United States · North America
Moving to Fort Worth
Fort Worth quick facts
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Cost of living in Fort Worth
Can you move to United States?
Pick your passport to see whether you can enter United States — and what it takes to stay.
Entry rules come from github.com/imorte/passport-index-data, updated 17 February 2026. They change without notice — confirm with the official immigration service before booking.
Getting set up in United States
Status, Social Security number and a Texas licence in 90 days
There is no post-arrival registration in the US: your I-94 record is your status. In the first weeks you need a Social Security number if work-authorised, or an ITIN if not. Texas expects a new resident to obtain a Texas licence within 90 days, and unlike some states it does not issue a driving credential to residents who cannot document lawful presence — so the licence is downstream of your immigration paperwork rather than parallel to it. DPS appointments across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex book out, but the metro has many offices and the Fort Worth-side ones in Hurst, Cleburne and Weatherford frequently have earlier slots than the closest one to you. Treat the appointment, not the 90 days, as the deadline that matters.
Read the full step-by-step guideNinety days, an emissions test most of Texas does not have, and a TollTag
Texas gives new residents 90 days to obtain a Texas licence and register a vehicle. The inspection regime changed on 1 January 2025: the annual safety inspection for non-commercial vehicles was abolished and replaced with a $7.50 inspection programme replacement fee at registration. But emissions testing continues in designated counties and Tarrant County has been in the Dallas-Fort Worth programme area for years — so unlike most of Texas, you still have an annual test here. Add a TollTag, because North Texas has far more tolled road than the rest of the state, and comprehensive insurance, because this is one of the most hail-prone regions on earth.
Read the full step-by-step guideA bank account, US credit from zero, and choosing an electricity retailer
You can open a US account without a Social Security number: federal rules let a bank use your passport number and country of issuance, or an ITIN, as the identifying number. The credit problem is the standard American one — no US file scores worse than a bad one, and here it lands on a car loan you cannot avoid. What is genuinely different in Fort Worth is the utility side: this is a deregulated electricity market, so nobody assigns you a supplier. You pick one, the plan you pick moves your annual bill by hundreds of dollars, and the deposit a retailer demands without a US credit file varies between providers — so shopping around matters twice over.
Read the full step-by-step guideHealthCare.gov, no Medicaid expansion, and JPS as the county safety net
Coverage comes from an employer or from HealthCare.gov, the federal marketplace. Texas has not expanded Medicaid, so adult Medicaid is limited to narrow categories and a low-income working adult can fall into a coverage gap with nothing underneath. That makes an employer plan disproportionately valuable and missing the federal open-enrolment deadline disproportionately costly. Tarrant County's counterweight is JPS Health Network, the county hospital district's public system, which runs a financial assistance programme for eligible residents — alongside a dense network of federally qualified health centres charging on a sliding scale. Fort Worth also has unusually good paediatric provision for a city its size in Cook Children's.
Read the full step-by-step guideA US phone number, tornado alerts, and a plan for when the grid fails
The US has no SIM registration requirement, so getting connected is trivially easy: buy a prepaid SIM or eSIM and it works immediately. The friction is postpaid contracts, which run a credit check you cannot pass on arrival. Locally, two habits matter. Leave wireless emergency alerts on — tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings arrive that way and the lead time is minutes, as the March 2000 tornado through downtown Fort Worth demonstrated. And keep a power bank, because Texas's grid is largely isolated from the rest of the country and cannot be backfilled from neighbouring states the way one elsewhere can.
Read the full step-by-step guideNo income tax, a $140,000 homestead exemption, and the Tarrant property bill
Texas levies no personal income tax, and voters amended the state constitution in November 2019 to prohibit one — so this is a constitutional position, not merely an unlegislated one. Property tax does the work instead: a Tarrant County address carries a combined rate from the county, city, hospital district, college district and school district that typically lands around two per cent of appraised value, with no state cap on how high a rate can be set. Renters pay it through the rent. The figure worth knowing is the school district residence homestead exemption, currently $140,000, with a further $60,000 for owners aged 65 or over or with a disability — both raised recently, so older guidance understates them. Sales tax runs at the 8.25% ceiling in the city, with groceries and prescription medicine exempt.
Read the full step-by-step guideEach guide has verified costs, timelines, required documents, and the non-obvious gotchas — sourced from official government pages. Last verified August 2026.
