A spouse has no right to work, neither on arrival nor after any period at all. Settling in scores 82, income tax is 7.5%.
between leaguesmedium confidenceFor IT people the state has rolled out a red carpet. IT Park works as a one-stop shop, the TashRush programme has brought in more than 3,000 foreign specialists since 2022, tax is 7.5%, and the family joins the same application with no separate income threshold. There are no mandatory integration or language tests for residence, and state schools are free and accept foreign children. Outside IT the door is much harder: employer permits and quotas.
The weak spots are commitments and family. The law promises no decision deadline, and the state publishes no refusal statistics. A spouse gets no right to work, either at once or later: they need their own ground, an employer permit or their own IT Visa. One account describes family members having to leave the country to get a visa abroad, valid for only one year while the main applicant held three. Data on Uzbekistan are thinner than for most countries in our ranking; the programme is young.
Since 15 November 2024 the state has a tool against people already living there: the list of undesirable persons. Grounds include "discrediting Uzbekistan"; being listed cancels any status up to permanent residence, gives 10 days to leave and a five-year entry ban, and expulsion can be challenged in court. We found no cases of it being used against expats. But the US State Department's 2024 report describes how, for one national group of newcomers, visa extensions became costly and corrupt, and some were handed exit visas instead of extensions.
What happens to an IT Visa when you lose your job or clients is not set out in any rule, and neither is renewal practice. This is a gap in the rules, not in our data: there is nothing to rely on.
Day to day, the key rule is registration. The regime is one of the strictest in the region: short deadlines and fines up to expulsion for overstaying; hotels register guests themselves, private housing is a separate procedure, and a new law in force since July 2025 is moving the process online. The IT Visa exempts you from re-registering when you move between regions. Bank accounts open only in person, with a personal ID number, registration and a local phone number; remote opening for non-residents stopped in 2025.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
Not on the visa-free list: you need an e-visa (e-visa.gov.uz) or a tourist visa under a simplified procedure. US citizens aged 55 and over may enter visa-free for up to 30 days for tourism.
Visa-free entry with no time limit under a bilateral agreement. Work follows the same rules as for everyone: an IT Visa or an employer permit.
Visa-free entry with no time limit under bilateral agreements. Uzbekistan is an observer, not a member, of the Eurasian Economic Union, so you cannot work without a permit: you need an IT Visa or an employer permit, and registration follows the general rules. When we checked on 9 August 2026 we found no nationality restrictions.
The place interval 26-44 shows where the country lands when the data is nudged and the index is recalculated. One place of difference in the table means nothing; a difference of a league means something.
Between leaguesThe league holds in fewer than half of the recalculations. Read this country as sitting between two leagues, not as a member of the upper one.
Medium confidenceSome scores rest on second-class sources. The score and the place stand, but read them with that caveat.
The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries
The strongest category here is Settling in: 82 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 69.5. The weakest is Agency processing: 50 against 48.7. Above the world average: 6 out of 7.
All 97 states are calculated for one applicant: 35 years old, income of $2,500 and $3,856 a month before tax, passport not counted, the most accessible route that is actually in use.
Your passport, your income and your family do not change the table. They change which of its lines apply to you. A different income makes entry read differently, a family makes the family category read differently, and your passport makes everything read differently.
The law sets no deadline in days. The IT Park board reviews applications at its monthly meeting, so in practice the answer comes within 10-30 days depending on when you apply.
Only if you work in IT: the IT Visa goes to people with proven income of at least $30,000 a year, to founders of IT Park resident companies and to investors. Other professions need an employer with a permit.
The residence permit fee is 82,400 sum (≈$6.5), but registration costs 40 times more: 4,944,000 sum (≈$389) for three years.
Yes. Since November 2024 being placed on the list of undesirable persons cancels any status, including permanent residence, with 10 days to leave; we found no use of it against expats. The rules do not say what happens to an IT Visa if you lose your job.
There is no time-based path to permanent residence; a residence permit needs a ground, such as an IT Visa holder buying a home of any value. Citizenship comes 5 years after the residence permit, giving up your previous citizenship, by presidential decree.
IT people are invited and well served by the rules; for everyone else entry is harder. Uzbekistan lets newcomers in but does not make them its own: families struggle to work, citizenship is nearly out of reach, and since 2024 any status can be cancelled through the list of undesirable persons.
97 states, 26 indicators, seven categories, 2,522 scores. Every score has a source and a source class: primary means the texts of laws and government portals; reliable secondary means reports by international organisations, tax reviews by audit firms and specialist legal publications; weak means community posts and single secondary sources. The classes add up to a confidence level for the country, and a country with low confidence gets neither a score nor a place.
Every indicator is scored against a fixed ruler, not against its neighbours. Adding new countries therefore does not move the old ones, and a change in a score means a change in policy and nothing else.
A high place does not mean a good country. It means one thing: the state machine treats newcomers predictably and by the rules. Living there may be expensive, dull or hot; that is not our question.
Checked 01/10/2026. Facts come from the country's index card and official websites.
We make mistakes and we will go on making them: policy changes faster than any database. Our answer is not a pose of infallibility but a visible trail of corrections. Every correction is published: what it was, what it became, the source and the reason for the error. The corrections log opens with the second issue, together with the first block of changes.