Travel Insurance for Expats Living in Saudi Arabia: 2026 Guide

Table of Contents

1. Why Your Saudi Health Insurance Doesn’t Travel With You
2. Who Actually Needs This
3. The Exit/Re-Entry Visa Isn’t Insurance
4. What Travel Insurance Should Actually Cover
5. Home-Country Trips: The Most Overlooked Gap
6. Umrah, Hajj, and Domestic Saudi Travel
7. Schengen and Other Visa-Mandated Insurance
8. GCC and Regional Travel: A Different Risk Profile
9. Retirees and Long-Term Residents
10. How Much It Costs
11. Family Considerations
12. Choosing a Provider
13. What Happens If You Travel Without It
14. Common Mistakes
15. FAQ

Saudi Arabia’s population stood at roughly 37 million residents in 2026, including about 24 million Saudi citizens and 13 million expatriate workers and family members.^[1] A growing share of that group now stays for years rather than a single contract cycle, partly because the expansion of the Saudi Premium Residency program in 2025 has encouraged more high-skilled expatriates to relocate with their families.^[2] Longer stays mean more trips home, more regional weekend travel, more Umrah visits, and more Schengen summer holidays — each one exposing a coverage gap that most residents don’t discover until they need it.

Why Your Saudi Health Insurance Doesn’t Travel With You

Every non-GCC expat legally residing in Saudi Arabia is required to carry health insurance as a condition of their Iqama. This obligation covers private sector employees and their dependents, non-GCC foreign students, holders of premium residency or investor visas and their families, and expatriate retirees remaining in the country.^[3] The system is overseen by the Council of Cooperative Health Insurance (CCHI), and as of late 2025, sponsoring companies must use insurance providers registered and approved by the CCHI, with coverage now linked directly to the employee’s passport before a work visa is even issued.^[4]

That policy does its job well inside the Kingdom. It falls apart the moment you leave it. Most Saudi employer health insurance policies are designed for use within Saudi Arabia only — some premium policies include international emergency coverage, but this should never be assumed without checking the specific policy document.^[5] A separate expat guide puts it more bluntly: standard travel insurance policies cannot substitute for the mandatory health insurance required under Saudi law, because travel policies are designed for short trips and offer limited benefits unsuitable for long-term residency.^[6] The reverse is equally true — a CCHI-linked employer plan is built for long-term residency inside Saudi Arabia, not a two-week trip to Cairo, Istanbul, or your home country.

An insurance guide draws the distinction cleanly: travel insurance is designed for short stays and mainly covers emergencies and repatriation, while international health insurance is designed for residents abroad and covers routine care and hospitalizations, following the policyholder independently of their employer or movements.^[7] For most expats living in Saudi Arabia, the practical answer isn’t switching to expensive international health cover — it’s layering a standalone travel insurance policy on top of the mandatory local plan, specifically for the days spent outside the country. Our guide to whether travel insurance is mandatory for Saudi Arabia breaks down the legal side of this in more detail.

Who Actually Needs This

If you hold an Iqama and never leave Saudi Arabia, this guide doesn’t apply to you. It applies to almost everyone else:

• Employees and their sponsored dependents flying home for annual leave
• Families visiting relatives in India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Egypt, or Bangladesh — the Kingdom’s largest expat source countries
• Anyone planning a Schengen, UK, or US holiday from Saudi Arabia
• Expats doing weekend or short-break travel within the GCC (Dubai, Bahrain, Muscat)
• Retirees and premium residency holders who split time between Saudi Arabia and a home base elsewhere
• Anyone whose employer-provided CCHI plan explicitly excludes treatment outside the Kingdom — worth checking, since most do

The Exit/Re-Entry Visa Isn’t Insurance — Don’t Confuse the Two

New expats sometimes assume that once they’ve sorted their exit/re-entry visa, they’re covered for travel. They’re two unrelated documents solving two unrelated problems. If you hold an Iqama in Saudi Arabia, you cannot simply book a flight and leave — every trip outside the Kingdom requires a separate document called an exit/re-entry visa, and without it you physically cannot board an outbound flight.^[8] It’s an immigration permission slip, arranged through Absher or Muqeem, that protects your residency status while you’re abroad. It says nothing about who pays if you break a leg in Manila or need a hospital bed in London.

