Iran digital nomad visa & residency (2026)

Iran's official non-immigrant visa categories — Entry, Tourist, Work, Treatment, Press, Student, Family, and Investment — include no dedicated remote-work, digital-nomad, or self-employed category. Iran does not appear on any authoritative list of countries offering such programmes.

Under Article 121 of the Iranian Labor Law, a work permit may only be issued where no qualified Iranian national is available for the position; the employer must apply to the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare on the foreign national's behalf. Self-employed or remotely-employed individuals with no Iranian sponsor cannot obtain a work permit.

A foreigner may obtain a residence permit only after entering on the appropriate visa and registering with the police; for workers this is contingent on a valid employer-sponsored work permit. There is no points-based or income-threshold route to residency independent of an Iranian employer or family relationship.

An 'Investment' visa category appears on the MFA portal, but this targets capital investors in Iranian enterprises, not location-independent remote workers; no publicly available regulations establish income thresholds or passive-income eligibility akin to a golden-visa programme for digital nomads.

Under a February 2025 National Security Presidential Memorandum, the US Treasury OFAC re-imposed maximum-pressure sanctions, designating over 1,000 Iran-related persons, vessels, and aircraft by mid-2025 and explicitly targeting Iran's banking and foreign-currency exchange networks. This effectively cuts Iran off from SWIFT-connected banking and international payment platforms on which digital nomads depend.

The US State Department notes that visa reciprocity with Iran is suspended; US nationals cannot obtain an Iranian visa through normal consular channels, and Iran generally does not issue visas to US passport holders. Other nationalities face heightened scrutiny. No pathway exists for US-based nomads specifically.