Diario Oficial de la Federación

The Diario Oficial de la Federación (DOF) is Mexico's official government gazette, published daily by the Secretaría de Gobernación. Laws, decrees, regulations, and agreements issued by federal authorities take legal effect only upon publication in the DOF, as mandated by Article 89 of the 1917 Constitution. The DOF's origins trace to the Gaceta del Gobierno de México of January 1810; it reached its current name and format following the Ley del Diario Oficial de la Federación y Gacetas Gubernamentales enacted in December 1986. Since 2012, the full digital edition has been freely accessible online.

The DOF serves as the enforcement mechanism for immigration fee policy. The Tarifas de Derechos Migratorios 2026 (the fee schedule that doubled most residency costs) was published by the DOF on 7 November 2025, effective 1 January 2026, giving applicants roughly seven weeks' notice of the 109% rise in the one-year temporary residency fee. The DOF publication contained no supplementary guidance on how the statutory 50% reduction mechanism for qualifying applicants would be applied operationally; as of mid-2026, the Instituto Nacional de Migración has still not published those procedures.

For digital nomads and migration lawyers, the DOF is a primary monitoring tool. Any change to Mexico's immigration law, fee structure, or residency categories appears there first, often without press releases from the INM. The gap between DOF publication and INM operational guidance is a known source of legal uncertainty for applicants, particularly for the 50% reduction that the 2026 schedule introduced on paper without a functioning application process.