British

The British in Bahrain are a community of a few thousand professionals and their families, heirs to a relationship that began with the treaties of 1820 and lasted as a protectorate until independence in 1971. British advisers once ran much of the state, and British managers and engineers came with the Bapco oil company after oil was struck in 1932. Today they work in banking, teaching, engineering, aviation and hospitality, and the Royal Navy has kept a permanent base, HMS Jufair at Mina Salman, since 2018. Family life revolves around villas and compounds in Saar, Hamala, Amwaj and Riffa, British-curriculum schools such as St Christopher's, and clubs like the British Club, founded in 1935. Anglican St Christopher's Cathedral in Manama, built on land given by the Emir in 1948, is one of the two cathedrals of the Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf, though most British residents are nominal Christians or not religious.

A few thousand Britons live in Kuwait, most of them teachers, oil engineers, medical staff, consultants and military advisers on fixed contracts. Their ties to the country run back to the 1899 agreement that made Kuwait a British protectorate until independence in 1961, and to the Kuwait Oil Company, whose British managers built the garden town of Ahmadi in the 1940s and 1950s. St Paul's Anglican Church there, built by the oil company and consecrated in 1956, still serves English-speaking and Asian congregations, and British-curriculum schools educate thousands of Kuwaiti and expatriate children. During the Iraqi invasion of 1990 hundreds of Britons, including passengers of a British Airways flight caught on the ground, were held hostage and some were used as human shields.

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.

About 20,000 Britons live in Qatar, most of them professionals in finance, law, energy, engineering, teaching and healthcare who stay a few years with their families, alongside Royal Air Force crews. Britain was Qatar's protecting power from 1916 until independence in 1971, British oilmen opened the oil town of Dukhan from 1940, and the embassy founded the country's first English-language schools in the 1970s and 1980s. The Anglican Church of the Epiphany, opened in 2013 in Doha's walled church complex, traces its congregation to oil-company chaplains of the 1950s and today hosts dozens of congregations from 65 nationalities. Most Britons are nominal Christians or non-religious, and the community includes many British Muslims of South Asian and Arab origin.

About 18,000 Britons live in Saudi Arabia, professionals, defence contractors, teachers and their families who live mostly in walled compounds in Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Province oil towns. Britain was the first Western power to recognise the Saudi state, in the 1927 Treaty of Jeddah, and British firms remain bound up with the kingdom through BAE Systems' support for the Saudi air force, Aramco contracts and British International Schools in Riyadh and Jeddah. The Vision 2030 projects at Diriyah, NEOM and the Red Sea coast have drawn growing numbers of British architects, engineers and project managers. Compound life, with its sports clubs, Friday brunches and private Christian gatherings, sets the rhythm of the community, nearly all of whom stay only a few years.

Britons in Türkiye are a mix of retirees on the Turkish coast, professionals and English teachers in Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara, and British spouses of Turks. The largest settled community lives around Fethiye on the Lycian coast, where about five thousand British residents make up most of the town's foreigners, followed by Didim and Kuşadası on the Aegean. Many first came as tourists, among the millions of Britons who holiday in Türkiye each year, and stayed on, living modestly on British pensions stretched by the weak lira. Their ties go back centuries: Anglican chaplains have served English merchants in Izmir since 1638, and Istanbul's Crimean Memorial Church recalls the Crimean War alliance.

Britons form the largest Western community in the Emirates, around 200,000 residents, most of them in Dubai's marina towers and villa suburbs and on Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Island. Britain was the protecting power of the Trucial States until the federation was born in 1971, and British oilmen, bankers and diplomats' families founded the first English-speaking schools, the oldest in a Dubai villa in 1963; today about a third of Dubai's private-school pupils study the British curriculum. Since the 2010s a new wave has come for tax-free salaries, sunshine and safety, from bankers and teachers to entrepreneurs, influencers and retirees, many of them British-born children of South Asian, Arab and African families. Most are nominal Christians or non-religious, and Anglican parishes that began as chaplaincies to oil workers now host congregations of every nationality. About one in eight left when Iranian missiles and drones struck the country in early 2026, many intending to return.