The visa itself has its own rules worth knowing before you plan a trip: the official 2026 fee is SAR 200 for a single exit and re-entry visa valid up to two months, and SAR 500 for a multiple exit and re-entry visa valid up to three months.^[9] Your Iqama needs at least 90 days of remaining validity beyond the requested visa period — a 30-day visa requires at least 120 days of Iqama validity.^[10] Since 2024, the consequences of letting it expire while abroad have also softened: there is no longer an automatic 3-year ban for a clean expiry abroad, a rule change that took effect on 16 January 2024; the resident simply returns on a new work or entry visa arranged by their employer.^[11] None of that changes the medical picture. The exit/re-entry visa gets you out of and back into the country. Travel insurance is what pays the hospital bill in between.

What Travel Insurance for Saudi-Based Expats Should Actually Cover

A generic tourist policy bought in five minutes online often misses the specific gaps a Saudi-based expat has. Look for:

1. Emergency medical treatment abroad — hospital admission, outpatient emergency care, and diagnostics at your destination.
2. Medical evacuation and repatriation — transport to an appropriate facility, or home, if local care isn’t sufficient.
3. Coverage for trips home, not just third-country holidays — some cheaper policies quietly exclude the traveler’s country of citizenship, which defeats the purpose for an expat flying home to India, Egypt, or the Philippines.
4. Trip cancellation and curtailment — especially valuable given how leave approval and exit/re-entry visa timing can shift a trip at short notice.
5. Baggage and travel delay — routine, but genuinely useful on long-haul routes with tight connections.
6. Personal liability and legal assistance abroad.
7. Pre-existing condition provisions, since many expats already manage a chronic condition through their CCHI plan and need to know whether it’s covered — or excluded — once they leave the country. Our guide to pre-existing conditions and travel insurance covers how insurers assess and price this.

A policy that ticks all seven boxes on paper still needs one more check: read the exclusions section before the benefits section. Most disputes come from a benefit that sounded comprehensive at purchase but carried a condition — an activity exclusion, a destination carve-out, a claims notification deadline — that only surfaces after something has already gone wrong.

Home-Country Trips: The Most Overlooked Insurance Gap

This is where a lot of expats get caught out. It feels intuitive to think insurance is only for “foreign” destinations — somewhere unfamiliar. But a trip home is still a trip outside the country your mandatory Saudi health insurance is built for. If you’re hospitalized in your home country, your CCHI-linked policy generally has no obligation to pay a single riyal of it, because the network, the approvals, and the coverage were never designed to extend there in the first place.

This matters more the longer someone has lived in Saudi Arabia. A newly arrived employee might still have residual health coverage or family support at home; someone who’s been in the Kingdom for eight or ten years, with a Saudi-registered family and no active policy back home, can be more exposed on a “routine” annual leave trip than on an exotic one, simply because they’ve stopped thinking of it as travel.

Umrah, Hajj, and Domestic Saudi Travel: What’s Different

It’s worth separating two very different situations that get confused under “travel insurance and Saudi Arabia.”

Incoming pilgrims applying for an Umrah or Hajj visa from outside the Kingdom already have insurance built into their visa cost. Umrah insurance is mandatory and already bundled into the visa fee, issued by Tawuniya under Saudi rules, with no opt-out, and the policy runs for up to 90 days from entry into Saudi Arabia — but it doesn’t extend before arrival, and it doesn’t apply in transit countries.^[12] That’s a visitor’s policy, tied to a visitor’s visa, and it has nothing to do with an expat resident. Our guide on whether travel insurance is required for Hajj and Umrah covers this from the pilgrim’s side in full.

Expats already living in Saudi Arabia performing Umrah domestically, or traveling within the Kingdom for leisure, don’t need — and can’t buy — that visa-linked policy, because they’re not entering on an Umrah visa in the first place. Their CCHI-linked health insurance is what applies to any medical need inside Saudi Arabia, including during a domestic Umrah trip to Makkah or Madinah. The insurance gap for a resident expat only opens once they leave the country, not while they’re traveling within it.

