Immigration Offices in Cyprus: Every District Office, Its Address, Hours and Booking Email

The two bodies are not interchangeable. They answer to different ministries, keep different hours, publish different phone numbers and take appointments in completely different ways. In my practice the most common reason a first visit goes nowhere is not a missing document. It is that the applicant went to the right city and the wrong institution.

Naturalisation files go to the civil-registry side, which stayed with the Ministry of the Interior when the department was split and renamed in 2024, and the guide to Cyprus citizenship covers those routes one by one. Both structures are published. The Cyprus Police set out that the Unit's headquarters operates in Nicosia and its branches are the divisional aliens and immigration departments, with passport control at Larnaca and Paphos airports. The Migration Department's appointments page sends everyone living outside the Nicosia district to their own district unit. And one piece of housekeeping explains a lot of the bad directions online: since the Deputy Ministry of Migration and International Protection and Related Matters Law of 2024, Law 23(I)/2024, the department no longer sits under the Ministry of Interior but under the Deputy Ministry of Migration and International Protection. The European Commission's own Cyprus page is still useful for the Aliens and Immigration Law framework, Cap. 105 and Reg. 242/72, and still out of date on the ministry.

Two rows in that table deserve a second look before you travel. The Nicosia district police unit at Egkomi is a separate building from the CRMD and opens half an hour earlier, which catches out anyone who read the CRMD's hours and assumed they applied to both. And the Limassol unit in Zakaki is on the second floor of a plain commercial block named "D. Nikolaou", not a police station front desk, which is the single most common wrong expectation in that district. Paphos is the same idea taken further: an apartment-style block on Eleftheriou Venizelou, second floor.

The Aliens and Immigration Unit's national headquarters, in the Dasoupolis area of Strovolos, is deliberately not in that table. It is a police command, not a public counter, and turning up there is a wasted morning. The counter for Nicosia district residents is the district unit at Egkomi.

One gov.cy page carries both ranges on adjacent lines, the submission-offices and service-hours page, posted 23 December 2025. It appears in no search result, which is roughly why six different sets of hours are in circulation. The Greek and English editions of the police branch directory both give 07:30 to 14:30 for every district unit, by name, and they agree on this even where they disagree on the phone numbers.

Two wrong answers travel especially well, and it helps to know their source. An 08:00 opening for a district police unit is the CRMD's range misapplied; it turns up in Google's English, German and Russian summaries of the Limassol office alike. A 13:30 close comes from Google's own business panels and AI answers for the Limassol, Larnaca, Paphos and Paralimni units, sometimes hedged as "or up to 14:30", a distinction that appears on no government page. I would treat neither as safe and arrive at opening.

Those addresses are the most useful thing on this page and among the hardest to find. The Cyprus Police publish them on a scanned one-page appointment sheet reachable from a single sentence on the Migration Department's appointments page. No organic search result surfaces it. Each spoke's own page had to be built before the set was complete.

The sheet asks for a precise protocol, and following it exactly is what gets you a slot:

One month is the published minimum, not a target. I would send the request the day that window opens. The mistake applicants most often make is leaving it to the fortnight before expiry, which leaves no room for a reply that arrives late.

On the old online portal, I want to be more careful than most guides are. What the government announced is that from 23 May 2023 an appointment could be arranged over the internet in addition to the call centre. If someone has pointed you at crmd.simplybook.pro, that is not the route the police publish today, but I have found no government page saying when, or whether, it was switched off. Treat any shut-off date you read for it as unconfirmed, and treat any site offering to book your slot for a fee as not the department.

If queueing is not realistic for you, you can have the application prepared and checked before you file instead of working it out at the counter.

This matters more than a tidy-up. A number published in one edition and absent from the other is still a government number, and calling it fake is the error waiting to be made here. This site made it once: an earlier version of the Larnaca page went live saying 24 804233 appeared in no government publication, when the English edition lists it first of three. The Limassol run was one step from publishing the same claim about 25 805211, which is the only number the Greek edition gives for that office. Google's Knowledge Graph and AI answers carry these numbers because they are real, not because they invented them.

A third government record adds numbers again. The ARO appointment sheet carries a "telephone centre" column: 25 805650 and 25 805210 for Limassol, 24 804223 and 24 804236 for Larnaca, 26 806222 and 26 806215 for Paphos, and 23 803288 for Famagusta, a number the branch directory does not list at all. Where a number appears in two records rather than one, that is the number I would dial first, and that is how the last column above is chosen. The Nicosia district unit is the one exception: no number for it appears twice, so there the newer Greek edition decides.

Two details worth carrying away. The faxes diverge too, not just the phones: for Famagusta the English edition gives 23 811308 and the Greek edition 23 803278. And only the English edition publishes email addresses, which is why Limassol is the one district with a general mailbox on that page. The CRMD is not in the branch directory at all; its numbers come from the Migration Department's own contact page.

Your district unit takes most residence applications. Eleven categories are examined only at the Migration Department's headquarters in Nicosia, whatever district you live in, and the government lists them:

1. Immigration Permits, Categories A to F
2. Long-Term Resident Status
3. Educational Institutions, for entry permits
4. Research Centres, for entry permits
5. Foreign Interest Companies
6. EU Blue Card
7. Shipping Companies
8. Intra-Corporate Transfers
9. Digital Nomad Visa
10. Start-up Visa
11. Visitor, for programme attendance

The rule runs both ways, and that is the part people miss. An application outside those categories "will not be accepted" at headquarters and "will be referred to the competent District Unit ... in the applicant's district of residence". So do not drive to Nicosia with an ordinary renewal your own unit handles, and do not email your district mailbox about an EU Blue Card it cannot examine.

