If you work in IT, hold a certificate showing at least two years in the field, and can show at least USD 25,000 of annual income arriving in at least two separate payments spaced 30 days apart, this is the best residence route available to you and you should stop reading about the work permit route. If you cannot show both of those, it is not a route at all, and no amount of arguing that your job is technical will make it one.

That binary is unusually clean for Georgian immigration paperwork, which is why this post is short.

What it is

The government approved a new residence permit for information technology specialists on 27 August 2025 (Georgia Today, 1 September 2025). It is issued by the Public Service Development Agency alongside the other permit types.

The categories it covers, as reported:

  • IT employees officially registered here as labour immigrants, and their family members.
  • Individual entrepreneurs with small business status working in IT, and their families.
  • Managers and representatives of international IT companies operating in Georgia, with families.

The two documented tests:

  • A certificate confirming at least two years of IT experience. Reported IT-related fields include software engineering, cybersecurity, data analysis, DevOps and systems architecture.
  • A minimum annual income of USD 25,000, received in at least two separate payments spaced 30 days apart.

Checked on 2 September 2026.

I have not applied for this permit. Everything above is sourced and dated rather than remembered, and the difference matters: on the routes I have personally been through I can tell you what the counter actually asked for, and here I cannot.

The payment-spacing test is the one to read twice

The income figure is the one everybody quotes. The structure requirement is the one that disqualifies people.

At least two separate payments, spaced 30 days apart. That is a test about how you get paid, not about how much. A contractor invoicing one client annually in December clears the income bar and fails the structure test. A developer paid monthly clears both without thinking about it. Somebody paid in irregular project lumps may or may not, depending on the calendar.

If your income arrives in a shape that does not obviously satisfy that, the fix is usually to change the shape of the invoicing before you apply, not to argue about it at the window. That takes months of banking history to become true, which makes this a thing to sort out early rather than at day 325.

The advantage nobody mentions

It sits outside the 40-day rule.

The Public Service Development Agency requires most applications 40 calendar days before your lawful stay expires. The exceptions it lists are the lifelong, investment, special, domestic-violence, short-term and IT permits. Work, study and family reunification are all inside the rule.

For anyone who has watched the calendar with the anxiety that deadline produces — see how the year is actually counted — being outside it is worth real money and more sleep.

Reported terms are also longer than the ordinary temporary permit: agency and advisory reporting describes a three-year initial permit, renewable, with a total cap; KPMG’s 29 April 2026 alert separately notes that work authorization for IT professionals runs up to three years against six months to a year for everyone else. I would treat the exact duration and any cumulative cap as a lead rather than a fact — the numbers circulating come from advisory blogs, not from PSDA’s published pages, and this is precisely the class of figure that turns out to be one amendment stale.

What it is not

It is not the digital nomad visa. There is no digital nomad visa in Georgia. The “Remotely from Georgia” programme ran in 2020 and closed. The query still has volume, which is why stale pages keep ranking for it, and a page that offers you a nomad visa here is a page that stopped checking years ago. If a search brought you to this site looking for one, the IT permit is the nearest real thing, and it is much narrower.

It is not a way around the right to work. Since 1 March 2026 a foreigner without permanent residence who is employed by a local employer, works remotely for one, or is self-employed needs a right to work granted by the State Employment Promotion Agency (KPMG, 29 April 2026). The exemption list in that alert does not include IT residence permit holders — it includes investment permit holders, refugees, asylum seekers, diplomats, accredited journalists and people covered by international agreements. A residence permit and a work authorization are two different objects from two different agencies, and this site’s most common reader mistake is assuming that one produces the other. The Special Labour Permit, in order covers the second one.

It is not a tax position. It says nothing about where your income is sourced or whether small business status applies to it, and it is not evidence of either. Georgian-source or foreign-source is where that question actually gets decided.

Whether to try for it

The decision, honestly:

Go for it if you are salaried or invoiced regularly by an IT employer or clients, you can get a written certificate of two years’ experience — from an employer, a body, or a documented work history — and your income lands in a pattern that satisfies the spacing test on your bank statements.

Do not build a plan around it if your two years of experience are real but undocumented, your income is irregular, or “IT” is a generous description of what you do. The work ground plus the right to work is the ordinary route and it works; it just has the 40-day deadline attached. The grounds, and which one you actually qualify for lays out the alternative.

Get advice if you are the “manager or representative of an international IT company” category. That is corporate-structure territory, the documents come from the company rather than from you, and it is not a DIY application in the way the freelancer route is. When to pay a lawyer is about exactly that line.

What to have ready before you start

Two of the three things this permit asks for take time to become true, which is the argument for reading this in month two rather than month ten.

The experience certificate. “A certificate confirming at least two years of IT experience” is a document somebody has to issue. An employer’s letter, a formal reference, a body’s certification — the form is less predictable than the requirement, and the person who has to produce it is usually in another country and another timezone. Ask for it early, ask for it in English, and ask for it on letterhead with a signature and a date. If it comes from a country whose documents need apostilling, add a month.

The banking history. Two payments thirty days apart is something your statements either show or do not. If your invoicing is irregular, changing it takes a couple of cycles before the record supports the application. You cannot fix this at the window.

The registration, if you are going the IE route. The category is individual entrepreneurs with small business status working in IT — which is two separate applications, one to register and one for the status, and the second is not automatic. The registration, step by step.

Before you go to the window

Ask PSDA directly what the current document list is, in the order they want it. This permit is a year old, it was created by an ordinance rather than by long practice, and the third-party pages describing it were written from the same press coverage I am citing here. The agency’s own answer on the day is worth more than any of them, including this page.

Bring two copies. The counter keeps one.

Approval date, categories, income and experience tests from Georgia Today, 1 September 2025; the 40-day exception list from sda.gov.ge; work authorization terms from KPMG, 29 April 2026. All checked on 2 September 2026. Permit duration and renewal caps are reported by advisory firms only — confirm on sda.gov.ge before you plan around them.