Schengen and Other Visa-Mandated Insurance

If a Schengen holiday from Saudi Arabia is on the calendar, the visa application has its own separate insurance requirement, independent of anything CCHI-related. Every Schengen consulate requires proof of travel medical insurance with a minimum of €30,000 in emergency medical cover, valid across all Schengen states, with no exclusion for COVID-19-related treatment, and the certificate has to name every traveler individually. A generic annual multi-trip policy bought for regional GCC travel won’t automatically meet this threshold — check the sum insured specifically before submitting a Schengen application, not after. The requirements are broadly the same ones we cover in our Schengen travel insurance guide for the wider Gulf.

The same logic extends to any destination with its own visa-linked insurance mandate — Saudi Arabia isn’t unusual in requiring proof of cover, it’s simply one of a growing number of countries doing it. If you’re applying for the Saudi eVisa yourself as a sponsor for visiting family, our breakdown of Saudi eVisa insurance cost and coverage requirements explains that separate visitor-side obligation. The difference for an expat resident is that this requirement sits on top of, not instead of, their CCHI obligation back home.

GCC and Regional Travel: A Different Risk Profile

It’s tempting to skip insurance altogether for a short GCC trip — Dubai for a long weekend, Bahrain for a concert, Muscat for a family holiday. The distances are short, healthcare quality across the Gulf is generally high, and nothing about the trip feels risky in the way a long-haul holiday might. That’s exactly why this is where expats are most likely to travel uninsured, and it’s a mistake for two reasons that have nothing to do with distance.

First, private healthcare in the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar is priced closer to Western levels than to Saudi Arabia’s, and a CCHI-linked policy issued in Saudi Arabia typically has no network agreement with hospitals in those countries. A routine emergency room visit for a child with a high fever, or a minor sports injury, can still run into a few thousand riyals paid entirely out of pocket. Second, regional trips are exactly the ones people book last-minute, on a public holiday weekend, without much planning — which is also when people are least likely to remember to arrange insurance at all.

A basic regional single-trip policy costs little enough that skipping it rarely saves anything meaningful relative to the exposure it removes. For expats who cross into the GCC more than once or twice a year, it’s usually one more argument in favor of an annual multi-trip plan, similar to the ones covered in our annual multi-trip travel insurance guide, rather than remembering to buy cover before each short trip.

Retirees and Long-Term Residents: A Different Calculus

Saudi Arabia’s premium residency system has created a small but growing group of long-term expats — some retired, some semi-retired, some simply choosing to stay in the Kingdom well beyond a standard employment contract. This group faces a slightly different set of considerations than a salaried employee on a standard work Iqama.

Retirees typically no longer have an active employer-sponsored CCHI plan, which means their mandatory local health insurance is self-funded and, depending on the plan chosen, may have narrower travel-related benefits than an employer group plan negotiated at scale. Age also affects travel insurance pricing directly — most insurers apply a step increase in premium at 60, 65, and 70, and some cap the maximum age for standard cover altogether, pushing older travelers toward specialist senior travel policies. Anyone in this category should check both the age limit and the pre-existing condition terms well before booking rather than assuming a policy bought at 45 still applies at the same terms a decade later. Our dedicated guide to Saudi Arabia travel insurance for seniors covers the age-banding and eligibility rules in detail.

How Much It Costs

Pricing for a Saudi-based expat depends on destination, trip length, age, and whether it’s a single trip or an annual multi-trip plan. As a general guide for an individual adult expat, here’s what the market typically looks like — treat these as indicative bands to compare against actual quotes, not fixed prices. For a fuller breakdown, see our Saudi Arabia travel insurance cost guide.

Family plans generally run 20–30% less than buying the same coverage individually for each family member, and most insurers waive premiums for infants traveling with an insured parent. If a budget-first option is the priority, our cheap travel insurance for Saudi Arabia guide ranks plans specifically on price.

Destination is the biggest single driver of price after group size. A weekend in Bahrain and a fortnight in London get priced very differently even at the same trip length, because the underlying medical sum insured an insurer is willing to offer reflects the actual cost of care at the destination — Western Europe and North America carry materially higher minimums than the GCC or South Asia. Age is the second-biggest factor: a family of four with two adults under 40 pays noticeably less than the same family with a grandparent added at 68, since most insurers price age brackets individually rather than averaging across the group.

