If you are planning Umrah, the most-misunderstood number on your visa is “validity” — because the Umrah visa runs on two separate clocks, and they were not changed together. In late 2025 Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Hajj and Umrah amended the rules for the 1447 AH season: the visa’s entry window was shortened, while the length of stay it grants once you are in the Kingdom was left untouched. We verified the current rule on 2026-06-21 against the Ministry’s announcement and the official Nusuk platform. Here is what actually changed, and what did not.
Two clocks, not one
- Entry validity — now 30 days from the date the visa is issued. This is the window in which you must enter Saudi Arabia. If you do not register your entry within 30 days, the Umrah visa is automatically cancelled. It was three months before the amendment.
- Stay duration — still up to 90 days (three months) counted from your arrival. This is how long you may remain in the Kingdom to perform Umrah and visit. This number did NOT change.
So a traveller issued a visa on 1 March must enter by roughly 31 March (the 30-day entry window), and — having entered — may then stay until late June (the 90-day stay clock, running from the arrival date, not the issue date). Mixing the two is the classic mistake: some let the visa lapse because they treat the 90 days as the deadline to fly; others cut their trip short because they think 30 days is all they get on the ground. Neither is correct.
Why Saudi Arabia tightened the entry window
The change is a crowd-management measure, not a restriction on the pilgrimage itself. With record Umrah demand — millions of visas issued across the season — a shorter entry window stops visas being issued months ahead and used unpredictably, helping the authorities regulate arrivals into Makkah and Madinah ahead of the peak. The pilgrimage experience once you arrive is unchanged: the 90-day stay, multiple-entry travel within the Kingdom, and the ability to visit beyond the holy cities all remain.
What still trips applications up
Beyond the validity confusion, Umrah visas are refused or cancelled for a familiar set of reasons. We list them in full on the visa page; the most common are:
- Applying outside the official Nusuk Umrah platform or through an unapproved agent.
- Missing the mandatory meningococcal (ACWY) vaccination certificate — and, for some countries, polio or seasonal requirements.
- A passport with under six months’ validity.
- Letting the 30-day entry window lapse before travelling — the visa self-cancels.
- A prior overstay or misuse of an earlier Umrah visa (for example, working, or staying on for Hajj without authorisation).
For the verified stay, entry rules, document checklist and the full refusal-reason list by passport, see the Saudi Arabia Umrah visa page and switch it to your nationality. Travelling through Saudi Arabia rather than for Umrah? The separate stopover/transit visa lets you enter for up to 96 hours — and you can perform Umrah on it.
How we keep this honest
This post accompanies a data correction: our Umrah page had stored the 30-day figure as the stay, conflating the entry window with the time on the ground. We corrected the stay to its real 90 days, recorded the source and date, and added the verified refusal reasons, all on 2026-06-21, as part of a fresh verification of Saudi Arabia’s inbound visa programs against official Saudi portals. Our full method is in the Editorial & Data Standards.