- Population
- 630,000
- Language
- Bengali
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Throughout Oman: Muscat (Ruwi, Wadi Kabir, Muttrah, Al Khuwair, Seeb, Al Amerat), Sohar, Saham and Barka on the Batinah coast, Salalah, Nizwa, Sur, Ibri and Buraimi; farms, fishing harbours, labour camps and Omani homes
Bangladeshis are Oman's largest foreign community, about 630,000 people, outnumbering even the Indians, and almost all of them are Bengali-speaking Muslim men who came from villages in districts such as Cumilla, Brahmanbaria and Chandpur. They build, clean, cut hair, wash clothes, tend date and vegetable farms on the Batinah coast, fish, drive and keep small shops in every town of the country. Many came on a so-called free visa, paying an agent around 1,200 rials and a sponsor a monthly fee to work for whoever would hire them, and so many fell out of status that Oman stopped issuing visas to Bangladeshis in October 2023, a ban only partly lifted since. Once a year thousands gather for the Bengali New Year fair at Barka, with Bangladeshi food, songs and village games.
Read more- Population
- 140,000
- Language
- Malayalam
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni (plurality; mixed)
- Location
- Throughout Oman: Muscat (Ruwi, Wadi Kabir, Muttrah, Ghala, Al Khuwair, Seeb), Sohar, Salalah, Nizwa, Sur, Ibri and Buraimi
Malayalis from Kerala have been coming to Oman since before the oil era, and about 140,000 live there today as nurses, shopkeepers, accountants, engineers, drivers and supermarket and construction workers in every town of the country. Unlike most South Asian workers in Oman, they are split between three faiths: Muslims from northern Kerala, Hindus, and Christians of the ancient Saint Thomas churches, who fill Malayalam services at the Mar Thoma, Orthodox and Catholic churches of Ruwi, Ghala, Sohar and Salalah. At Onam thousands sit down to a feast of up to 26 dishes served on banana leaves, and Omani friends often join them. Their numbers have fallen from earlier estimates of 200,000 or more as Omanisation pushed Keralite nurses and office staff out of government jobs.
Read more- Population
- ~50,000-60,000
- Language
- Arabic, Egyptian
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Mainly Muscat (Bawshar, Al Khuwair, Ruwi, Seeb), with teachers, doctors and engineers in Salalah, Sohar, Nizwa and towns across the country
Egyptian Arabs in Oman are a community of roughly 50,000 to 60,000 Muslim professionals and their families, part of some 60,000 to 65,000 Egyptians in the sultanate. They arrived with Oman's modern state: when Sultan Qaboos began building schools in 1970 there were almost no Omani teachers, and Egyptian teachers, followed by doctors, engineers and lawyers, were sent to cities, mountain villages and desert towns alike. Many Omanis over forty learned to read, count and pray from an Egyptian teacher, and the Egyptian dialect of films and television is understood everywhere. Today they still teach in schools and universities and work in hospitals, engineering firms and offices, keeping their own school in Al Ansab and a community club in Muscat, while Coptic Christians among the Egyptians worship in their own church.
Read more- Population
- 50,000
- Language
- Tagalog
- Religion
- Christianity - Roman Catholicism
- Location
- Muscat (Ruwi, Al Khuwair, Ghala, Seeb) and employer homes nationwide; Salalah, Sohar and Duqm
About 50,000 Filipinos live in Oman, roughly seven in ten of them women, most working as housemaids, nannies and caregivers in Omani homes, alongside nurses, hotel and retail staff, engineers, technicians and port staff. Before the pandemic the Philippines sent about 25,000 workers a year to Oman, and remittances now exceed $340 million a year. Catholic faith shapes community life: Filipinos fill the parishes of Ruwi and Ghala, where a Filipino Capuchin has led the main parish and dawn Masses of the Simbang Gabi novena are said in Tagalog before Christmas. The Filipino Community Social Club is the only officially recognised umbrella body for the community's associations.
Read more- Population
- ~32,000 (Myanmar nationals, NCSI 2024; mostly Bamar, with Rakhine, Chin and other minorities)
- Language
- Burmese
- Religion
- Buddhism - Theravada
- Location
- Employer homes across Oman, centred on Muscat; also the Sharqiyah (Ja'alan) and other governorates
Myanmar nationals are the fastest-growing foreign community in Oman, rising from almost none before 2022 to about 33,000 by the end of 2024. Most are young women from the Irrawaddy delta, Yangon, Rakhine and Chin State who answered social-media job advertisements after the 2021 military coup wrecked Myanmar's economy, and who now work as live-in housemaids for 100-120 rials a month. Myanmar has no embassy in Oman and no labour agreement with it, so many arrive on tourist visas through brokers who hold their passports and demand thousands of dollars before letting them go home. Mostly Theravada Buddhists, they have no temple or monk in Oman and keep their faith privately in their employers' homes.
