Cayman Islands Term Limit and Roll-Over Guide: The Nine-Year Rule, Who Is Outside It, and the Year Between Eight and Nine

The Cayman Islands term limit, known locally as roll-over, is nine years. Section 66(1) of the Immigration (Transition) Act (2022 Revision) provides that "the term limit of a worker shall be nine years", and the Immigration (Transition) (Amendment and Validation) Act, 2025 (Act 14 of 2025), in force from 1 May 2026, left that period as it was. The ten-year figure that appeared in press coverage during 2025 was a clause of the February 2025 draft Bill and was not enacted. This guide explains what the term limit is, when the clock starts, how it sits against the eight-year permanent-residence threshold, who is outside it, and what the Act provides for the year between eligibility and roll-over.

Every date on this page is a date the roll-over calculator computes from a single input, the date the clock started, with the section of the Act cited beside it. The points side of the picture is covered by the complete PR points guide; this is the timeline side.

What the term limit is

A work permit is a temporary permission to work for a named employer. The term limit caps the total time a worker may spend in the Islands on work permits: once nine years have run, the worker must leave unless something else has intervened, most often a pending or granted application for permanent residence. The name "roll-over" comes from the idea that a worker who reaches the limit rolls out of the Islands and, after a break, may return and start a fresh count.

The limit exists alongside the permanent-residence threshold rather than instead of it. Section 37(1) allows a person who has been legally and ordinarily resident for at least eight years to apply for permanent residence. Section 66(1) ends the worker's stay at nine. The year between the two is the natural application window, and the Act's provisions for that year are the subject of the second half of this page.

When the clock starts

The nine years run from the start of the worker's residence on a work permit, and the eight-year count under section 37(1) is of years "legally and ordinarily resident", which for a worker ordinarily runs from the same date. The precise rule for the day the clock starts, including the position of a person who was already in the Islands as a visitor when the permit was granted, is set in section 66 and has not yet been reconciled on this site against the gazetted text; the calculator takes the date the reader enters. From that single date it returns three others:

Date	Years from start	Provision
Earliest permanent-residence application	8	Immigration (Transition) Act (2022 Revision) s.37(1)
Term limit (roll-over)	9	s.66(1), unchanged by Act 14 of 2025 s.30
Earliest application for the right to be Caymanian	20 (with 10 holding PR)	s.28(3), as amended by Act 14 of 2025 s.10(a)

Whether time spent in the Islands on a different basis before the permit, for example as a student or a visitor, counts towards either period depends on the basis of the stay and on how the Act defines the start of each count, and is a question for a licensed Cayman Islands immigration attorney with the file in front of them.

Nine, not ten: what the 2025 and 2026 Acts did to section 66

Section 30 of Act 14 of 2025 is headed "Amendment of section 66". It inserts paragraphs (c) and (d) into subsection (1), dealing with non-Caymanian civil servants who leave the civil service and become workers, and substitutes subsections (2), (9) and (10). It does not amend the words "nine years". The Immigration (Transition) (Amendment and Validation) Act, 2026 does not touch section 66 at all.

The February 2025 draft Bill did contain clauses moving the term limit from nine to ten years and the permanent-residence threshold from eight to nine. Both were reported at the time and both were carried into summaries on several Cayman websites with the words "from 1 May 2026". Neither clause is in the Act as passed. The Government's immigration-reform page lists the changes that were made and does not mention a change to either period. The verification behind this page compared the gazetted Acts against sections 37 and 66 of the principal Act and is recorded in the site's decision log of 30 August 2026; the 1 May 2026 spoke lists what did change.

Who is outside the term limit

Holders of permanent residence

Section 66(1) fixes "the term limit of a worker", and a worker is a person holding a work permit. A person granted permanent residence with the right to work holds a Residency and Employment Rights Certificate under section 37, not a work permit, and the nine-year clock does not apply.

The spouse or civil partner of a Caymanian

The spouse or civil partner of a Caymanian who holds a Residency and Employment Rights Certificate on that basis is likewise not a worker on a permit, and the calculator's "spouse of a Caymanian" setting returns no term-limit date on that reading, with the eight-year date under section 37(1) and the twenty-year date under section 28(3). The provision governing that certificate is on the statute-review list. The certificate spoke covers what changed for certificate holders on 1 May 2026.

