Saudi Arabia’s Nitaqat 2026 Update: Latest Quotas by Sector and What Foreign Employers Need to Comply Now

Saudi Arabia’s 2026 Nitaqat overhaul has tightened Saudization enforcement through higher sector quotas, elimination of the Yellow tier, mandatory Qiwa contract documentation, and profession-specific compliance rules, increasing the risk of Red classification for foreign employers. 

Saudi Arabia has entered the most significant phase of its workforce localisation programme since the 2021 overhaul. Between November 2025 and April 2026, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development (MHRSD) launched a new three-year Nitaqat cycle, raised sector quotas across healthcare, engineering, accounting, procurement, marketing and sales, eliminated the Yellow tier, and tied Saudization credit to digital contract documentation on the Qiwa platform. The stated objective is to localise more than 340,000 additional private-sector jobs by 2028.

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For foreign employers, the Nitaqat classification now determines a company’s ability to sponsor visas, renew work permits, bid on government contracts via Etimad, and operate the Qiwa labour services portal at all. Companies that were comfortably in the Green band twelve months ago are finding themselves on the threshold of Red, often without realising the band itself has moved.

See also: Saudi Arabia’s New Employment Contract and Wage Enforcement System: What Employers Need to Know

What changed between late 2025 and April 2026

The 2026 Nitaqat phase rests on five concurrent changes:

1. The new three-year cycle: Effective April 16, 2026, the Nitaqat Mutawar Program entered a new phase running through 2028. The core Saudization formula remains unchanged, but the “c-values” that drive required localisation percentages have been raised for most sectors, and the band thresholds themselves have moved up. Companies whose Saudi-to-expatriate ratios were unchanged may find their classification has fallen.
2. Yellow tier eliminated: The Yellow band is gone. Establishments that previously sat in Yellow have been reclassified as Red, which means immediate exposure to blocked visa processing, blocked work permit renewals, restricted government services, and loss of the right to retain expatriate staff (expatriate employees of Red-tier companies can transfer sponsorship without the employer’s consent).
3. Qiwa contract documentation mandatory: From April 15, 2026, a Saudi employee no longer counts toward a company’s Saudization percentage unless their employment contract has been electronically documented and authenticated on the Qiwa platform. GOSI registration remains necessary but is no longer sufficient. Companies that have not migrated their workforce contracts to Qiwa have effectively invisible Saudi headcount for Nitaqat purposes.
4. Higher salary thresholds: The minimum monthly wage for a Saudi national to count toward the quota has risen from SAR 3,000 (US$796) to SAR 4,000 (US$1,061), and several profession-specific decisions impose higher thresholds (engineering SAR 8,000, US$2,123; dentistry SAR 9,000, US$2,389; marketing SAR 5,500, US$1,459). Saudi employees below the threshold are counted at 0.5 of a person.
5. Profession-level quotas expanded to 269 roles: MHRSD has moved beyond company-wide quotas to profession-by-profession requirements. A company can be Green at the establishment level while in violation in a single covered department.

Sector quotas in force as of mid-2026

The following thresholds reflect MHRSD decisions issued between July 2025 and April 2026. Quotas apply to private-sector establishments meeting the relevant headcount trigger.

The headline list does not capture every recent decision. Foreign employers operating across multiple covered functions should verify their position role-by-role against the MHRSD profession list on the Qiwa portal, where classifications now update on a weekly basis.

How the band system works in 2026

Nitaqat classifies every private-sector employer into one of five bands based on the ratio of Saudi nationals to total employees, cross-referenced against sector and company size:

• Platinum: Exceeds the sector quota substantially; receives expedited visa approvals, priority hiring access, and unrestricted workforce transfers.
• High Green: Meets the quota with margin; full operational flexibility including visa sponsorship and government contract eligibility.
• Mid Green: Meets the quota; core operational capabilities preserved.
• Low Green: Just at the quota; operational but vulnerable to small workforce changes pushing the company into Red.
• Red: Below quota; blocked visa processing, blocked work permit renewals, ineligible for government tenders via Etimad, expatriate staff free to transfer sponsorship.

