No Treaty Gives Anyone a Right to Live in Georgia; the Nearest Thing Is a Visa Waiver and a Defence Exemption
No residence permit in Georgia is granted by membership of a union, a common market or a free-movement area. Article 15 of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons is a closed list of the residence permits Georgia issues, and as it stands after the amendments of 15 April and 25 June 2026 it has thirteen entries: work, study, family reunification, former citizen of Georgia, stateless person, special, permanent, spouse of a citizen of Georgia, investment, temporary for a victim of domestic violence, short-term on property, unlimited, and temporary for a person employed in information technologies. Not one rests on a treaty, and the Law contains no equivalent of a Mercosur residence agreement or a Nordic common labour market. Two treaty-shaped provisions exist and neither gives residence. Article 10(3¹) lets an alien holding a visa or residence permit of a country named in a Government ordinance enter Georgia without a visa, for the period and on the conditions that ordinance sets: that is a rule about entry, not about living here. Article 4(5) and (6) exempt representatives of NATO armed forces and of countries in the Partnership for Peace Programme from the visa requirement when they enter, leave or transit on official duties connected with training and operations, and allow visa-free movement on other official duties with the prior written consent of the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Both are exemptions from a visa, and both are tied to a purpose rather than to residence.
At a glance
- A residence permit granted by a regional treaty or union
- None among the thirteen types in article 15 of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons
Read in the Georgian consolidated text of 25 June 2026.
- Nearest treaty-based provision
- A visa waiver for holders of a visa or residence permit of a country named by Government ordinance
Article 10(3¹) of the Law. It sets entry, for the period and on the conditions in that ordinance, and confers no status.
- NATO and Partnership for Peace
- Visa-free entry, departure and transit on official duties, not a residence right
Article 4(5) and (6) of the Law. Duties outside training and operations need prior written consent of the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Requirements
- There is no treaty route to residence: an applicant from any country uses the same thirteen permit types
- A visa waiver based on another country's visa or residence permit, under article 10(3¹), is a rule about entry only
Exceptions by origin
No exceptions recorded
Nothing we have read treats any nationality differently for this topic. The rule above applies to everyone.
What the law says
«31. უცხოელს, რომელსაც აქვს საქართველოს მთავრობის დადგენილებით განსაზღვრული ქვეყნის ვიზა ან/და ბინადრობის ნებართვა, შეუძლია საქართველოში უვიზოდ შემოსვლა იმავე დადგენილებით გათვალისწინებული ვადითა და პირობებით.»Our translation - not official
An alien who holds a visa and/or a residence permit of a country determined by an ordinance of the Government of Georgia may enter Georgia without a visa, for the period and on the conditions provided for by that same ordinance.
About this source
The official gazette and consolidated statute book of Georgia, a legal entity under public law under the Ministry of Justice. Every instrument lives at matsne.gov.ge/ka/document/view/<id>: laws, organic laws, Government resolutions, presidential decrees and ministerial orders, each page opening with a metadata block that gives the document number, the issuing body, the date of issue, the source and date of publication, the date of entry into force and the registration code, then listing every consolidated publication by date with its own publication index. Above the body of each page the site states which edition is being shown: კონსოლიდირებული ვერსია (საბოლოო) means the final consolidation, and a different line means it is not. Amending instruments are published separately and in full, each citing the registration code of the act it amends, so a schedule whose consolidation is paywalled can still be reconstructed from the original plus the amendments. Renders through Firecrawl without difficulty, including million-character statutes: the Georgian Tax Code comes back at 1,190,393 characters.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: Three things it must not be cited for. First, it is not free for everything: for some Government resolutions - resolution No 255 of 5 June 2015 on visa-free entry, and resolution No 36 of 21 February 2013 on universal health care - the site serves only the text as originally published and prints დოკუმენტის კონსოლიდირებული ვარიანტის ნახვა ფასიანია, that viewing the consolidated version is a paid service requiring registration and the purchase of a viewing right. A reading of such a page is a reading of the original, however many consolidations have followed, and must be labelled as one. Second, it publishes the consolidated law and not the reasoning: no explanatory memorandum, no case law, no ministerial guidance, and a great deal of Georgian immigration and tax practice sits in orders of the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Internal Affairs which it holds but which are not linked from the parent act. Third, the Georgian pages are the law and the English pages at the matching address are not the same document - see ge-matsne-en. Pages render statutes inside HTML tables, so stored text carries table pipes and <br> markers around the publisher's own words.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«An alien holding a country visa and/or residence permit as determined by an ordinance of the Government of Georgia can enter Georgia without a visa for the period and with the conditions provided for by the same ordinance.»About this source
The same publisher's English rendering of Georgian instruments, served at matsne.gov.ge/en/document/view/<id> - the same document id as the Georgian, so the two texts are one address apart. Where an English consolidation exists it is a full translation of that consolidation, with the same article numbering, the same amending-law footers and the same metadata block. For the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons the English kept pace with the Georgian through the amendments of 15 April and 25 June 2026, so the 2026 spouse permit and the interagency marriage commission can be read in both languages.
