For more than seventy years, a foreign worker’s legal status in Saudi Arabia was tied directly to a single employer, the kafeel, who controlled whether that worker could change jobs, leave the country, or even hold onto their own passport. That system, known as Kafala, was formally replaced in June 2025 with a contract-based employment framework. If you are considering work in Saudi Arabia, or are already there, here is what the reform actually changes, who it covers, and where the old vulnerabilities persist.
What Changed
Employment in Saudi Arabia is now governed by a formal contract registered on the government’s Qiwa digital platform, rather than by informal sponsorship. Three changes matter most for someone actually doing the work. First, job mobility: workers can change employers without prior approval once they meet contract conditions, typically after completing one year of service. Second, freedom of movement: the exit and re-entry visa system that once required a sponsor’s signature has been eliminated, and workers can request travel authorization directly through government platforms. Third, legal recourse: workers now have direct access to labor courts and dispute mechanisms without needing employer consent to file a complaint.
Passport confiscation, long a hallmark of the old system despite technically being illegal even then, is explicitly barred under the new framework, and enforcement is tied to the same digital contract system. Roughly 13 million migrant workers are affected by the reform, more than 2.6 million of them from India, with large populations from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, the Philippines, and several African countries also covered.
Who Actually Qualifies
The reform is not universal, and eligibility carries real conditions. Coverage applies to private-sector employees on documented, Qiwa-registered contracts. Workers generally need at least one year of continuous service with their current employer before they can transfer freely, along with a clean legal record and a verified offer from another Qiwa-compliant employer. Job changes are also permitted outside the one-year threshold in cases of contract violations, such as unpaid wages or a role that does not match what was promised at hiring.
One recent addition worth knowing about: as of 2026, Qiwa also caps total job changes at seven employment contracts per rolling year, with a maximum of two active contracts at once. This is aimed at curbing rapid job-hopping rather than restricting legitimate mobility, but it means workers should plan transfers deliberately rather than assuming unlimited switching.
Where the Gaps Remain
Domestic workers, including housekeepers, drivers, and caregivers, are the clearest exception. This group is still governed by separate regulations and has not automatically received the same protections as private-sector employees, though officials have said phased coverage may extend to this group over time. Anyone recruited for domestic work should confirm current terms directly with Saudi labor authorities before accepting a position, since this is the category where the old dynamics are most likely to persist in practice.
Implementation is also uneven in a more general sense. Multiple legal and policy analyses note that the reform’s rollout is still unfolding, and past reform announcements in the region have sometimes fallen short of full enforcement on the ground. A verified Qiwa-registered contract is the single most important document a worker can have, since it is what labor courts and dispute mechanisms actually reference.
How Saudi Arabia Compares to Its Neighbors
Saudi Arabia’s reform did not happen in isolation. Bahrain was the first Gulf state to formally repeal Kafala, back in 2009. Qatar enacted significant reforms ahead of the 2022 World Cup, including removing employer permission requirements to change jobs and setting a non-discriminatory minimum wage. In practice, Qatar’s implementation has been mixed. Human Rights Watch’s 2026 World Report found that despite the formal reforms, workers in Qatar still face wage theft and exploitation, and a de facto no-objection requirement re-emerged through signed resignation letters in the months after the 2020 reform took effect.
The UAE presents a more limited picture. According to a comparative academic analysis, the freedom to change or quit a job without employer permission after one contract year, now standard in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, is still not available in the UAE, Oman, or Lebanon. A 2025 review by Business and Human Rights Centre also found that the UAE’s newer unemployment insurance scheme leaves out domestic workers and other groups who remain most dependent on employer sponsorship. Across every Gulf country with reforms on paper, domestic workers are consistently the group left furthest behind.
What This Means If You’re Considering Work in the Gulf
The practical advice for a prospective worker has shifted. Before accepting an offer, confirm that the employer is Qiwa-registered and that the contract itself, not a verbal agreement or a recruitment agency’s promise, states the actual terms of pay, working hours, and job role. Because job mobility protections are tied to that registered contract, workers arriving through informal or undocumented channels do not get the benefit of these reforms even if they are physically working in Saudi Arabia.
For workers already in the region considering a move between Gulf countries, the reform landscape is genuinely uneven. Saudi Arabia and Qatar currently offer the most formal mobility rights on paper. The UAE lags on job-switching freedom specifically, even though it has made separate improvements to domestic worker protections since 2017. None of the Gulf states have fully closed the gap for domestic workers, and this is the area where independent verification, through organizations like the ILO or Migrant-Rights.org, is most worth doing before accepting a position, rather than relying on a recruitment agency’s description of the role.