GlobeQuest
Legal & ID🇲🇦 Casablanca, Morocco

The carte de séjour, the police prefecture, and the documents that actually block people

Every foreigner staying beyond three months must hold a carte d'immatriculation — universally called the carte de séjour. It is a single card carrying a 'mention' that describes why you are here: travail, étudiant, visiteur, or a commercial activity. The card is cheap and issued in around thirty-five days once accepted. Almost all the difficulty is in the file, and specifically in three documents: proof of address, an attestation de résidence from your local authority, and a criminal-record extract from your country of origin.

Total cost
The card fee is nominal — around MAD 100 plus fiscal stamps. The real spend is document production: legalisation, sworn translation into Arabic or French where needed, the home-country criminal record, and the consular visa where one is required.
Time needed
Roughly thirty-five days from acceptance of a complete file to the card in hand. Getting to a complete file is the part that takes two to eight weeks, or longer if you have to send abroad for a police certificate.
Validity
Typically one year on a first application, renewed annually, with longer validity possible later. A carte de résidence valid ten years exists for people with at least four years of continuous regular residence, but in practice it is granted far more readily to spouses and parents of Moroccan nationals than to long-serving employees.
Verified
August 2026
Medium confidence·Foreign nationals intending to live in Casablanca for more than three months. Immigration is national, under loi n° 02-03, but the file is submitted and decided locally by the DGSN at the commissariat or préfecture de police covering your address.

Before you start

  • A long-stay visa from a Moroccan consulate, for nationalities that require one; many nationalities enter visa-free for ninety days and apply from inside Morocco
  • An address in Casablanca, with a lease in your name or a formal attestation d'hébergement
  • For work: an employment contract visaed by the Ministry of Employment, preceded by an ANAPEC attestation
  • A criminal-record extract from your home country, obtained before you leave

Step-by-step

  1. 1

    Find the commissariat that covers your address

    There is no central immigration office in Casablanca. The service des étrangers sits inside the commissariat or préfecture de police for your arrondissement, and the district you live in determines where you go, who you deal with and how the queue behaves. Ask your landlord or a neighbour rather than guessing.

    In personWho: YouWeek 1
  2. 2

    Get the attestation de résidence from the moqata'a

    The local authority office issues a certificate that you live at your stated address, usually after a check. It is separate from your lease and separate from a utility bill, and the police will ask for it. This is the step nobody warns newcomers about and the most common reason a file is sent away.

    In personWho: YouWeek 1–2
  3. 3

    Legalise everything

    Morocco runs on légalisation — an official stamp certifying a copy or a signature, done at the moqata'a or commune. Your lease, your passport copy and your attestation d'hébergement all need it. Plain photocopies are refused. Budget an afternoon and take the originals.

    In personWho: You
  4. 4

    Get the medical certificate and the photographs

    A certificat médical less than three months old from any Moroccan doctor, plus around eight identity photographs to Moroccan specification. Both are quick and inexpensive, and both expire — do them near the end of the file, not the start.

    In personWho: You
  5. 5

    Submit, collect the récépissé, then collect the card

    A complete file produces a récépissé — an interim receipt that is itself valid proof of your status — after roughly twenty days, and the card about fifteen days after that. The récépissé matters: it is what banks, NARSA and employers will accept while you wait.

    In personWho: You≈35 days once acceptedAround MAD 100 plus timbres
  6. 6

    Diarise the renewal well before expiry

    The first card is usually one year. Renewal needs a Moroccan criminal-record extract instead of the foreign one, plus a fresh attestation de résidence. Start two months out — letting a card lapse turns a renewal into a new application and can leave you irregular in the meantime.

    In personWho: You2 months before expiry

Documents you’ll need

  • Passport, plus a legalised copy
  • Legalised lease, property deed, or attestation d'hébergement
  • Attestation de résidence from the moqata'a
  • Medical certificate less than three months old
  • Criminal-record extract from your country of origin (Moroccan extract at renewal)
  • Employment contract visaed by the Ministry of Employment, for the 'travail' mention
  • Around eight identity photographs

Things most newcomers don’t know

The attestation de résidence, not the lease, is what stalls files.

Newcomers arrive with a signed lease and assume address is settled. The police want a certificate from the moqata'a — the local authority office — confirming you actually live there, which is a separate errand with its own queue and sometimes a home check. It is not mentioned in most published document lists and it is the single most common reason a first file is rejected on the spot.

Source: loi 02-03; local practice

Get your home-country criminal-record extract before you leave, not after.

A first application needs a police certificate from your country of origin, and obtaining one from Morocco means consular appointments, postage and often an apostille or legalisation. People routinely discover this requirement in a Casablanca commissariat with everything else in order, then lose six weeks to it. It is a fifteen-minute errand at home and a month-long one from here.

Source: loi 02-03

The récépissé is not a consolation prize — it works.

The interim receipt issued while your card is produced is accepted by banks for account opening, by NARSA for a licence exchange (with a residence certificate alongside it), and by employers. Newcomers treat the waiting period as dead time and put everything on hold. It is not dead time; start the bank and the licence the day the récépissé is in your hand.

Source: NARSA; banking practice

Morocco has no digital-nomad visa, and the ninety-day extension is not residence.

Many nationalities enter visa-free for ninety days and can request a single extension at a police prefecture. That gets a remote worker to roughly six months and then stops, builds nothing toward a residence card, and can be refused. There is no route in Moroccan law for someone paid from abroad who is not employed by a Moroccan entity or running one. Anyone describing a Moroccan nomad visa is describing something that does not exist.

Source: loi 02-03

Common mistakes to avoid

  • Arriving without a criminal-record extract from your home country.
  • Assuming a signed lease is sufficient proof of address without the attestation de résidence.
  • Presenting plain photocopies where Morocco requires legalised ones.
  • Letting the medical certificate expire while assembling the rest of the file.
  • Waiting until day eighty-nine of a visa-free stay to start the process.

Some of this may be out of date. Spotted something inaccurate? Help us keep it right for the next newcomer.

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Sources

Last verified August 2026. Government processes change — always confirm critical details against the official source before acting.

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Telecom
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Tax
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