Spouse Visa Indonesia and the Route to Permanent Stay (KITAP)
The spouse visa Indonesia issues to the husband or wife of a citizen: a stay permit of one or two years, and permanent stay once the marriage reaches two years.
References (7)
- UU No. 6 Tahun 2011 on immigration, as amended, most recently by UU No. 63 Tahun 2024 — Article 52(e) covers the limited stay permit for a foreigner lawfully married to an Indonesian citizen, and has letters rather than numbered paragraphs. Article 54(1)(b) covers permanent stay for family by mixed marriage. Article 60(1) sets three consecutive years of residence for a cleric, worker, investor or retiree. Article 60(2) sets the two-year marriage condition and the Integration Statement. Article 61, which has no numbered paragraphs, allows work or business to support the holder and their family. Article 62 lists how permanent stay comes to an end. Article 63(4) disapplies the guarantor provisions for the spouse of a citizen. Article 64(3), as amended in 2024, gives the re-entry permit the same validity as the permanent permit.
- Permen Imipas No. 3 Tahun 2025 on visas, stay permits and supervision for the diaspora, in force 6 May 2025 — Article 14 sets what the spouse of an Indonesian citizen supplies, and Article 14(2) splits it by where the marriage took place. Article 18(3) leaves the visa index to the Minister's published classification. Article 23(2) gives the one-year and two-year options. Article 24 covers renewal. Article 34(1) makes the five-yearly report free of charge. Article 35 restates the right to work. Article 40 ends permanent stay after more than a year outside Indonesia. Article 42(1) provides for one application covering the visa, the permit, the change of status and the re-entry permit.
- Permenkumham No. 22 Tahun 2023 on visas and stay permits, as amended by Permenkumham No. 11 Tahun 2024 — Article 121(1) grants permanent stay for five years. Article 128(1) allows it to be extended for an unlimited period. Article 132(1) sets the five-yearly report and states that it carries no charge. Article 179(3) requires the marriage to have reached at least two years. Article 179(4) releases a married work-permit holder from the three-year residence rule without a change of guarantor.
- PP No. 31 Tahun 2013, the implementing regulation, amended four times and most recently by PP No. 40 Tahun 2023 — Article 155 grants permanent stay for five years and then an unlimited extension. Article 159(3)(f) makes divorce a ground on which a limited stay permit obtained through the marriage may be cancelled. Article 160, as replaced in 2023, keeps the permit valid when the Indonesian spouse dies and replaces the former guarantor requirement with a duty to report. Article 162 keeps permanent stay after a divorce where the marriage had reached ten years. Article 163(3) gives 60 days from the divorce deed to present a guarantor where it had not. Article 167(3) confines the three-year residence rule to clerics, workers, investors and second-home holders. Article 168, which used to state the two-year marriage rule at this level, was deleted by PP No. 40 Tahun 2023, so guidance resting on it is out of date.
- UU No. 1 Tahun 1974 on marriage — Article 56(1) makes a marriage celebrated abroad valid if it was performed under the law of the country where it took place. Article 56(2) asks for the certificate to be registered after the couple returns to Indonesia.
- UU No. 23 Tahun 2006 on civil administration — Article 37(1) requires a marriage abroad to be registered with the local authority and reported to the Indonesian mission. Article 37(4) gives 30 days from returning to Indonesia to report it to the civil registry where you live.
- PP No. 34 Tahun 2021 on the use of foreign workers — Article 6(1) requires an employer of a foreign worker to hold an approved plan to employ one. Whether it reaches a company employing the spouse of an Indonesian citizen is not settled by the regulations.
Married to an Indonesian citizen, you do not need an employer or an investment behind you to stay. The spouse visa Indonesia issues for this is the E31A family visa, and your Indonesian husband or wife applies for it. It carries a limited stay permit — a KITAS, Kartu Izin Tinggal Terbatas — of one or two years, renewable. Once your marriage reaches two years, that permit can be changed to permanent stay, a KITAP (Kartu Izin Tinggal Tetap), which runs five years and is then renewed without a further time limit.
This is the route for the husband or wife of an Indonesian citizen. If you are married instead to a foreigner who holds a stay permit here, you are on a different route. There your permit tracks your spouse’s, and a family permit alone does not let you work. The guide to Indonesia’s visa codes sets out what each one allows.
How the spouse visa Indonesia works
Your Indonesian husband or wife makes the application, through the immigration system, to the Directorate General of Immigration; you can also make it yourself (Minister of Immigration and Corrections Regulation No. 3 of 2025, Article 14(1)). There is no guarantor to find. The Immigration Law sets the guarantor provisions aside altogether for a foreigner lawfully married to an Indonesian citizen (UU 6/2011, Article 63(4)). That is why your husband or wife is the person who files, rather than a company or an agency. The E31A code itself comes from the Minister’s published visa classification rather than from the regulation (Article 18(3)).
What proves the marriage depends on where you married. A marriage in Indonesia is proved by the marriage book or the marriage certificate the responsible ministry or institution issued (Article 14(2)(b)); a marriage abroad is dealt with in the next section. You choose one year or two years at the point of application (Article 23(2)(a)). The permit is then renewed on application to the head of your immigration office (Article 24). The first application asks for proof of means of living for you and your family here; a renewal does not ask for that again (Article 24(4)).