Read more- Population
- 30,000
- Language
- Iranian Persian
- Religion
- Islam - Shia
- Location
- Muscat (Ruwi, Muttrah, Qurum, Al Khuwair, Sarooj), Sohar; Iranian boat traders in Khasab
Persians have lived in Muscat for centuries as merchants, shopkeepers, fishmongers, quilt makers and coppersmiths, and the old al-Ajam quarter of Muscat still carries their name. Today the Persian-speaking community is mainly some 25,000 Iranian nationals, businesspeople, traders, professionals and their families, whose numbers have grown fast as Iranian firms register in Oman: companies with Iranian shareholders nearly doubled to over 6,500 in 2024. Their children attend an Iranian state school in Muscat, and Iranian boatmen cross the Strait of Hormuz daily to barter pistachios, carpets and livestock in the port of Khasab. Most are Twelver Shia Muslims, with Sunni families from the Iranian Gulf coast and a small Baha'i presence. The older Omani families of Persian descent, the Ajam, have largely married into other communities, taken Arab names and turned to Arabic.
Read more- Population
- 30,000
- Language
- Swahili (individual language)
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Private households throughout Oman, above all Muscat and the Batinah; also the interior, Sharqiyah and Salalah
Tanzanians in Oman are mostly young women from Zanzibar and the Tanzanian coast who come on two-year contracts as live-in housemaids, with a smaller number of men working as drivers and labourers; at about 30,000 in mid-2026 they have more than doubled since 2022. They speak Swahili, the language many older Omanis of Zanzibari descent still use at home, and most share the Islam of the families they serve, while a Christian minority comes from the mainland. Their lives are bound to their employers' homes: many have described 15 to 21-hour days, withheld wages and confiscated passports, and only in October 2025 did Oman set legal limits on domestic workers' hours, leave and weekly rest. In July 2026 Tanzania's embassy held Muscat's first World Kiswahili Day and began forming a Tanzanian diaspora association.
Read more- Population
- 25,000
- Language
- Arabic, Sudanese
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Mainly Muscat; also Salalah, Sohar and other towns
Sudanese in Oman are a community of about 25,000, most of them Arabic-speaking Muslims from the Nile valley of northern and central Sudan, and one of the fastest-growing Arab groups in the sultanate. Most are men working as doctors, nurses, engineers, accountants, drivers, technicians and labourers, sending wages home to relatives scattered by the war that broke out in Sudan in April 2023. The war also stranded thousands of Sudanese visitors in Oman, some for more than a year, until Sudan's government began flying them home from Muscat to Port Sudan in 2025. In Muscat they meet over sweet tea and coffee from the clay jabana, the men in white jalabiya and turban on feast days and the women wrapped in the bright Sudanese toub.
Read more- Population
- 25,000
- Language
- Nepali (individual language)
- Religion
- Hinduism
- Location
- Muscat (Ruwi, Seeb, Ghala, Al Amarat) and employer homes nationwide; Salalah and Sohar
About 25,000 Nepalis live in Oman, men working as security guards, hotel and restaurant staff, cleaners, drivers and construction hands, and a fast-growing number of women working in Omani homes. Nepal has banned women from taking housemaid jobs in the Gulf since 2017, yet more than 12,000 Nepali women now work in Oman as domestic workers, many brought in on visit visas after the UAE tightened its own rules. Hindus with Buddhist and Kirati minorities, they mark Dashain, Tihar and Teej in shared rooms and community halls, and the Nepali Non-Resident Social Club runs Nepal's stalls at Muscat's winter Night Festival. The Nepali embassy now travels to Salalah, 1,100 km from the capital, to register workers who left Nepal without a labour permit.
