Georgia added a five-year visa that allows stays of up to a year at a time
Amendments published in April and June 2026 created a new C5 short-term ordinary visa: valid for five years, allowing stays of up to one year, and covering entry as a tourist while carrying out activities solely for a non-resident's business outside Georgia. The same package exempts several categories of work from needing a work permit, and a new D6 visa covers minors studying in Georgia together with their parents or guardians.
What the C5 actually is
The C5 is a short-term ordinary visa. Its validity runs five years, and within that validity it permits a stay of up to one year. The category it was written for is the visitor who arrives as a tourist but is, while here, working for a business that sits outside Georgia and belongs to a non-resident. The amendment took effect on publication. The practical gain is not a new right to be in the country so much as a longer-dated document: one application covering five years of coming and going, rather than a fresh decision at each entry.
Work that no longer needs a permit
Amendments published on 15 April 2026 remove the work-authorisation requirement for three situations: short-term project work carried out during a visit, in the terms set by government resolution; work or services performed for a non-resident employer or client in connection with that party's operations abroad; and managerial or audit-committee roles in enterprises falling into Categories I, II or III under the accounting law. Read together with the C5, this is the state writing down something that was previously a grey area for consultants and company directors who spend part of the year here.
A separate visa for families with a child in school here
The D6 immigration visa is issued for one year to minors studying in Georgia, and can be extended to parents or guardians and to minor siblings. It takes effect from 1 September 2026. For a family weighing a move rather than a long holiday, this is the more consequential of the two new categories: it treats schooling as the anchor and attaches the adults to it, which is a different structure from each adult qualifying separately on work or investment grounds.
What none of this decides
A visa category governs entry and length of stay. It is not a statement about where your income is taxed, and the two questions are decided under different parts of the law. Someone who spends most of a year in Georgia on a C5 and keeps earning from abroad still has to work out their tax residence position on its own terms, and in both countries involved. If the plan is to buy property here and spend long stretches in it, the visa is the easy half of the problem and worth settling early with an adviser who handles the other half as well.
Written by us from the source linked above, not investment, legal or tax advice. Figures and rules change — confirm anything that matters before acting on it.