As the spouse of a citizen you may work, or run a business, to support yourself and your family. That right is in the Immigration Law itself and is restated in the 2025 regulation (UU 6/2011, Article 61; Permen Imipas 3/2025, Article 35) — it is not a recent concession. Whether a company that employs you still needs its own approval to employ a foreign worker is genuinely unresolved in the regulations, and our guide to the visa codes says so openly rather than guessing.
We prepare the application with your husband or wife and file it, and we give you the government fees with the quotation. Family and spouse visas is the service this sits under.
If you married outside Indonesia
Indonesia asks that a marriage celebrated abroad be recorded here. Register it at the Indonesian mission in the country where you married, and report it to the civil registry where you live once you are back. The civil administration law allows 30 days from your return (UU 23/2006, Article 37(1) and (4)). Immigration wants to see the proof of that record, together with the marriage certificate translated into Indonesian by a sworn translator, unless it is already in English (Permen Imipas 3/2025, Article 14(2)(a)). The translation applies on this route as much as on any other.
None of this makes your marriage valid: it already is. The Marriage Law treats a marriage celebrated abroad as valid where it was performed under the law of that country (UU 1/1974, Article 56(1)). The record follows the marriage; it does not create it.
It is worth doing early all the same, because it is one of the everyday reasons an application does not go through first time. What happens in that case, and how an application is put right, is set out in why stay permits are refused.
From the stay permit to permanent stay (KITAP)
The clock runs on the marriage, not on your years here
Permanent stay opens once your marriage has reached two years, and on signing an Integration Statement (Pernyataan Integrasi) — Immigration Law, UU 6/2011, Article 60(2), and the regulation on visas and stay permits (Permenkumham 22/2023, Article 179(3)). The three consecutive years of residence that Article 60(1) asks of a worker or an investor are not asked of you on this route.
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Your husband or wife applies
Or you apply yourself, for the family visa and the stay permit that follows it.
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The stay permit is granted
You chose the length when you applied.
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Renewed before it expires
Filed while the permit still runs; a decision that arrives after it ends is not counted as an overstay.
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Changed to permanent stay
Once the marriage has reached two years and the Integration Statement is signed.
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Permanent stay
Then extended for an unlimited period, so long as the permit has not been cancelled.
The Integration Statement is a declaration to the Government of Indonesia. It is signed as part of the application rather than arranged separately.
“Unlimited” here means what it says. Permanent stay is granted for five years and then extended for an unlimited period, provided the permit has not been cancelled (PP 31/2013, Article 155; Permenkumham 22/2023, Articles 121(1) and 128(1)). What it asks in return is small. A holder who has extended reports once every five years to the immigration office covering where they live, and that report carries no charge (Permenkumham 22/2023, Article 132(1); Permen Imipas 3/2025, Article 34(1)). Travel became easier in 2024 as well. The re-entry permit now runs for the same period as the permanent permit itself, and covers as many journeys as you make (UU 6/2011, Article 64(3), as amended by UU 63/2024, and Article 64(4)).
The 2025 regulation also provides for a single application covering the visa, the stay permit, the change of status and the re-entry permit together (Article 42(1)). The two-year marriage condition still governs, and the ordinary route above is the one we see. We handle the change of status to permanent stay for the spouse of an Indonesian citizen, once the marriage qualifies. One thing the permit does not settle is tax. Holding permanent stay makes you a resident for immigration purposes (UU 6/2011, Article 54(3)); whether you are resident for tax is decided by its own tests, which our guide for expatriates moving to Indonesia explains.
If the marriage ends
Permanent stay does not fall away with the marriage
If your Indonesian husband or wife dies, the permit you hold remains valid. What you do is report the change in your marital status to the immigration office (PP 31/2013, Article 160, as replaced by PP 40/2023). And where a marriage has reached ten years or more, permanent stay stands on its own even if the marriage later ends in divorce (UU 6/2011, Article 62(2)(g); PP 31/2013, Article 162).
That death rule was changed in 2023, when the requirement to produce an Indonesian guarantor was replaced by the duty to report, so guidance still sending a widow or widower to find one is out of date. Where a marriage of less than ten years ends in divorce there is a further step — a guarantor, within 60 days of the divorce deed (PP 31/2013, Article 163(3)) — and it is a step we take care of.
The temporary permit sits in a weaker position than the permanent one, because divorce is a ground on which a stay permit obtained through the marriage may be cancelled (Article 159(3)(f)). That is one reason people move to permanent stay once the marriage qualifies, rather than renewing the temporary permit indefinitely.
Questions people ask
We married abroad. Is our marriage recognised in Indonesia?
I hold a work KITAS and have been married to an Indonesian for more than two years. Do I still have to serve three years first?
Does permanent stay ever have to be renewed?
What this means for you
Two things are worth knowing early. If you married outside Indonesia, get the marriage on the record here, because everything else rests on that document. And count from your wedding rather than from your arrival. At two years of marriage, the permit you keep renewing can become a permanent one instead — and after ten years a permanent one no longer depends on the marriage continuing.
If you are somewhere in the middle of that — a permit due for renewal, or a marriage about to reach two years — tell us where you are and we will tell you which application to make next.