Essential English phrases
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What to know before you go
You choose your own electricity retailer here — this is not San Antonio
CriticalFort Worth sits in the deregulated ERCOT retail market. Oncor owns the poles and wires and delivers the power regardless of who you buy from, but you pick your own retail electric provider, and the plan you pick is worth several hundred dollars a year. Use the Public Utility Commission's own Power to Choose comparison site rather than a marketing site, read the Electricity Facts Label for each plan, and watch for teaser rates that only apply at one exact monthly usage level and for large early-termination fees. Set a calendar reminder a month before the contract ends, because the roll-over rate is where providers make their money.
Tarrant County requires an emissions test — this differs from most of Texas
CriticalTexas abolished the annual safety inspection for non-commercial vehicles on 1 January 2025, replacing it with a $7.50 inspection programme replacement fee at registration. But emissions testing continues in designated counties, and Tarrant County has been inside the Dallas-Fort Worth programme area for years. So a vehicle registered here still needs an annual emissions test — which is the opposite of the position in most of the state and the reason advice written for San Antonio or Austin will mislead you. Confirm the current requirement with the Texas DPS or TCEQ before your first renewal.
Model the property tax, because there is no income tax to model instead
CriticalTexas levies no personal income tax and voters wrote a prohibition into the state constitution in 2019. The money is raised on property: a Tarrant County address carries a combined rate from the county, city, hospital district, college district and school district that typically lands around two per cent of appraised value, and renters pay it through the rent. The school district residence homestead exemption is currently $140,000, with a further $60,000 for owners aged 65 or over or with a disability — both figures were raised recently, so an older article will understate them. A Texas salary is not the same as Texas take-home until you have done this arithmetic.
Find out which school district your address is in — Fort Worth has more than a dozen
CriticalThe city is carved up by well over a dozen independent school districts, and Fort Worth ISD serves only part of it. Keller, Northwest, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw, Crowley, Arlington, White Settlement, Castleberry, Aledo and Everman all cover pieces of the city, and their boundaries do not follow neighbourhood names or the city limit. If schools matter at all, verify the district against the specific street address before you sign anything — this is the single most common expensive mistake newcomers make here.
Texas did not expand Medicaid — sort health insurance before you arrive
CriticalTexas has the highest uninsured rate in the country and has not expanded Medicaid, so a working-age adult on a low income can fall into a coverage gap with no state programme underneath. Texas also runs no state marketplace: individual cover is bought on the federal HealthCare.gov site, whose open-enrolment window is fixed and unforgiving. If your employer offers a plan, take it in the new-hire window. Tarrant County's counterweight is JPS Health Network, the county hospital district's public system, which runs a financial assistance programme — register before you need it.
Hail, tornadoes and the grid are the three things to insure and plan against
ImportantNorth Texas is one of the most hail-prone regions in the world and a single storm writes off large numbers of vehicles at once, so comprehensive cover is not optional and covered parking has directly calculable value. Fort Worth also took a tornado directly through its downtown in March 2000, so this is not a theoretical risk. And Texas runs its own electricity grid, largely isolated from the rest of the country, which failed catastrophically in the February 2021 freeze. A few days of water, a battery and a plan is standard local preparedness rather than paranoia.
Top industries & employers
Aerospace & defence
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics at Air Force Plant 4, Bell (Textron), Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base, a deep supplier base across the west side
The F-35 is assembled in west Fort Worth on a mile-long production line at a government-owned plant, and Bell builds tiltrotor aircraft nearby. This is the city's defining industrial cluster and the largest concentration of aerospace manufacturing employment in Texas. Most direct roles need US citizenship and frequently a security clearance, so treat it as context for the local economy rather than a job market you can enter on arrival.
Transport, logistics & aviation
BNSF Railway (headquartered here), American Airlines (headquartered in Fort Worth), Alliance Texas and the Fort Worth Alliance Airport inland port, Amazon, FedEx, GM Arlington nearby
BNSF and American Airlines both put their global headquarters in Fort Worth, and AllianceTexas north of the city is one of the largest master-planned inland ports in the country — an industrial airport, two Class I railways and the interstate all on one site. Between them these are among the largest white-collar employers in the city.