Standing:
Cannot be cited for: It may never be cited as the law, for four reasons found in the text itself. (1) It lags, silently to a reader who does not look up: on 11 October 2026 the Tax Code in English was the consolidation of 25 June 2026 while the Georgian was that of 30 September 2026, and the Organic Law on Georgian Citizenship in English was the edition of 7 March to 26 June 2025 while the Georgian was 25 June 2026. (2) The newest consolidation of a lagging instrument does not exist in English at all: the English page for Tax Code publication 246 and citizenship publication 12 carries no law, only 'Attention! The consolidation of the document is underway. You are not reading the latest version of the document.' (3) The default English address serves the last complete English edition under the line 'Attention! You are not reading the final edition', which is one line of body text above a million characters of statute. (4) Subparagraph letters are relabelled by alphabetical position rather than transliterated, so Georgian ფ becomes u, ჟ becomes p and თ becomes h - and the trap is live, because the Latin letter that a reader would reach for by sound lands on a different and sometimes repealed subparagraph: English article 99(1)(p) is Georgian 99(1)(ჟ), while Georgian 99(1)(პ) was deleted on 30 May 2018. It also mis-states one amending law's number, printing the law of 30 May 2018 as No 3591 in twelve places and as No 2391 in twelve others where the Georgian prints №2391 throughout, and it loses superscripts: article 21¹ appears as '211' and paragraph 6¹ as '61'. Cite it beside the Georgian, as a translation, never instead of it.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
«5\. Representatives of the armed forces of NATO and representatives of countries participating in the Partnership for Peace Program do not need a visa for the entry into, departure from, and transit through Georgia when performing official duties related to training and operations associated with NATO and the Partnership for Peace Program.»About this source
The same publisher's English rendering of Georgian instruments, served at matsne.gov.ge/en/document/view/<id> - the same document id as the Georgian, so the two texts are one address apart. Where an English consolidation exists it is a full translation of that consolidation, with the same article numbering, the same amending-law footers and the same metadata block. For the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons the English kept pace with the Georgian through the amendments of 15 April and 25 June 2026, so the 2026 spouse permit and the interagency marriage commission can be read in both languages.
Standing:
Cannot be cited for: It may never be cited as the law, for four reasons found in the text itself. (1) It lags, silently to a reader who does not look up: on 11 October 2026 the Tax Code in English was the consolidation of 25 June 2026 while the Georgian was that of 30 September 2026, and the Organic Law on Georgian Citizenship in English was the edition of 7 March to 26 June 2025 while the Georgian was 25 June 2026. (2) The newest consolidation of a lagging instrument does not exist in English at all: the English page for Tax Code publication 246 and citizenship publication 12 carries no law, only 'Attention! The consolidation of the document is underway. You are not reading the latest version of the document.' (3) The default English address serves the last complete English edition under the line 'Attention! You are not reading the final edition', which is one line of body text above a million characters of statute. (4) Subparagraph letters are relabelled by alphabetical position rather than transliterated, so Georgian ფ becomes u, ჟ becomes p and თ becomes h - and the trap is live, because the Latin letter that a reader would reach for by sound lands on a different and sometimes repealed subparagraph: English article 99(1)(p) is Georgian 99(1)(ჟ), while Georgian 99(1)(პ) was deleted on 30 May 2018. It also mis-states one amending law's number, printing the law of 30 May 2018 as No 3591 in twelve places and as No 2391 in twelve others where the Georgian prints №2391 throughout, and it loses superscripts: article 21¹ appears as '211' and paragraph 6¹ as '61'. Cite it beside the Georgian, as a translation, never instead of it.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source
Practical notes
Georgia's Association Agreement with the European Union and its free trade agreements are not read on this record. The claim made here is narrower and it is the one the data supports: the residence permits the Law creates are a closed list of thirteen and none of them is conferred by membership of a bloc.
