Changing employer in Qatar: what the end of the NOC did, and did not, change

A worker moving between two Qatari companies is one event with two employers, two ministries and at least three dates in it. Since 2020 the one thing it no longer needs is the old employer's blessing — which is the half everybody knows, and which is routinely mistaken for the whole.

What was actually repealed

Decree-Law No. 19 of 2020 did two things to Law No. 21 of 2015 on the entry, exit and residence of expatriates. It replaced Article 21, and by its second article it repealed Article 22 outright — the provision that had required the employer's consent. Al Meezan's consolidated text still shows Article 22 in place, with one word where its content used to be: «ملغاة».

Abdullah Al-Dosari, Director of Labour Relations at the Ministry of Labour, put it plainly in 2022: the previous employer's approval has been cancelled, and the notice a worker owes is thirty days below two years of service and sixty above it. Those periods are Article 49 of the Labour Law and they are set out with the rest of the termination rules in our guide on ending an employment contract.

The notice starts the day the form is filed

The Ministry's own Change Employer Form carries a line above the first box, in both languages, and it is the single most useful sentence in the whole procedure: the date this form is submitted is the start date of the notice period with the current employer.

The same form allows exactly two reasons for not serving that notice out, each a tick box with a condition attached.

• The worker and the current employer agreed not to observe the notice period — and proof of that mutual agreement must be attached.
• The current employer breached the worker's rights under the contract or the law — and the worker must explain it in the space below.

The first of those boxes is what the old no-objection letter has become: not a permission, since none is required any more, but the evidence of an agreement — which is exactly why it still has to exist on paper and be attached. Absent either box, Article 49 prices an unserved notice rather than forbidding it: whoever ends the contract early owes the other side compensation equal to the worker's basic wage for the notice period, or for whatever is left of it. The figure is the basic wage and not the package.

A transfer happens twice, at two ministries

The Ministry of Labour decides the employment relationship, and only after that does the Ministry of Interior move the residence permit onto the new employer. Both halves have to complete: a worker approved at Labour whose permit still names the old company is not transferred, they are mid-transfer. The Interior half is now done in the Metrash app, in five steps.

1. 1Open Metrash and choose Residencies from the home screen.
2. 2Choose the change-of-workplace service.
3. 3Specify the type of workplace — personal, or an establishment.
4. 4Pick the request from the list that appears, and choose a payment method.
5. 5Pay. The updated residence card is then posted out through Qatar Post.

That last part is eleven days old at the time of writing, and it is the reason this guide exists in September 2026 rather than in 2020: the counter visit is gone. Nobody needs to attend the passports administration or a service centre to complete the Interior half any more.

The conditions the Ministry actually applies

• The establishment must be under no ban that stops it using the service.
• The new establishment's commercial registration must be active.
• The worker must be under no ban preventing a change of employer.
• The worker must have no other transfer request already under consideration.
• The mobile number entered must be registered in the worker's own name.
• The worker's current residence status must be work.

A national address must be registered for every party, and an establishment reaches the service through the national authentication system with its smart card — which means only an authorised signatory can file at all. In practice that is the sentence that decides who in your office can do this.

What the receiving employer carries

• Confirm the hire to the Ministry and complete the contract details in the authentication system.
• Have the employment contract authenticated, and pay the authentication charge.
• Request the new residence card through the Ministry of Interior.
• Give the worker a copy of the authenticated contract and of the new card.

Probation is a different rule, and the bill lands elsewhere

Article 39 of the Labour Law, as replaced in 2020, lets a worker leave during probation for another employer on one month's written notice whatever their length of service. But it attaches a payment that exists nowhere else in the Law: the new employer compensates the old one for the air ticket and the recruitment fees, if there were any.

Lending and part-time: the door most companies do not know is there

Article 23 forbids anybody to employ expatriates without a contract, or to put the expatriates they recruited to work for somebody else. It then opens two exceptions, both of which require the Ministry's permission and the written agreement of the recruiter and the worker alike.

What getting it wrong costs

Article 38 of Law No. 21 of 2015 is the one that bites, and it is not a schedule of fines. Breaching the first paragraph of Article 23 — employing without a contract, or using your own recruits on somebody else's job — carries imprisonment of up to three years and a fine of up to fifty thousand riyals, or either of the two.

What an office should actually do

1. 1Diary the transfer from the filing date, not from the conversation, because that is the date the Ministry counts the notice from.
2. 2Check the establishment card and the commercial registration are live before making an offer, not after the file is refused.
3. 3Treat a probation hire as a costed decision: the ticket and the recruitment fees are yours, up to two months of the worker's basic wage.
4. 4Follow the file through the Interior half as well. An approval at Labour with a residence card still naming the old employer is an unfinished transfer, not a finished one.