If your Instagram or WhatsApp status has been full of framed certificates lately, all with someone’s name on them and a UAE flag tucked into the design somewhere, you’ve already met the Pledge and Commitment certificate. Half the people sharing it don’t fully know what it is beyond “everyone’s doing it,” and it isn’t just individuals either. Supermarkets, small businesses, even entire office teams have been posting their own versions of it, which only adds to the confusion for anyone seeing it for the first time. Now that talk of a Saudia version has started too, the questions have piled up fast. Who can actually get one? Is it free? Does it do anything for you beyond looking good framed on a wall? Let’s go through it properly, UAE first since that’s where the whole thing started, then the honest answer on Saudia, because it isn’t what most people assume.
What the UAE Pledge and Commitment actually is
Strip away the branding and it’s a national loyalty pledge, the kind of thing that usually happens at a podium with cameras rolling, except this one lives on a website anyone can open from their phone. It was launched on May 19, 2026, by Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence, at a ceremony at the Abu Dhabi Energy Centre that pulled in more than 4,800 people on the very first day: citizens, residents, students, academics, business owners, investors, people from communities across the country. Behind it sits Sandooq Al Watan, a non-profit under Erth Zayed Philanthropies, and the whole campaign is built around four ideas they keep returning to: gratitude for the security and opportunity the UAE offers, taking the President’s own values as an example to follow, a shared commitment to living together in harmony, and passing all of that down to whoever comes next.
None of that fully explains why it spread the way it did, though. That part is simpler. It takes about two minutes, it costs nothing, and at the end you walk away with a certificate that has your actual name on it. People like proof of things, even the symbolic kind, and a personalised certificate is a very shareable kind of proof.
It also hasn’t stayed a one-day event. What started as a launch ceremony with a few thousand people in a room has turned into an ongoing digital movement, with the platform staying live long after the Abu Dhabi event ended. Retailers and companies have started joining in publicly too, treating it less like a personal keepsake and more like a brand statement, which is part of why you’ll now see it show up in contexts that have nothing to do with individual families or first-time residents. The intention, as Sandooq Al Watan has framed it, was never for this to be a single ceremony. It was built to keep running as an open platform, which is exactly why it’s still gaining traction weeks after the original launch.
Who’s actually eligible
This is the part that surprises people, mostly because it’s more open than they expect. There’s no visa category checklist, no minimum number of years you need to have lived here, no Emirates ID number to type in anywhere. The pledge is open to UAE citizens and residents, full stop, and it runs in 12 languages, which tells you it was built with the country’s actual mix of people in mind rather than just one group.
Working here on a standard employment visa qualifies you. Studying at a UAE university qualifies you. There’s no age restriction mentioned in any of the official material either, which is why you’ll see whole households doing this together rather than one person signing up alone. And that’s not a coincidence: the platform lets you add up to 10 family members onto a single pledge, so a household of six doesn’t need six separate entries. One person can lead the process and pull the rest of the family in.
Nationality isn’t a filter either, which is really the point of the whole exercise. The UAE’s population is mostly made up of foreign residents rather than citizens, and the pledge was designed with that reality in mind, not around it. Whether you moved here two months ago on a new employment contract or you’ve held a Golden Visa for a decade, you fall under “resident” for the purposes of this initiative. Nobody is asking which passport you’re carrying before you’re allowed to take part.
How to get your certificate, step by step
The process really is as short as people online make it sound.
1. Go directly to [pledge.ae](https://pledge.ae/), the only official platform for this. Anything else claiming to issue the certificate isn’t the real thing.
2. Pick your language from the 12 on offer. Arabic and English cover most people, but Urdu, Hindi, Tagalog, and several others are all in there too.
3. Type your full name exactly the way you want it to appear, because whatever you enter becomes the name printed on your certificate.
4. Add an email address if you’d like a copy sent to you. It’s optional, not a required field.
5. If family members are joining you, select how many, up to 10.
6. Click the “Click and Participate with Pride” button, and that’s genuinely the whole process.
Right after that, your certificate is ready to download immediately. There’s no waiting period, no approval queue, no email verification link to hunt down in your spam folder. You can also choose between a standard certificate format for printing and a version already sized for an Instagram or WhatsApp story, plus a landscape or portrait layout depending on how you plan to use it.
One thing worth doing before you hit submit: type your name slowly and actually check it. There’s no visible edit option once your certificate has generated, and re-doing the whole process just to fix a spelling mistake is a little embarrassing when the entire thing was supposed to take two minutes. If you’re adding family members, double-check their names too, especially anyone whose name has more than one accepted spelling in English.
What you actually get, and what “benefits” really means here
Here’s where it’s worth being straight with you instead of dressing it up: this isn’t a scheme with cash prizes, discount codes, or visa perks attached, and anyone telling you otherwise is either guessing or trying to get clicks. What you actually receive is a digital Certificate of Appreciation, personalised with your name, available in that printable layout and the social-story version mentioned above. That’s the complete tangible output. Nothing more gets added on afterward.
