News about Sri Lanka changing the tourist visa process come pouring out of the country this year. In late April, we reported about the introduction of an eVisa process for foreign visitors. Even back then, the Sri Lankan government vaguely announced that some form of visa-free travel would be introduced at a later point. This point seems to be October 1, 2024. From this day, the country will waive the application fee for 30 day, single-entry tourist visas. However, the path to that point was quite rocky.
The electronic visa application website was handled by a private company, rather than the government directly. Because this resulted in a wide array of issues, the supreme court shut down the application website on August 2, 2024, citing corruption allegations as the cause.
Since that day, Sri Lanka turned back to issuing visa-on-arrival. The most basic form of this visa is a single-entry, 30 day tourist visa with a price tag of US$50 (~€43). From October 1, 2024, foreign nationals of the following 35 countries will get them for free:
- Australia
- Austria
- Bahrain
- Belarus
- Belgium
- Canada
- China
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- France
- Germany
- India
- Indonesia
- Iran
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Kazakhstan
- Malaysia
- Nepal
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Oman
- Poland
- Qatar
- Russia
- Saudi Arabia
- South Korea
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Thailand
- United Arab Emirates
- United Kingdom
- USA
This list includes 15 European countries, along global heavy-weights like China, India and the United States of America. Notable omissions are Finland, Norway, Ireland, Hungary and all three Baltic States.
According to the government, the free visas will be issued for six months, meaning that you can enter Sri Lanka until March 31, 2025, without paying for your visa-on-arrival at the airport. For these 35 nationalities, no prior online registration is currently required – when staying less than 30 days in the country. However, the country is mulling the reactivation of the state run ETA registration system.
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