One carve-out is worth knowing: initial registration of employees of newly registered foreign-interest companies, through the Business Facilitation Unit, is served first come, first served with no appointment. And one distinction catches students in particular. The entry permit is a Nicosia matter; the residence permit that follows is a district matter. If you are not sure which route applies to you, the permit routes are set out in full rather than at a counter.

The Nicosia pair is the easiest wrong turn on the island. The Asylum Service sits at Archiepiskopou Makariou 70 and the Migration Department at 90: twenty door numbers apart, sibling departments under the same Deputy Ministry, and completely different work. Asylum and international protection go to the Asylum Service, never to the CRMD.

In Paphos the discriminator is the dialling prefix. Every telephone number the government publishes for the immigration unit begins 26 806, and the District Administration's begin 26 801. The one exception is the Police Divisional Headquarters, which sits inside the same 26 806 block, so that one you tell apart by what it does rather than by its number. In Larnaca the trap is arithmetic instead: airport passport control and the district unit both begin 24 804, so a single mistyped digit lands you at a real desk that cannot help you.

Beyond that baseline the requirements split by nationality.

EU, EEA and Swiss citizens (Yellow Slip / MEU1):

• Valid passport or national ID, plus a copy.
• The completed MEU1 form.
• A certified rental agreement or proof of address.
• Proof you can support yourself: employment, self-employment, study enrolment, or sufficient resources.

Non-EU (third-country) nationals:

• Valid passport, plus a copy.
• The relevant application form for your category.
• A certified rental or sale agreement.
• Proof of income or sufficient funds.
• A private medical-insurance certificate. This is mandatory, and Category F retirees need it too. DigiCare, the licensed Cyprus insurance agency that owns this site, issues the Plan A certificate the counter asks for.

The filing applicants most often get wrong is the lease: an uncertified rental agreement is a routine rejection, so have it certified before you go. Note also that proof of address and health cover are commonly requested rather than set out in a statutory list I can point you to, so check what your own permit type needs. Your biometrics, the photograph, fingerprints and signature, are captured at your district police unit at the same time as submission, which is why the local visit is the substantive one even when Nicosia takes the decision.

On fees, the EU registration certificate (MEU1) carries a government fee of 20 EUR per person, per the official EURES Cyprus guidance; fees for non-EU categories differ, so confirm yours on gov.cy. The full document list and the exact fee for the Yellow Slip are in the Yellow Slip (MEU1) guide, and non-EU visitors want the Pink Slip guide.

I raise these as a planning fact, not a complaint, and I have not read the reviews or summarised what they say. What a public score on a district counter does justify is planning for a wait.

The spread is the interesting part. Paralimni, the smallest office and the one serving a whole divided district from a single building, rates better than every city office by a wide margin. The three largest counters cluster at the bottom. If you have a choice of nothing else, you at least know which morning to clear your diary for.

• Arrive at opening rather than mid-morning. The queue builds early, and a counter often stops taking new arrivals before the posted close.
• Bring the complete document set. A second visit is the real cost of one missing document.
• Write your ARC and File Number on paper. You may be asked to put your phone away.
• Allow the whole morning, and do not book anything else before 15:00.

The department publishes direct dials by service, which saves a transfer: students 22 308630, foreign companies 22 308679 or 22 308715, immigration permits 22 308633 or 22 308676. Have your File Number or ARC in front of you before you dial, because the officer cannot look anything up without it. If you write instead, the contact page asks that correspondence be addressed to the Director of the Migration Department, carrying the date, your full name, your signature and a return address.

There is no public status lookup by passport number, whatever the search suggestions imply, and no unofficial lookup worth trusting. Beyond the SMS, the question is who holds your file: a non-EU file still in progress is a question for your district unit, and a decision is a question for the CRMD. Five renewal categories can now be filed online with a verified CY Login account rather than at a counter, but a first application still goes in person.

• Going in the afternoon. Every office closes at 14:30, and the CRMD stops admitting anyone at 14:00. All six are shut at weekends.
• Going to the wrong body. Nicosia-district residents want the CRMD; everyone else wants their district police unit. Nicosia has one of each, at different addresses.
• Applying the CRMD's 08:00 opening to a police unit. District units open at 07:30. The 08:00 figure in circulation belongs to the Nicosia department.
• Emailing the wrong district's mailbox. Each district has its own, and a heavily cited guide gives Limassol's address for Paphos.
• Leaving the booking request to the last fortnight. One month before expiry is the published minimum, and the reply takes up to five working days.
• An uncertified lease, or no insurance certificate. Both are routine reasons to be sent home from the counter.
• Phoning without your ARC or File Number. The officer cannot look anything up without it.
• Driving to Nicosia with an ordinary renewal. Outside the eleven head-office categories it is refused and referred back to your district.
• Assuming a north-Cyprus office can help. It cannot with Republic of Cyprus matters; it is a separate jurisdiction.