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How a foreigner opens a company in Oman in 2026

· Saned team · investorcompany-formation

Two questions reach us more than any others: "Do I still need an Omani partner?" and "Is there a minimum capital I have to put in?" The short answer to both is no. This article walks the path as it stands in 2026, step by step.

What this article does not contain, and why. No government fees, no durations, no bank deposit figures, no residency amounts. We have numbers for all of those in our research notes, and every one of them comes from secondary sources — consultancies, law firms and the press. Not one is confirmed against a primary source. On this subject a wrong number costs a real person real money, so it stays unpublished until a human has checked it against the Official Gazette. That is the same rule the reserved-activity checker is built on, and this article is held to it. If you have seen any of these published as a firm figure, ask which gazette issue it is in.

What changed with Royal Decree 50/2019

The Foreign Capital Investment Law was issued by Royal Decree 50/2019 and took effect on 1 January 2020. For most activities it brought two things:

  • No mandatory Omani partner. A foreign investor can own the company outright.
  • No legal minimum capital. The old restriction — a mandatory Omani shareholding and a floor on paid-up capital — was abolished.

Old minimum-capital figures are still quoted on consultancy websites today. They pre-date this decree. If you see one in a quote, ask when the quote was written.

Check first: is your activity on the barred list?

The one exception to the rule above is a list of activities reserved for Omanis. Ministerial Decision 209/2020 issued it with seventy activities; Ministerial Decision 364/2023 then repealed two and added twenty-seven; and Ministerial Decision 435/2024 added a further twenty-eight — bringing the total to 123 activities. Much of what is published online cites only 209/2020 and 435/2024, arithmetic that cannot reach 123 because it silently drops the 2023 amendment.

The first thing to do in any application — before paying anything — is to confirm the intended activity is not on that list. You can check yours against the full 123 here: the reserved-activity checker. A check that takes minutes saves a rejection that does not.

The path, in the order the authorities take it

An investor does not want seven transactions; they want one result: "open my company." Behind that result sit ten steps across different authorities. What follows is the sequence and the authority for each step — not how long any of them takes, and not what any of them costs.

# Step Authority
1 Activity eligibility check Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion
2 Trade-name reservation The Ministry
3 Memorandum of Association, notarised in Arabic The Ministry / Notary Public
4 Commercial Registration (CR) The Ministry, via the Invest Easy portal
5 Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry membership The Chamber
6 Municipality licence — requires a registered premises lease The relevant municipality
7 Tax registration and tax card Oman Tax Authority
8 Establishment file for employment and work permits Ministry of Labour
9 Company bank account — in person, with KYC The bank
10 Investor residency (optional) The Ministry / Royal Oman Police

The incorporation itself runs digitally through the Invest Easy portal of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion.

Two of those ten are outside anyone's control but the counterparty's: the bank account, which the bank opens on its own policy and its own schedule, and any sector licence (health, education, transport, food and others) that your activity needs on top of the CR. The company does not trade before the account exists, so plan around it rather than around the registration.

Reported, not established: a first-year Omani-hire obligation

Press reporting in 2025 described a new obligation on foreign-owned companies to employ an Omani national within the first year of registration, registered with the Social Protection Fund, and attributed it to Ministerial Decision 411/2025. We have not found that decision in the Official Gazette, so we do not state it here as a rule. We name it because a reader who has seen the reporting should know we looked and what we found — not so that it can be planned against. Before you rely on it, ask the Ministry of Labour directly, or ask whoever quoted it which gazette issue carries it.

What we are still verifying

Everything below exists in our notes with a number attached, and none of it is confirmed:

  • Government fees for registration, licences and permits — they follow the activity and the registration grade, and cannot honestly be priced before a file is reviewed.
  • How long registration takes, and how long until a company can trade.
  • What banks expect in practice when a foreign-owned company opens an account.
  • Investor residency tiers and the investment amounts attached to them. Sources contradict each other here more than anywhere else.
  • The filing detail inside the sequence above: exactly what each authority accepts, and who may file on a foreign investor's behalf.

Our rule at Saned: the fee is confirmed after your file is reviewed, and we never show a total we cannot stand behind.

Where Saned fits on this path

What we do with you today:

  1. Eligibility check — is the activity outside the reserved list, and which sector licences does it need.
  2. Your document and attestation list, by your situation (individual or parent company) and your country — before you buy a plane ticket. Read: The documents to attest before you fly.
  3. File preparation — collecting the documents and checking they are complete and valid.
  4. Follow-up and reminders — the CR, the municipality licence and the Chamber membership all renew annually.

And what we say plainly is outside our scope: opening the bank account (the bank requires you in person) and drafting the Memorandum of Association (legal work for a lawyer or a consultancy). Filing on the Invest Easy portal on your behalf is handled by a licensed Sanad office within what the rules allow, and we tell you in advance about any step that needs your presence or a notarised power of attorney.

Sources