Duhail Immigration Office Qatar: Location, Timings & Services

"Duhail Immigration Office" is a name the public gave to a building the Ministry of Interior never labelled that way. It is shorthand for the MOI complex in Wadi Al Banat, on the northern edge of Al Duhail, which took over from the old Al Gharafa premises in 2023. Knowing which department inside it you need is the difference between a finished errand and a wasted morning.

Quick reference

Detail	What MOI publishes
Official department names	General Directorate of Passports (headquarters) and the Nationality and Travel Documents Department. Neither is officially called "Duhail Immigration Office".
Location	Wadi Al Banat, in the Al Daayen area immediately north of Al Duhail. MOI has not published a street name or building number for the site.
Map link	25.3811389, 51.4719722, the coordinates MOI issued with its relocation announcement.
Working days	Sunday to Thursday. Closed Friday and Saturday.
Published service hours	7:00am to 12:30pm, then 1:00pm to 6:00pm, per the MOI working hours update of 26 March 2026.
Visitor access	Gates 1 and 3, with visitor parking in Basement B1.
Official contact	Nationality and Travel Documents Department 44890888 and nationality@moi.gov.qa. General Directorate of Borders, Passports and Expatriates Affairs 44890212 or 44883777 and bpea@moi.gov.qa. MOI general line 2367111. These are departmental numbers published on the MOI portal, not a reception desk for the Wadi Al Banat building.
Online alternative	The Metrash app and the MOI e-services portal handle most residency and visa transactions without a visit.

What is Duhail Immigration Office?

There is no MOI department of that name. The building people mean houses two distinct parts of the Ministry of Interior, and they moved there separately in 2023.

The Nationality and Travel Documents Department announced on 6 August 2023 that its headquarters was leaving Al Gharafa for a new building in Wadi Al Banat, effective Tuesday 8 August 2023. The MOI portal lists its internal sections as Nationality, Travel Documents, Administrative Affairs and Archive.

The General Directorate of Passports followed. MOI announced that its headquarters would move from the old Al Gharafa building to Wadi Al Banat and begin operating there on Sunday 10 September 2023. This directorate, listed on the MOI portal as the General Directorate of Borders, Passports and Expatriates Affairs, is the one responsible for residence permits, visa issuance and stamping, family residence approvals and expatriate affairs.

One relocation story is really two, announced a month apart, which is why the names get used interchangeably. MOI's working hours notices now list the two as a single headquarters entry.

Duhail Immigration Office location and map

The site is in Wadi Al Banat, a district in the Al Daayen municipality just north of Al Duhail. With its relocation announcement MOI published the coordinates 25.3811389, 51.4719722, which is the most precise official pointer available. Open those coordinates in Google Maps and navigate to the pin rather than to a place name.

That matters, because mapping services and older guides still carry a "General Directorate of Passports" marker at the former Al Gharafa address. OpenStreetMap still has that pin. If your map app routes you to Al Gharafa, its data is years out of date.

Several guides describe the building as directly opposite Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Stadium, home of Al Duhail SC. The coordinates MOI published sit roughly a kilometre north of it, so treat the stadium as orientation for the right part of town, not as a landmark opposite the entrance.

For arrival, MOI did publish two concrete details with the September 2023 announcement: visitors enter through gates 1 and 3, and visitor parking is in Basement B1.

Opening hours and visiting days

MOI last restated the headquarters schedule in its working hours update of 26 March 2026, which is the most recent official statement we could find:

Session	Hours	Days
Morning	7:00am to 12:30pm	Sunday to Thursday
Afternoon	1:00pm to 6:00pm	Sunday to Thursday
Friday and Saturday	Closed	Weekend

These are the hours MOI publishes for the General Directorate of Passports and Nationality and Travel Documents Department headquarters as a single entry. They are the same figures first announced with the 2023 relocations, so the schedule has held for close to three years.

Published hours are when the department operates, not a promise that a counter is still issuing tokens at 5:55pm. MOI publishes no token or queue cut-off for this site, so arrive well inside a session rather than at the end of one.

Services available

MOI publishes services by department, not by building, so the honest way to read this is: these are the services of the two departments based at Wadi Al Banat, and the channel column tells you where each one is normally completed.

Service	Who it applies to	Confirmed channel	Official guidance
Qatari passports and travel documents	Qatari citizens	Nationality and Travel Documents Department. Also issued and renewed at several MOI service centres.	MOI portal, Nationality and Travel Documents Department page
Nationality matters	Qatari citizens and applicants	Nationality and Travel Documents Department. Decisions sit with MOI, not with a counter clerk.	Same department page
To whom it may concern certificates	Citizens and residents	Issued through Metrash by this department, which MOI states removes the need to visit.	MOI announcement via its official channels
Residence permit issue, renewal and cancellation	Expatriate residents and their sponsors	Metrash and MOI e-services. In-person attendance at an MOI counter only where a case cannot be completed online.	MOI e-services portal
Change of passport details on a residence permit	Residents issued a new foreign passport	Metrash, listed by MOI among its residence permit services.	MOI e-services portal
Visa issuance, stamping and family residence approvals	Sponsors and their dependants	General Directorate of Borders, Passports and Expatriates Affairs, with most applications submitted through Metrash or e-services.	MOI portal, directorate page
Fingerprinting	New residents completing residency formalities	Not this site. Criminal Evidence and Information Department, plus a Fingerprints Section in the Industrial Area and several MOI service centres.	MOI working hours notices
Police clearance certificate	Citizens and residents	Not this site. Criminal Evidence and Information Department, available through Metrash and the MOI portal.	See our Qatar police clearance certificate guide

MOI also runs eleven General Directorate of Passports service centres, listed again in March 2026 at HMC, The Pearl, Souq Waqif, Al Khor, Al Shamal, Umm Salal, Al Wakra, Umm Seneem, Al Rayyan, Al Shahaniya and Mesaimeer. Most open 7:00am to 12:30pm only, and the services each one offers differ. For a routine transaction a nearer centre may suit you better, but confirm it handles your specific service first.