Family Considerations for Expats in Saudi Arabia

Families make up a growing share of the Kingdom’s long-term expat population, partly driven by the same premium residency expansion mentioned earlier. A few things specific to families are worth flagging:

• Children’s ages and school-holiday timing often push families toward annual multi-trip plans rather than repeated single-trip purchases, since school breaks mean 2–3 trips a year is common.
• Dependent visa status matters for eligibility — most travel insurers just need proof of relationship (passport, Iqama, birth certificate) rather than caring about visa sponsorship type.
• A family member with a pre-existing condition managed through the CCHI plan inside Saudi Arabia needs that condition specifically declared on the travel policy — it isn’t automatically carried over just because it’s already covered locally.

Choosing a Provider: What to Check Before You Buy

1. Confirm home-country coverage isn’t excluded — ask directly, since this is the single most common gap for expats.
2. Check the medical sum insured against the destination — a Schengen trip needs at least €30,000; a US trip should carry considerably more given evacuation costs discussed below.
3. Read the pre-existing condition clause if anyone traveling manages an ongoing health issue.
4. Ask about the assistance hotline — is it 24/7, and does it operate in English and Arabic at minimum?
5. Check policy issuance speed — for a Schengen visa appointment or a last-minute leave approval, same-day digital issuance matters.
6. Compare annual multi-trip against single-trip costs if more than two trips a year are likely — the math usually favors annual cover by the second or third trip.

For a side-by-side look at top-rated options, our best travel insurance for Saudi Arabia guide compares providers against these exact criteria.

What Happens If You Travel Without It

The financial exposure isn’t hypothetical. Emergency medical transport is one of the largest single costs a traveler can face, and the Gulf region specifically shows up in industry data as one of the more expensive corridors. Based on data from past IMG air ambulance transfers, the average emergency medical flight to the U.S. costs $50,820 — but an air ambulance transfer from the United Arab Emirates to the U.S. can cost approximately $186,200.^[13] Broader industry estimates put the range even wider: international evacuation back to the United States runs roughly $20,000 to $200,000 depending on distance and medical needs, and a transatlantic air ambulance can run $90,000 to $220,000.^[14]

None of that includes the underlying hospital treatment itself, which is billed separately and, in destinations like the US or Western Europe, can already run into tens of thousands of dollars before evacuation is even considered. For an expat on a fixed salary supporting a family both in Saudi Arabia and back home, a single uninsured emergency abroad can undo years of savings in one incident. Our guide to medical evacuation and repatriation cover explains how this benefit works and what limits to look for.

Common Mistakes Expats in Saudi Arabia Make

1. Assuming the exit/re-entry visa covers medical emergencies. It’s an immigration document, not insurance — see above.
2. Assuming CCHI or employer insurance follows them abroad. Confirm this in writing rather than assuming; most policies don’t extend outside the Kingdom.
3. Buying a generic tourist policy that excludes the country of citizenship, then discovering it on a trip home rather than before booking.
4. Underinsuring for US or UK trips by buying the same coverage level used for regional GCC travel, where evacuation costs are far lower.
5. Not declaring a pre-existing condition already managed through CCHI, assuming it “carries over” automatically to the travel policy.
6. Leaving Schengen insurance purchase to the last minute, then finding the sum insured doesn’t meet the €30,000 minimum required by the consulate.
7. Treating regional GCC trips as low-risk enough to skip insurance entirely, based on distance rather than actual network coverage at the destination.
8. Assuming a policy bought years ago at a younger age still applies unchanged, without checking whether an age-based benefit reduction has since kicked in.

FAQ

Does my Saudi CCHI health insurance cover me when I travel abroad?

Usually not. Most CCHI-linked employer policies are built for treatment inside Saudi Arabia only. Some premium plans include limited international emergency coverage, but this should never be assumed — check the policy document directly before traveling.

Is the exit/re-entry visa the same as travel insurance?

No. The exit/re-entry visa is an immigration permit that lets an Iqama holder leave Saudi Arabia and return without losing residency status. It has no connection to medical coverage, trip cancellation, or any other insurance benefit.

Do I need separate insurance to visit my home country?

Yes, in almost every case. A trip home is still travel outside the coverage area of a standard CCHI-linked policy. Many expats mistakenly assume “home” trips don’t need insurance, which is one of the most common coverage gaps.