Non-Caymanian civil servants

Civil servants are not work-permit holders, so the section 66(1) limit does not apply to them. Act 14 of 2025 inserted a new section 66B giving non-Caymanian civil servants a nine-year term limit of their own (section 66B(1)), running alongside the section 66(1) limit for workers. A civil servant who leaves the service and takes a work permit becomes a worker under the inserted section 66(1)(c) and (d), with the two periods reconciled by the substituted subsections. The calculator's "civil servant" setting cites section 66B(1).

The year between eight and nine

An applicant who files for permanent residence at the eight-year mark will, in most cases, still be waiting for a decision when the nine-year term limit arrives. The Act sets no deadline for the Board's decision, and it deals with the gap directly.

Permission to continue working: section 66(4)

A person who has applied for permanent residence during the currency of a work permit may seek permission from the Director of WORC to continue in employment on the same terms, or for a new employer in the same occupation, until the application and any appeal are determined. That permission is what carries an applicant across the term limit while the decision is pending. The application for it attracts a fee of CI$150, CI$250 or CI$500 depending on the annual work-permit fee band for the applicant's occupation (Caymanian Protection (Fees) Regulations, 2026, as set out in the Ministry's Immigration Reform Guide fee tables, page 23; the fee was CI$100 before 1 May 2026), and WORC's published guidance describes the permission itself as attracting a fee equivalent to a six-month work permit, a figure that depends on the occupation and has not been reconciled against a primary copy on this site.

The application itself

The permanent-residence application fee is CI$1,500, CI$2,500 or CI$5,000 on the same three bands (previously a flat CI$1,000), paid with the form and not refunded on refusal. The fees and timeline spoke lists every line, and the PR cost calculator totals them for a given band and household.

What the window looks like in numbers

For a worker whose clock started on 1 September 2018, the calculator returns 1 September 2026 as the earliest application date and 1 September 2027 as the term limit: a window of 365 days. An application filed on the first day of the window has a year of ordinary permit time before the section 66(4) permission is needed; one filed in the last month of the window has almost none. The calculator's countdown shows the days remaining to each date from today, and marks which of three phases the reader is in: before eligibility, inside the window, or past the term limit.

What roll-over is not

• It is not a bar on returning. A worker who leaves at the term limit may return on a new permit after the break the Act requires; the count then starts afresh. The length of the required break is set in section 66 and its subsections, and the substituted subsections (2), (9) and (10) from Act 14 of 2025 are the current text; this site has not yet reconciled the break period against the gazetted wording and lists it as pending on the statute-review list rather than print a figure.
• It is not the same as the eight-year threshold. Eight years opens the permanent-residence application; nine years closes the work-permit stay. The two are conflated in several secondary sources, and the draft-Bill figures of nine and ten have added to the confusion.
• It does not run for permanent residents, certificate-holding spouses of Caymanians, or Caymanians. Section 66(1) applies to workers.

After permanent residence: the longer horizon

Permanent residence is not the end of the timeline. From 1 May 2026, a permanent resident may apply for the right to be Caymanian on grounds of naturalisation after twenty years of legal and ordinary residence, of which ten must have been spent holding permanent residence (section 28(3), as amended by Act 14 of 2025 section 10(a); the figures were fifteen and five before). Between the two, many long-term residents also naturalise as British Overseas Territories Citizens under the British Nationality Act 1981, which has its own residence test with absence caps of 450 days in five years and 90 days in the final year. The twenty-year path spoke sets the whole sequence out, and the BOTC residence calculator does the day counting.

Where the numbers come from

The periods on this page are read from the Immigration (Transition) Act (2022 Revision), sections 28(3), 37(1), 66(1), 66(4) and 66B(1), as amended by the Immigration (Transition) (Amendment and Validation) Act, 2025 (Act 14 of 2025) sections 10, 14 and 30 and left unchanged by the 2026 Act, both in force from 1 May 2026 per the gov.ky immigration-reform page. Fees are read from the Caymanian Protection (Fees) Regulations, 2026 via the Ministry's Reform Guide fee tables of 29 April 2026. The constants sit in one file in this site's code, each with its section and effective date; a change to any of them fails a test on purpose and produces a notice to newsletter subscribers.

Nothing on this page is legal advice. How the term limit applies to a particular history of permits, breaks and status changes is a question for a licensed Cayman Islands immigration attorney, and the contact page passes referral requests on.