dependant is. Our guide to
family and dependant
visas covers the requirements, and our
overview of UAE visa types
sets out where it sits among the rest. This is the step the 120-day clock and the AED 100 daily charge
attach to.
The order that actually works
| # | Step | Who issues it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Birth notification | The hospital |
| 2 | Birth certificate | MoHAP, or DoH Abu Dhabi via TAMM, or DHA in Dubai |
| 3 | Attestation and Arabic translation | MoHAP and MoFA — or a DoH/DHA stamp in place of MoHAP |
| 4 | Passport | Your embassy or consulate |
| 5 | Emirates ID | ICP |
| 6 | Residence visa | ICP, under a parent’s sponsorship |
Two practical notes. Health cover for the newborn is a separate obligation with its own rules — see
our guides to UAE
health insurance and, if you are in the capital, to
the Department of Health’s
rules and the basic plan. And the leave you are entitled to while doing all of this is set out in our
guide to maternity and parental
leave.
Nothing in the sequence is difficult on its own. The difficulty is that steps three and four run
through institutions that do not answer to the UAE calendar, and the clock does not stop for them.
Primary sources: the UAE Government portal on
having
a baby in the UAE and on
Emirates
ID; the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi on
digital
birth certificates and the
TAMM
birth certificate service; and the Ministry of Health and Prevention on its
electronic
birth and death registration system. Deadlines and fees were read on 20 August 2026 — confirm the
current position on the service page before you rely on them.