Is Umrah insurance the same thing as travel insurance for expats?

No. Umrah insurance is bundled into a pilgrim’s entry visa for people traveling into Saudi Arabia from abroad. Expats already resident in the Kingdom performing a domestic Umrah trip rely on their existing CCHI coverage, not a visa-linked Umrah policy.

How much travel insurance coverage do I need for a Schengen trip from Saudi Arabia?

At minimum, €30,000 in emergency medical coverage, valid across all Schengen states, with every traveler named individually on the certificate. This is a Schengen visa requirement, separate from Saudi CCHI obligations.

Is annual multi-trip insurance worth it for expats living in Saudi Arabia?

If you’re traveling more than twice a year — common for expat families visiting relatives abroad plus taking a separate holiday — an annual multi-trip plan typically costs less than buying single-trip cover repeatedly, usually breaking even by the second or third trip.

What happens if I need medical evacuation while traveling without insurance?

You’re responsible for the full cost, which industry data puts well into five and six figures for international evacuations from the Gulf region. Without insurance, this is billed directly to the patient or their family.

Do I need travel insurance for a short trip to Dubai or Bahrain from Saudi Arabia?

Yes, ideally. Saudi CCHI-linked policies generally don’t have hospital network agreements elsewhere in the GCC, so a routine emergency abroad is still paid out of pocket. Basic regional cover is inexpensive enough that skipping it rarely saves much relative to the risk.

Is there an age limit on travel insurance for expats in Saudi Arabia?

Many insurers apply higher premiums or reduced benefit limits starting around age 60–65, and some cap eligibility for standard policies entirely beyond a certain age. Retirees and older long-term residents should check the age terms on a specific policy rather than assuming coverage bought years earlier still applies at the same rate today.

Conclusion

Saudi Arabia’s mandatory health insurance system does exactly what it’s designed to do: guarantee that residents can access private healthcare inside the Kingdom. It was never designed to follow anyone across a border, and the exit/re-entry visa that gets you across that border has nothing to do with medical coverage either. The gap between the two is exactly where standalone travel insurance belongs — cheap enough to buy for every trip, and the only thing standing between an ordinary annual leave trip and a six-figure medical bill if something goes wrong. Compare current options in our Saudi Arabia travel insurance guide before your next trip.

Sources

1. Saudi Arabia Population 2026: 37 Million Live Counts and Trends, World Population Clock, 2026. worldpopulationclock.net
2. Saudi Arabia (KSA) Population Statistics 2026, Global Media Insight, 2026. globalmediainsight.com
3. Moving to Saudi Arabia as an Expat: Complete Guide, Jarniascyril, 2026. jarniascyril.com
4. Saudi Arabia – Health Insurance Now Mandatory Prior to Temporary Work Visa Issuance, KPMG Flash Alert, December 2025. kpmg.com
5. Healthcare and Insurance Guide Saudi Arabia 2026, Saudi Expat Guide, 2026. saudiexpatguide.com
6. Saudi Arabia — Health Insurance, Expat Focus, 2026. expatfocus.com
7. Health Insurance for Expats in Saudi Arabia, Alea, 2026. alea.care
8. Exit Re-Entry Visa & Final Exit Visa Saudi Arabia 2026, How to Saudi Arabia, 2026. howtosaudiarabia.com
9. Saudi Exit Re-Entry Visa 2026: Fees, Validity & Rules, GulfVisaHub, 2026. gulfvisahub.org
10. Saudi Exit/Re-Entry Visa 2026: Check on Muqeem, Fee, Validity, Extension & More, Wego Travel Blog, 2026. blog.wego.com
11. Saudi Exit Re-Entry Visa 2026: Fees & Extensions, Wathim, 2026. wathim.com
12. Umrah Insurance Explained: Is It Mandatory and What Does It Cover?, Wego Travel Blog, 2026. blog.wego.com
13. Emergency Medical Evacuation Coverage: Your Lifeline in Travel Emergencies, IMG Global, 2026. imglobal.com
14. How Much Does Emergency Medical Evacuation Cost?, Expedition Insure, citing U.S. State Department guidance, 2026. expedition.insure