Do you need an appointment?

MOI does not publish a blanket appointment rule for this building, and nobody should tell you it does. What is on the record is narrower and more useful.

The current Metrash app, which replaced Metrash2 on 1 March 2025, includes appointment booking among its service categories. So for some MOI transactions a slot can be reserved in the app. MOI has not published a list of which services at the Wadi Al Banat headquarters are bookable, which are walk-in and which require a referral, so the practical approach is to open Metrash, find your service, and see whether it offers you an appointment before you set off.

Three situations are worth planning for:

• Your service is completed online. Most residency and visa transactions are. In that case there is nothing to book and no reason to attend.
• Your application has already been submitted and flagged for attendance. Bring the application reference. A counter cannot easily help with a case it cannot locate.
• Your case involves a sponsor or an authorised representative. Sponsorship, family residence and dependant matters are tied to the sponsor's file. Where the sponsor's signature, Metrash approval or presence is required, sending the dependant alone will not resolve it. MOI states the requirement per service, so check the service page or the Metrash flow rather than assuming.

If you are going in to ask about residency status rather than to lodge anything, do the free check first. You can check your Qatar ID status online in under a minute, and it often answers the question that prompted the trip.

Documents to prepare

MOI sets document requirements per service, not per building, and a generic checklist is no substitute for the one attached to your transaction. Use the list below as general preparation and the official service page as the authority.

• Your Qatar ID, original, plus a copy
• Your passport, original, plus a copy of the data page
• Any application reference, receipt or Metrash confirmation already issued
• The original of any certificate your service calls for, attested where attestation is required, with a copy
• A payment method, since fees are charged per service

Do not assume everyone needs a salary certificate, a medical certificate or a sponsor letter. Those belong to particular services, not to walking through the door, and a family residence application asks for very different papers than a change of passport details. Confirm yours on the MOI service page or in the Metrash flow before you travel, and bring originals as well as copies.

Can you use Metrash instead?

For a large share of visitors, yes, and this is the single most useful thing to check before planning a trip.

The app is now called simply Metrash. MOI launched the new version in December 2024 and discontinued the old Metrash2 app on 1 March 2025, so guides describing Metrash2 menus are describing software that no longer runs. MOI puts the current service count above 440.

Residency and passport-related services MOI has confirmed in the app include issuing, renewing and cancelling a residence permit, changing passport details on a residence permit, reducing residence violation fines, tracking residence service applications, and issuing to whom it may concern certificates from the Nationality and Travel Documents Department. If you are renewing, our Qatar ID renewal guide walks through the process, which for most residents is completed entirely online and not at Duhail. The same is true of a Qatar family visit visa, which is submitted through Metrash or the MOI e-services portal rather than over a counter.

The limits are worth naming plainly. MOI notes that a newcomer's residence permit is issued after the medical check and fingerprinting are complete, so parts of the residency journey are physical by design. Nationality questions, committee decisions, document discrepancies and anything the app rejects still need a human. This guide prints no menu paths, because MOI redesigns the app and the labels move.

Getting there

Drive to the coordinates, not to a place name, and enter through gate 1 or gate 3 with parking in Basement B1. Those are the only arrival instructions MOI has published.

On public transport, the nearest Doha Metro station is Qatar University on the Red Line, roughly two kilometres east of the MOI coordinates. Qatar Rail runs free Metrolink feeder buses from metro stations into surrounding areas, and its announcements have described a Metrolink route covering Wadi Al Banat from Qatar University station. Route numbers and stops in that network have changed more than once, so confirm the current route in the Doha Metro and Lusail Tram app or the Karwa journey planner rather than trusting a bus number printed elsewhere.

No official source publishes a walking time from the nearest stop, a taxi fare or a parking capacity for this site, so this guide does not either.

Fees and processing times

There is no single Duhail immigration fee. MOI charges per service, and the amount depends on which service you are completing and, for residency, on the sponsorship category and the number of years.

We could not retrieve a current official fee schedule from an MOI page that loads reliably from outside Qatar, so this guide publishes no figures. Secondary sites quote riyal amounts confidently and disagree with each other. The reliable number is the one your Metrash or e-services payment screen shows, because it is calculated from your own case.

On timing, MOI does not publish a processing time for counter transactions at this headquarters, nor an approval guarantee. Residence applications submitted online are tracked through Metrash, which is where a status, rather than an estimate, will appear.

Before you visit

1. Confirm the department and the service. Passports and residency sit with the General Directorate of Passports. Qatari nationality and travel documents sit with the Nationality and Travel Documents Department. Fingerprints and police clearance sit elsewhere entirely.
2. Check whether it can be done in Metrash. If it can, you have saved the trip.
3. Check hours and notices on the day. Sunday to Thursday, 7:00am to 12:30pm and 1:00pm to 6:00pm as published, with Ramadan and public holiday schedules announced separately by MOI.
4. Prepare originals and copies of the documents your specific service lists, not a generic bundle.
5. Carry your application reference or any confirmed Metrash booking.
6. Check whether the sponsor or an authorised representative has to attend before anyone travels alone. Company PROs should use the External Services Centres.

Where to go next

Start on the MOI portal, not a search engine. The Nationality and Travel Documents Department page carries that department's contact details and service links, and the MOI e-services section is where to confirm whether your transaction needs a building at all. QatarVia is independent and not an MOI service, so where this guide and an MOI page disagree, the MOI page wins.