Health care
Texas Health Resources (headquartered here), Cook Children's Health Care System, JPS Health Network, Baylor Scott & White, Medical City
Texas Health Resources is one of the largest non-profit health systems in the country and is headquartered in Arlington within the metro. Cook Children's is the region's paediatric system and one of the largest free-standing children's hospitals in the US. JPS Health Network is Tarrant County's public hospital district — the safety net in a state that did not expand Medicaid, and the reason a low-income Fort Worth resident has somewhere to go.
Energy
Barnett Shale operators and midstream companies, TXO Partners, a large oilfield services layer, and the wider Permian back-office presence across DFW
Fort Worth sits directly on the Barnett Shale, the field where modern combined horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing was first proved at commercial scale in the late 1990s. There are producing gas wells inside the city limits. The sector is far smaller than it was at the peak, but the legal legacy is everywhere: severed mineral estates, pipeline easements and drilling ordinances.
Finance & professional services
Charles Schwab's campus at Westlake, Fidelity Investments at Westlake, Frost Bank, a large regional accounting and legal layer
The corridor north of Fort Worth toward Westlake and Alliance has become a genuine financial-services back-office and technology cluster, drawing operations out of higher-cost states. It is the part of the local job market most open to newcomers without a clearance and most likely to offer hybrid work.
Culture, tourism & events
The Kimbell, Modern and Amon Carter museums, the Fort Worth Stockyards, Dickies Arena and the Will Rogers complex, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
Fort Worth's Cultural District carries a concentration of first-rank museums that would be remarkable in a city three times the size — a Louis Kahn building, a Tadao Ando building and a Philip Johnson building within a few hundred metres of each other, with free general admission. Combined with the Stockyards and the Stock Show it supports a substantial hospitality economy.
Where to go in Fort Worth
The Fort Worth Stockyards
Landmark · North of downtown
The preserved livestock exchange district — brick pens, the Livestock Exchange Building, Billy Bob's, and a longhorn herd driven down Exchange Avenue twice a day.
Local tip: The cattle drive at 11:30 and 4 is genuinely worth ten minutes and is free. Then leave the main strip: the White Elephant Saloon and the honky-tonks off Exchange are where people actually go, and Thursday nights are better than Saturday.
The Cultural District
Culture · West of downtown, around Camp Bowie
The Kimbell Art Museum in Louis Kahn's 1972 vaulted building with a Renzo Piano pavilion beside it, the Modern Art Museum in Tadao Ando's concrete-and-water pavilions, and the Amon Carter's American collection by Philip Johnson — all within a few hundred metres.
Local tip: General admission to all three is free; only special exhibitions are ticketed. Go to the Modern on a Friday evening and sit in the café over the reflecting pond — it is the best room in the city and costs nothing.
The Near Southside and Magnolia Avenue
Neighborhood · Immediately south of downtown
The city's most walkable district — a medical campus surrounded by brick storefronts, bungalows and the densest concentration of independent restaurants, bars and coffee in Fort Worth.
Local tip: Friday on the Green in Magnolia Green Park and the ArtsGoggle street festival in autumn are the two events that will introduce you to more people in one evening than three months of trying. Park once and walk.
The Trinity Trails and Panther Island
Nature · Along the Trinity River, north and west of downtown
Roughly a hundred miles of paved riverside trail radiating from downtown along the West, Clear and Main forks of the Trinity, with the long-running Panther Island flood-control and redevelopment project at the confluence.
Local tip: Rockin' the River — tubing on the Trinity with live music on the bank — is the local summer institution. For the rest of the year the trail from downtown out to the Stockyards is the flattest, shadiest run in the city.
The Fort Worth Water Gardens
Landmark · Downtown, south end
Philip Johnson's 1974 concrete water park — an aerating pool, a quiet meditation pool and the Active Pool, a stepped descent into a roaring basin that feels genuinely unsafe and is the point.
Local tip: Go at dusk in summer when the temperature drops and the noise is at its best. It is two blocks from the convention centre and most visitors never find it.
The Fort Worth Botanic Garden and the Japanese Garden
Hidden gemNature · Cultural District
Texas's oldest botanic garden, with a seven-acre Japanese garden of koi ponds, maples and a moon-viewing deck tucked into a former gravel pit.
Local tip: The Japanese Garden in late November is the one place in North Texas with genuine autumn colour, and it is quiet on weekday mornings. The Fall Festival weekend is lovely and rammed; go the week before instead.
Emergency numbers in Fort Worth
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