The real “benefit,” if you want to call it that, is what people end up using it for. Some print it and keep it with other family paperwork. Some post it because it says something about being part of the country’s story rather than just passing through it. Schools have started asking students to bring a copy in as part of national-values classroom activities, and a few companies have quietly folded it into onboarding packs for new hires as a small welcome-to-the-UAE gesture. None of that is official policy anywhere, just people finding their own uses for a piece of paper that happens to feel meaningful.
For a fair number of long-term residents, though, it ends up being a quieter moment than any of that: reflecting on years spent building a life somewhere that wasn’t originally home. If that sounds softer than what “benefits and rewards” usually implies, that’s the honest picture. This is a civic gesture, not a loyalty programme, and it was never marketed as one by the UAE government or Sandooq Al Watan. Anyone expecting points, upgrades, or Golden Visa priority is going to be disappointed, because none of that is part of the initiative, now or, as far as anything official says, later either.
Is there a Saudia version of this?
Short answer: not like this one. There’s no Saudi pledge.ae, no online form where you type your name and a matching bilingual certificate appears a minute later.
What Saudia has instead is older, and it works in a completely different way: bay’ah (بيعة), the formal pledge of allegiance sworn to the King and Crown Prince. This happens in person, historically at palaces in Makkah or Riyadh, and when a new Crown Prince is confirmed, allegiance centres open across the Kingdom so citizens who can’t travel to the capital can still take part locally. When Mohammed bin Salman was named Crown Prince in 2017, thousands went through this in person at Al Safa Palace, and plenty more posted their allegiance on Twitter, which was, in its own pre-certificate way, the closest thing Saudia has had to a digital version of what the UAE is doing now. It’s rooted in tradition and governance, going back generations, not a digital awareness campaign someone launched this year. It isn’t something you can do on a random Tuesday because a friend’s certificate showed up on your timeline, and there’s no printable keepsake waiting at the end of it.
If what actually brought you to this article is wanting a certificate of appreciation for Saudia specifically, for a job well done, a training course, a school event, a company milestone, that’s a completely different and much simpler thing, and it has nothing to do with governments or pledges. You build that one yourself using a free tool like Canva, and it takes about fifteen minutes start to finish. We’ve already broken down the exact steps, including how to handle the Arabic and English layout properly, in a separate guide on [creating a Certificate of Appreciation in Saudi Arabia](https://ilmwap.com/certificate-of-appreciation-in-saudi-arabia-2026-create-and-download-online/) if that’s actually what you were searching for.
Quick questions people keep asking
Is the UAE certificate a legal or immigration document?
No. It carries no legal weight and has no connection to visa status, PR pathways, or the Golden Visa. Treat it as symbolic, because that’s exactly what it is.
Does it cost anything?
Nothing at all. The pledge and the certificate that follows are both completely free.
Do I need an Emirates ID to sign up?
No ID number is requested anywhere in the process. A full name and an optional email address is all that’s asked for.
Can tourists or visit-visa holders take part?
The initiative is framed specifically around citizens and residents who are building a life in the UAE, not short-term visitors, so it’s really meant for the two groups named in the title.
Will this help with a visa renewal or job application?
There’s no official link between the pledge and any government service, renewal process, or employer requirement. If someone tells you otherwise, they’re not quoting the UAE government or Sandooq Al Watan, they’re guessing.
Can I do this more than once?
The platform doesn’t appear to block repeat entries, though there’s no practical reason to submit twice since the certificate itself doesn’t change based on how many times you’ve pledged.
What happens to my name and email after I submit?
The platform doesn’t publish a detailed breakdown of data handling beyond the basic form fields it asks for, which is worth knowing before you enter anything. If you’re not comfortable providing an email address, leave it blank. It’s optional precisely because the certificate itself doesn’t depend on it.
I already made a mistake with my name. Can I get it fixed?
There’s no visible correction tool on the platform itself, so the simplest fix is going through the process again with the correct spelling. It costs you the same two minutes it did the first time, just with a bit more care at the name field.
Bottom line
Take the certificate for what it is: a quick, free, slightly emotional way to put your name next to a country you’ve chosen to call home, nothing more complicated than that. It won’t move your visa application forward and it won’t land in any government file, and going in with that understanding is what keeps the whole thing pleasant instead of disappointing. If you’re in the UAE and the idea genuinely means something to you, pledge.ae takes less time than reading this article did. If you’re in Saudia hoping for the exact same experience, the honest answer is that the government hasn’t built that yet, and what exists instead, bay’ah, is a different tradition entirely, rooted in something much older than a website. But if a certificate of appreciation was the real goal all along, that’s still very much within reach, and it takes roughly the same fifteen minutes either way.