Morocco · Retirement
Carte de Séjour — Retiree / Non-Working Resident
Open
Last verified July 2026
Open, but this is an ordinary immigration permit, not a designed programme. There is no published statutory minimum income. Morocco has no residency-by-investment or citizenship-by-investment programme of any kind.
The 80% abatement on repatriated foreign pensions is the whole proposition, and it survives in 2026. It produces an effective rate on foreign pension income in the region of 5-8%. For a retiree with a large defined-benefit pension and no need for a new passport, Morocco quietly beats most of the advertised Mediterranean retirement regimes on arithmetic alone.
Qualifying routes
€1.5k
Carte de séjour pour inactif
No statutory minimum is published. In practice, expect roughly EUR 1,500 per month, plus pension proof and a Moroccan bank account.
The facts
- Minimum
- €1.5k
- Total landed cost
- Low. A few hundred euros in official fees plus modest professional costs. The real economics are in the tax outcome, not the entry cost.
- Route type
- Pension requirement
- Timeline
- 2–6 months (Apply within 90 days of arrival. Renewals must be filed at least 60 days before expiry.)
- Physical presence
- Substantial in practice. The card is meant for people actually living in Morocco, and the tax benefit requires repatriating the pension.
- Family
- SpouseDependent children
- Permanent residency
- A 10-year card after roughly 4 years' continuous legal residence (3 years if married to a Moroccan)
- Citizenship
- 5 years' legal residence (2 for spouses of Moroccans), good conduct and demonstrated integration capacity. Naturalisation is granted by Royal decree, though, and remains genuinely discretionary.
- Language test
- Arabic and integration assessed in practice
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- proof of pension or passive incomeMoroccan bank accountproof of accommodationclean criminal recordmedical certificateapplication within 90 days of arrival
What can go wrong
- Do not confuse the 2026 pension exemption with your pension. Finance Law 2025/2026 fully exempted pensions from CNSS, CMR, RCAR and CIMR from 1 January 2026. Those are Moroccan domestic schemes only. Foreign-source pensions are not covered and still rely on the Art. 76 80% reduction. At least one prominent advisory site markets this as total exemption from 2026, which is simply false for foreign retirees.
- The 80% reduction requires the pension to be duly repatriated to Morocco in non-convertible dirhams. Money that stays offshore gets no relief. And dirhams are not freely convertible back out.
- Morocco taxes residents on worldwide income at up to 37%. The pension abatement is narrow. Your dividends, interest and capital gains get no such treatment.
- The residency test runs on a rolling 365-day window, not a calendar year. Spend 183 days within any period of 365 days and you become resident. That is a subtler trap than the usual rule, and it catches people who think they have split their years carefully.
- There is no published minimum income for the retiree card. That means there is no entitlement either. Approval comes down to administrative discretion, and refusals need not be explained.
- Morocco is not a permanent holdout on CRS, the system countries use to automatically exchange financial account information. The OECD's 22 May 2026 commitments table records that Morocco committed to exchange in 2025 but has not yet done so, and it identifies 2028 as the year exchange is expected to begin. Plan on exchange by 2028.
- Naturalisation happens by Royal decree. It is discretionary, slow, and not something to build a plan around.