Read more- Population
- ~15,000-25,000
- Language
- Arabic, Ta'izzi-Adeni
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Dhofar (Salalah and the Al Mazyunah border free zone) and the Muscat capital area; smaller numbers in Sohar and other towns
Yemenis in Oman number perhaps 15,000 to 25,000, most of them workers, traders and their families from Hadramawt, al-Mahra and the south of Yemen, for whom Dhofar is the neighbouring province across a 288-kilometre desert border. About 11,000 hold jobs as shopkeepers, drivers, builders, cooks and fishermen, and the free zone at Al Mazyunah on the border, where Yemeni businessmen trade fuel, food and goods bound for eastern Yemen, ties Oman's south to the markets of al-Mahra and Hadramawt. Since the war in Yemen began in 2015, Oman, the only Gulf state outside the Saudi-led coalition, has flown wounded Yemenis to its hospitals, fitted hundreds of amputees with artificial limbs at a centre in Salalah, and let merchants from Mukalla and a few thousand displaced families stay on ordinary residence permits rather than in camps; Muscat is also home to the negotiators of Yemen's Houthi movement. Their Hadrami and southern dialects, Shafi'i Sunni Islam and family ties across the border set them apart from the Omani Arabs of the north.
Read more- Population
- 17,000
- Language
- Sinhala
- Religion
- Buddhism - Theravada
- Location
- Muscat (Ruwi, Al Khuwair, Seeb) and employer homes in every governorate; smaller numbers in Sohar, Salalah, Nizwa and Buraimi
About 17,000 Sinhalese live in Oman, most of them women working as live-in housemaids, alongside men in hotels, cleaning, garages and offices and a smaller professional class of doctors, bankers and teachers. Sri Lankans began arriving with the oil boom of the 1970s and set up their own community school in Muscat in 1989, which now teaches about 1,200 children. Unlike in most Gulf states, Oman's Theravada Buddhists have a shrine of their own: the Sambuddhatva Jayanthi Viharaya on the grounds of the Sri Lankan embassy, where visiting monks lead a week of Vesak rites with lanterns, a decorated pandal, free food stalls and a blood drive. Housemaids recruited on tourist visas by unlicensed agents remain the community's most vulnerable members.
Read more- Population
- 12,000
- Language
- Standard Arabic
- Religion
- Islam - Sunni
- Location
- Mainly Muscat; university and school staff in Nizwa, Sohar, Salalah and other towns
Jordanians in Oman are a small, settled community of about 12,000 people, half of them working professionals and the rest their families. They are teachers and university lecturers, about a thousand of them, engineers, trainers, accountants, bankers and managers in Omani companies, banks and factories, and many have spent decades in the sultanate. Jordan and Oman have been close since the 1970s, when Jordanian troops helped Sultan Qaboos end the Dhofar rebellion, and Jordanian doctors, dentists and teachers remain familiar figures in Muscat. Their Levantine Arabic, mansaf on family occasions and strong ties to hometowns such as Irbid, Salt and Karak set them apart from the Gulf Arabs around them; many Jordanian passport holders are of Palestinian origin.
Read more- Population
- ~5,000-7,000
- Language
- Arabic, Egyptian
- Religion
- Christianity - Coptic Orthodox (Oriental Orthodox)
- Location
- Mainly Muscat, where their one parish worships; smaller numbers in Salalah, Sohar and interior towns
Coptic Egyptians in Oman are the Orthodox Christian minority among the sultanate's 60,000 or so Egyptians, perhaps 5,000 to 7,000 teachers, doctors, engineers, accountants and their families. They are Egyptians first in daily life, sharing the dialect, food and workplaces of their Muslim compatriots, but their social world centres on the Coptic Orthodox Church of Muscat, a single parish served for years by its own priest, Father Surial Anba Bishoy. Christmas on 7 January and Easter, kept by the Coptic calendar after weeks of fasting from meat and dairy, fill the church with families, and Egypt's ambassador, and once its foreign minister, have joined the celebrations. Copts in Salalah or Sohar, hundreds of kilometres away, worship with the Indian and Syrian Orthodox congregations there or travel to the capital for feasts.
Read more- Population
- ~3,000-6,000
- Language
- English
- Religion
- Unaffiliated
- Location
- Muscat (Qurum, Madinat Sultan Qaboos, Al Khuwair, Al Bandar); Duqm; smaller numbers in Sohar and Salalah
A few thousand Britons live in Oman, most of them teachers, engineers in oil, gas and ports, doctors, consultants, bankers and military advisers on contract, with their families. Their presence rests on two centuries of treaties between Britain and the Al Bu Said sultans: British officers fought beside the Sultan's forces in the Jebel Akhdar war of the 1950s and the Dhofar rebellion of 1965-75, and Britain helped Sultan Qaboos take power in 1970. The tie continues through a joint defence agreement, a British logistics base and joint training area at Duqm, and British schools in Muscat, from the British School Muscat founded in 1971 to a branch of Cheltenham College opened in 2022. When the war between Iran and the United States and Israel closed Gulf airspace in March 2026, Muscat became the exit point for Britons across the region, and the British government ran charter flights from its airport.
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