How to Get Your First Carte de Séjour in Morocco

If you plan to live in Morocco beyond 90 days, you need a residence card. For almost everyone that first card is a carte d’immatriculation, usually just called the carte de séjour. You apply in person at the police foreigners’ service (service des étrangers) for the city where you live, you hand in a file of documents, and you receive a récépissé: a receipt that counts as your residence document while the card is produced.

Three things decide how smoothly it goes, and it helps to know them before you start:

• Your category. Most people who are not employed in Morocco, including retirees, apply as a visiteur, living on their own means. Employees, spouses and students have their own categories, each with extra documents.
• Your office. The legal framework is national, but the exact document list, appointment system and pace are set locally. What an office in Marrakech asks for can differ from Casablanca, so get your own office’s current list first.
• Your means. For a visiteur there is no published income threshold in dirhams. The office assesses whether your means are sufficient, and expectations vary from one office, and one officer, to another.

What to do this week: request your criminal record certificate from home, sort out an address you can prove (usually a lease), and visit your local foreigners’ service to collect its current list.

What the card does, and what it does not

The card makes you a lawful resident rather than a visitor. In practice that tends to make the rest of settling in easier: resident bank accounts, longer leases with landlords who insist on it, and the paperwork that asks for proof of residence, such as exchanging a foreign driving licence.

It does not give you the right to work. Employment has its own authorisation, and the travail category below exists for it. Nor does the card by itself enrol you in public health insurance; that follows from employment or from joining a scheme, as the healthcare guide explains.

Before you apply: check how you entered

Morocco has four entry pathways, not one, and your nationality decides which is yours:

• Visa-free, for roughly 70 to 76 nationalities, giving a 90-day stay with nothing to apply for.
• eVisa, for nationalities named by the Moroccan authorities, and separately for holders of a qualifying document. There are two qualifying routes and their country lists are not the same: a residence permit with at least 180 days left to run, from an EU or Schengen state, the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Norway, New Zealand, Switzerland or the UAE; or a non-electronic multiple-entry visa, which is not a residence permit, with at least 90 days left to run when you apply, from a Schengen state, the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Japan or New Zealand. The eVisa itself is valid 180 days from issue and permits a stay of up to 30 days. Processing is 72 working hours as standard, 24 working hours express. It does not permit an application for residence.
• AEVM (Autorisation Electronique de Voyage au Maroc), a pre-registration rather than a visa, for a short list of nationalities that are otherwise visa-free. As of September 2026: Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Ghana and Guinea. It does not change the visa-free stay length. The list has changed before and needs rechecking rather than assuming.
• Consular visa, for everyone else, applied for at a Moroccan embassy or consulate before travel.

The visa and entry requirements guide sets all four out in full.

Two things follow from that, and both catch people out. First, an eVisa does not permit an application for residence. If that is how you entered, you cannot begin this process from that status. Second, no entry category converts into residence on its own. Entering visa-free and staying 90 days does not accrue anything towards a Carte de Séjour; the application below is a separate procedure that you start from the beginning regardless of how you arrived. The 90 days is simply the window you have in which to get it going.

Which category you apply under

Morocco’s foreigner residency law, Law 02-03, requires anyone staying beyond 90 days to hold a carte d’immatriculation, issued in one of several categories printed on the card itself:

• Visiteur: living on your own means without undertaking paid activity in Morocco. This is the category most retirees use.
• Travail: employment with a Moroccan employer, on a contract approved through Morocco’s foreign-employment procedure before you apply.
• Regroupement familial: family reunification, typically a foreign national married to a Moroccan national or to a legal resident.
• Étudiant: enrolment at a recognised Moroccan institution.

Law 02-03 does not define a separate investor category, so self-employed people and investors generally apply as visiteur or travail depending on their situation. If you work remotely for clients abroad, read the note on that in the digital nomad guide before choosing, because the published rules do not address it directly.

This is a different document from the carte de résidence, a longer-term status that most first-time applicants cannot yet get. Article 16 of Law 02-03 allows it after at least four years of continuous, lawful residence, and it remains a decision for the administration, which also looks at your means. Article 17 makes an exception: a foreign spouse of a Moroccan national is entitled to it without that wait, provided they entered and live in Morocco lawfully.

The file most offices ask for

The core is similar everywhere. Expect to be asked for:

• your valid passport, with copies of the identity page and entry stamp;
• passport-format photographs on a white background (offices ask for anywhere from four to six);
• the application form, available at the office;
• proof of address in Morocco, usually a lease in your name (see the renting guide on getting one in writing), or a certificate from your landlord legalised at the local authorities;
• proof of means, usually several months of bank statements showing regular income, or a guarantee from a solvent third party;
• a criminal record certificate from your home country, which many offices want apostilled and issued within the last three months.

Each category adds its own papers: the approved employment contract for travail, the marriage certificate and your spouse’s documents for regroupement familial, an enrolment certificate for étudiant. Documents that are not in French or Arabic generally need a certified translation.

Treat this as a starting point rather than a guarantee. The list your office gives you is the one that counts.

Step by step

1. Get your office’s current list. Go to the foreigners’ service for where you live and ask what it requires for your category, and how it takes applications.
2. Assemble and legalise copies. Many offices expect copies to be certified against the originals at your local commune or moqataa. You bring both, an official stamps the copy, and you pay a small fee per stamp. Which copies need it varies, so ask rather than certifying everything.
3. Submit a complete file. An incomplete file is usually handed back, and you start again.
4. Receive your récépissé. Keep it with your passport.
5. Renew the récépissé if the card is not ready before it expires.
6. Collect the card when you are told it is ready.

The récépissé

The récépissé is issued once your application is accepted, on the day at some offices and after a wait of a few weeks at others, and it counts as your residence document while you wait. Its validity is limited to a maximum of three months, so check the date on it. If the card is not ready by then, you go back and have it renewed. Some applicants renew it more than once, so note the date and do not let it lapse.

How long it takes

There is no reliable national figure. Applicants report anything from a few weeks to several months, depending on the office, the time of year and how complete the file was. Plan for the longer end, keep the récépissé current, and avoid booking travel that depends on having the card by a set date.

What it costs

The official charge is a fiscal stamp (timbre), most often cited as 100 dirhams. Whether the amount changes with the card’s period of validity, and how the stamp is paid (stamp duties can now be paid online), are both worth confirming at the counter when you submit.

The larger costs usually sit around the edges: legalisation stamps, photographs, the criminal record certificate and any apostille, and translations. How much those add up to depends mainly on how many documents need translating.

What slows applications down

Legalised copies. The most common source of extra trips is underestimating how many copies need certifying. Ask your office which ones, then do them in one go.

An expired criminal record certificate. If your office wants it within three months and your country is slow, request it as soon as you arrive. Some countries let you apply through their embassy or consulate in Morocco.

Photographs. Booth photos are sometimes refused. A photographer near the office will usually know the local specification.

Missing the 90-day window. If your 90 days are running out and your file is not ready, look at the options in staying longer in Morocco before the date, not after it.