The Government ordinance under article 10(3¹) has not been read. The Ministry of Internal Affairs announced in April 2025 that it had been tightened for Gulf-state visas and permits; we have not seen the instrument, so nothing about its content is published here.
- consolidatesუცხოელთა და მოქალაქეობის არმქონე პირთა სამართლებრივი მდგომარეობის შესახებ
საქართველოს საკანონმდებლო მაცნე (Legislative Herald of Georgia) · consolidated to 2026-06-25
About this source
The official gazette and consolidated statute book of Georgia, a legal entity under public law under the Ministry of Justice. Every instrument lives at matsne.gov.ge/ka/document/view/<id>: laws, organic laws, Government resolutions, presidential decrees and ministerial orders, each page opening with a metadata block that gives the document number, the issuing body, the date of issue, the source and date of publication, the date of entry into force and the registration code, then listing every consolidated publication by date with its own publication index. Above the body of each page the site states which edition is being shown: კონსოლიდირებული ვერსია (საბოლოო) means the final consolidation, and a different line means it is not. Amending instruments are published separately and in full, each citing the registration code of the act it amends, so a schedule whose consolidation is paywalled can still be reconstructed from the original plus the amendments. Renders through Firecrawl without difficulty, including million-character statutes: the Georgian Tax Code comes back at 1,190,393 characters.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: Three things it must not be cited for. First, it is not free for everything: for some Government resolutions - resolution No 255 of 5 June 2015 on visa-free entry, and resolution No 36 of 21 February 2013 on universal health care - the site serves only the text as originally published and prints დოკუმენტის კონსოლიდირებული ვარიანტის ნახვა ფასიანია, that viewing the consolidated version is a paid service requiring registration and the purchase of a viewing right. A reading of such a page is a reading of the original, however many consolidations have followed, and must be labelled as one. Second, it publishes the consolidated law and not the reasoning: no explanatory memorandum, no case law, no ministerial guidance, and a great deal of Georgian immigration and tax practice sits in orders of the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Internal Affairs which it holds but which are not linked from the parent act. Third, the Georgian pages are the law and the English pages at the matching address are not the same document - see ge-matsne-en. Pages render statutes inside HTML tables, so stored text carries table pipes and <br> markers around the publisher's own words.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
- publishesLaw of Georgia on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons (matsne English translation)
Legislative Herald of Georgia, English translation service · consolidated to 2026-06-25
About this source
The same publisher's English rendering of Georgian instruments, served at matsne.gov.ge/en/document/view/<id> - the same document id as the Georgian, so the two texts are one address apart. Where an English consolidation exists it is a full translation of that consolidation, with the same article numbering, the same amending-law footers and the same metadata block. For the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons the English kept pace with the Georgian through the amendments of 15 April and 25 June 2026, so the 2026 spouse permit and the interagency marriage commission can be read in both languages.
Standing:
Cannot be cited for: It may never be cited as the law, for four reasons found in the text itself. (1) It lags, silently to a reader who does not look up: on 11 October 2026 the Tax Code in English was the consolidation of 25 June 2026 while the Georgian was that of 30 September 2026, and the Organic Law on Georgian Citizenship in English was the edition of 7 March to 26 June 2025 while the Georgian was 25 June 2026. (2) The newest consolidation of a lagging instrument does not exist in English at all: the English page for Tax Code publication 246 and citizenship publication 12 carries no law, only 'Attention! The consolidation of the document is underway. You are not reading the latest version of the document.' (3) The default English address serves the last complete English edition under the line 'Attention! You are not reading the final edition', which is one line of body text above a million characters of statute. (4) Subparagraph letters are relabelled by alphabetical position rather than transliterated, so Georgian ფ becomes u, ჟ becomes p and თ becomes h - and the trap is live, because the Latin letter that a reader would reach for by sound lands on a different and sometimes repealed subparagraph: English article 99(1)(p) is Georgian 99(1)(ჟ), while Georgian 99(1)(პ) was deleted on 30 May 2018. It also mis-states one amending law's number, printing the law of 30 May 2018 as No 3591 in twelve places and as No 2391 in twelve others where the Georgian prints №2391 throughout, and it loses superscripts: article 21¹ appears as '211' and paragraph 6¹ as '61'. Cite it beside the Georgian, as a translation, never instead of it.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source