The band is calculated on a 26-week weighted average to discourage short-term workforce engineering. The Ministry formally reviews classifications approximately every six months, but Qiwa updates the underlying data continuously.

Three points are worth noting for non-Saudi business owners. First, since April 2024, foreign investors who own private establishments in Saudi Arabia are counted as Saudi nationals for quota purposes, a structural advantage for owner-operated foreign businesses. Second, GCC nationals are counted as Saudi nationals. Third, employing one person with a disability counts as four persons toward the quota. Saudi citizens working remotely are now also recognised as regular employees for Nitaqat purposes.

The operational consequences of each band

The financial cost of falling into Red is not principally the fines. It is the cascading loss of services:

• Visa issuance blocked for new expatriate hires;
• Iqama (residency permit) renewals blocked for existing expatriate staff;
• Profession changes and sponsorship transfers blocked;
• Government contract bidding via Etimad suspended;
• General Manager Iqama extensions blocked, with downstream effects on commercial registration updates and MISA licence validations;
• Sponsorship transfer rights forfeited, expatriate employees can leave for competitors without employer consent:
• ZATCA tax compliance is now linked to Nitaqat, serious tax violations can trigger a Nitaqat downgrade as a joint enforcement measure.

For Mid Green and Low Green companies, the practical risk in 2026 is not an immediate Red classification but the loss of the operational headroom they used to have. The elimination of Yellow narrowed the safety margin considerably.

What foreign employers need to do now

Six steps consistently distinguish companies maintaining Green status from those drifting toward Red in 2026:

• Audit the Qiwa contract base immediately: Any Saudi national without a digitally documented and counter-signed Qiwa contract is excluded from the Nitaqat headcount from 15 April 2026 onward. For companies near a band threshold, even a handful of undocumented contracts can trigger a downgrade. The contract is generated on Qiwa by the employer and signed digitally by the employee through their personal Qiwa account.
• Recalculate position under the new c-values: The April 2026 phase raised c-values across most sectors. A company that was High Green under the previous calculation may now be Mid Green or Low Green at the same headcount. The Qiwa portal calculator reflects the updated values; running it against current establishment data is the simplest way to surface the gap.
• Map exposure profession by profession: A company-wide Green classification does not protect against profession-level violations. An establishment with 30 percent overall Saudization but only two Saudi accountants in an eight-person accounting function is non-compliant on the accounting decision regardless of headline status. Identify every covered profession on the payroll and check it against the relevant sector decision.
• Verify salary thresholds: Saudi employees below the applicable minimum wage count at 0.5 of a person, or not at all where a profession-specific threshold applies. For profession-level compliance, headcount alone is not sufficient, salary structures need to match the threshold rules.
• Use the part-time and contract worker provision: Companies can now earn a full Nitaqat point for each part-time or contract worker performing 160 hours per month. For establishments struggling to reach quota with full-time hires alone, this is a meaningful flexibility.
• Build accreditation into the hiring pipeline for technical professions: Engineering Saudis must hold Saudi Council of Engineers accreditation; dental Saudis must hold Saudi Commission for Health Specialties accreditation. Without these credentials, even a properly contracted and salaried Saudi national does not count toward the profession-level quota. Onboarding processes need to verify accreditation status before headcount is treated as Nitaqat-eligible.

The strategic picture

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The 2026 cycle marks a shift in what Saudization means operationally. For most of the past decade, it was a headline ratio measured at the establishment level, manageable through periodic hiring adjustments. The current regime is profession-resolved, salary-weighted, contract-documented, and continuously monitored.

It also sits inside a broader integration of compliance systems: Qiwa, GOSI, the Wage Protection System, ZATCA tax compliance, and Etimad procurement eligibility are now linked, and a deterioration in one can propagate to the others.

For foreign employers, the practical implication is that workforce planning needs to move from annual to continuous, with Nitaqat status treated as a live operating metric alongside revenue and headcount. The companies handling this well in 2026 are those that have brought Saudization out of HR and into the same review cycle as commercial planning, with profession-level mapping, Qiwa documentation discipline, and accreditation tracking built into the onboarding workflow rather than added afterwards.

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