Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Population wants foreign specialists in 174 professions to qualify for permanent residence, up from 51 today. It posted a draft order on the Open NPA portal on September 21 and accepts comments until October 6.
The draft amends Order No. 49, which the ministry issued in 2023 to set the list and the rules for building it. Its summary says the ministry drew up the longer list around the needs of the national economy and its priority sectors.
The new list is not on the portal. When a commenter complained that the full text was missing, the ministry replied that the portal now posts the main content of draft regulations such as this one.
Tengrinews reported that the new professions come from medicine, engineering and construction, digital technology, energy, transport, agriculture, education, and other fields. According to the same report, the ministry linked the change to a shortage of specialists in sectors the economy depends on.
Many of the professions on the current list are in digital technology, from software developers to cloud computing specialists. The list also covers medical specialists such as neurosurgeons, a group of engineering roles, and creative jobs such as video editor.
How the professions route works
Kazakhstan has used a professions list for permanent residence since Order No. 49 took effect in 2023. A 2024 law added a visa for people with in-demand professions, and that visa gives the right to apply for permanent residence.
Article 7 of the Law on Migration of Population sends people on that visa to the internal affairs authorities to apply for the permit. Under Article 49 of the same law, foreign nationals with in-demand professions do not have to prove financial solvency.
Every profession the draft adds would come with that exemption. The Interior Ministry’s rules for residence permits call the route a simplified procedure.
Those rules require that applicants provide a petition from the relevant sectoral government body.
The petition names the applicant’s occupation group in Kazakhstan’s National Classifier of Occupations. It also confirms that the applicant meets the classifier’s requirements on profession, skill level, diploma, work experience, and qualification.
Kazakhstan cancels a permit issued through the list if the person has not worked in the listed profession for 183 days in any 12-month period since issue.
How many foreigners use the routes
The ministry’s summary of the draft gives no estimate of how many foreign specialists the longer list would reach. A search by IMI also turned up no published total of permits issued through the list since 2023.
The Interior Ministry counted 241,000 foreigners with permanent residence in Kazakhstan on March 1, 2026, Tengrinews reported. The figure does not show which route each person used.
Foreign information technology (IT) specialists can apply under a pilot called Digital Nomad Residency. Astana Hub, a technology park in the capital, screens each application.
The Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development then decides whether the applicant qualifies for an in-demand IT profession. An applicant who passes that check applies online for pre-approval of a permanent residence permit.
As of August 2026, 250 IT specialists had received permanent residence permits through the pilot, The Astana Times reported, citing Astana Hub.
By then, Astana Hub had received 1,517 applications from 71 countries under the pilot and a related Digital Nomad Visa program. It had issued 1,069 petitions across the two.
According to Astana Hub, a petition does not guarantee a permit, since state bodies make the final decision.
Network School opens in Astana
Network School officially opened in Astana on September 2, Azattyq Rýhy reported, citing the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development. It is a membership community where technology founders and remote workers live and work together.
Balaji Srinivasan, a former chief technology officer of Coinbase, founded Network School in 2024. Until late July, it was based in Johor and Malaysia.
The ministry signed a five-year memorandum of understanding with Srinivasan in July to set up a campus in Kazakhstan.
Network School’s website says the campus is on the fifth floor of Astana Hub, Business Insider reported. Network School also says its agreement with Kazakhstan will provide expedited visas, according to the same report.
The decree behind the draft
On the portal, the draft names Presidential Decree No. 1242 of April 25 as one of its bases. That decree gives the government until the end of 2026 to reform the investment climate and attract qualified foreign specialists.
The decree unifies existing visas into three categories. One of them is a qualified worker visa, which covers specialists in in-demand professions on a list that the government approves.
The decree also calls for an Altyn Visa, which Tengrinews translates as “Golden Visa.” Participants in the investment tax residency program of the Astana International Financial Center will be able to apply.
People on those three visas will qualify after set periods, from one month on a business visa to one year on a temporary worker visa. On a qualified worker visa, the wait is six months, or one month for IT specialists.
Altyn Visa recipients would pay no individual income tax, property tax, or land tax, and their family members would receive the same preferences.
The Ministry of National Economy has posted a draft Tax Code amendment on Altyn Visa income. It would add the income of recipients and their family members to the Tax Code’s list of economic benefits that do not count as an individual’s income.
A second change would add that income to the list of non-resident income that Kazakhstan does not tax. Its public discussion period was set to end on September 25, 2026, Tengrinews reported.
Kazakhstan’s investor visa does not appear in the tax draft. That visa dates from 2015, and Kazakhstan added a US$300,000 investment route to it in 2025.
Kazakh Invest called the investor visa a golden visa in its release on the 2025 rules. The decree sets out the Altyn Visa as a new status with its own eligibility rules.
IMI’s guide to Central Asia covers the investor visa and the Astana program in more detail.
As for the professions order, its summary says the longer list will take effect after the order is adopted. For now, the 51 professions on the current list are the ones that qualify.
