Sri Lanka's Free Tourist Visa in 2026 and 2027: The Verified 40-Country List, Who Is Wrongly Assumed to Be On It, and Why You Should Not Assume It Is Permanent

The Department of Immigration and Emigration issued a notice headed 'Special Notice to the Short Term Visitors to Sri Lanka'. Its operative provision is that with effect from 25.05.2026, nationals of 40 named countries are eligible to obtain a tourist visa, in the form of an ETA, free of charge for a period of 30 days.

Diplomatic, official, service and ordinary passport holders of those countries all qualify.

Separately, the ETA is also processed free of charge for nationals of Maldives, Seychelles and Singapore, which have bilateral reciprocal arrangements with Sri Lanka. Under the arrangement with the Maldives, Maldivian nationals receive a 90-day tourist visa through the ETA system rather than 30.

ETA fees paid by applicants before 25 May 2026 are not refundable. If you paid in April for a June trip, that money is gone.

Everything else about the ETA system continues to apply. Nationals of countries not on the list remain subject to the general rules and the standard processing fee.

That is the whole of the change. It is a fee waiver applied to a specific list of nationalities. It is not a visa-free regime, it is not an arrival stamp, and it does not remove any step from the process except paying.

This is the list exactly as it appears in the Department of Immigration and Emigration's official notice. We have corrected obvious typographical errors in the source document's spelling of country names, and changed nothing else.

Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland.

France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait.

Malaysia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, Russia.

Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America.

Plus, under separate bilateral arrangements rather than this scheme: Maldives, Seychelles and Singapore.

If your nationality appears above, your ETA is processed at no charge. You still complete the application.

One note on the number. When the Cabinet approved the scheme in April 2026, the spokesman described it as covering 39 countries. The notice that took effect on 25 May covers 40. Both figures are in circulation and the operative one is 40. If you see 39 quoted, that is the Cabinet announcement rather than the implemented list.

This is the section we would most like travellers to read, because it is where the money is lost.

A large share of the coverage framed this as free entry for Europeans, or for Western tourists, or for major source markets. None of those descriptions matches the list.

European Union and European nationalities not on the list include Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta and Cyprus. An Irish passport holder reading a headline about free Sri Lankan visas for Europe is not covered by this scheme.

Latin America is entirely absent. Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru are not on the list.

Africa is entirely absent, including South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and Morocco.

Notable Asian absences include Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Myanmar. Note that Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan are SAARC members and receive reduced rates at some Sri Lankan attractions, but that is a separate matter and does not put them on this visa list.

If your nationality is not named in the previous section, assume you will pay the standard fee, and check your own position on immigration.gov.lk before you book anything.

The practical advice for anyone in this group: budget for the ETA fee, and treat any article telling you Sri Lanka is now visa-free as written by someone who did not read the list.

This is the most consequential misunderstanding of the whole change, and it is the one most likely to end with someone denied boarding.

The Department's notice is explicit: all foreign nationals, including nationals of the 40 listed countries and nationals of the countries holding bilateral reciprocal agreements with Sri Lanka, are required to obtain an Electronic Travel Authorization prior to arrival.

The fee is waived. The requirement is not.

This trips people up because the phrase most commonly used in coverage is 'free visa', which many travellers read as 'no visa'. If you arrive without an approved ETA, you are in the same position as anyone else arriving without one, and airlines increasingly check before boarding.

Apply before you travel. Approval times are usually short but vary with volume, and applying a few days out is a needless risk during peak season.

The same point applies to the reciprocal countries. A Singaporean or Seychellois national still applies for an ETA; it is simply processed without a fee.

We are going to lay out what is documented and decline to predict, because this is exactly the kind of question where confident travel writing does readers real harm.

What the current notice says: nothing about an expiry. The Department of Immigration and Emigration's operative notice states the scheme takes effect from 25.05.2026 and gives no end date, no review date and no sunset provision.

What the history says: Sri Lanka has run several free-visa schemes and every previous one was announced as temporary.

In 2019, following the Easter attacks, a free visa scheme covering 48 countries was announced for a six-month period from August.

In October 2023, the Cabinet approved free visas for seven countries, including India, China and Russia, explicitly as a pilot project running until 31 March 2024.

In August 2024, the Cabinet approved free tourist visas for 35 countries, described at the time as a six-month pilot programme starting 1 October.

In July 2025 the scheme was reintroduced with Cabinet approval and an expanded list, and implementation was then delayed repeatedly, at one point expected in January 2026.

In April 2026, the Cabinet spokesman described the incoming programme as a six-month programme covering 39 countries, with draft regulations to be presented to Parliament under the Immigration and Emigration Act.

On 25 May 2026 the scheme went live for 40 countries, and the notice contains no time limit.

So: the government has repeatedly described these schemes as pilots, the current one was described as six months at Cabinet stage, and the notice actually in force does not say so. We cannot reconcile those two things from public sources and we are not going to guess at which governs.

What that means for you, practically. If you are travelling in the next few months, the scheme is live and you will not pay. If you are planning for 2027, do not build a budget on the assumption that the fee will still be waived, and check the position again closer to the time. Treat the waiver as a saving you may get rather than one you are owed.

Thirty days, from the date of first arrival in Sri Lanka.

A double-entry facility within that 30-day validity period. This matters more than it sounds: it means you can leave Sri Lanka and return once within the same 30 days without a fresh application, which is useful for anyone combining Sri Lanka with the Maldives or southern India.

Maldivian nationals receive 90 days rather than 30, under the bilateral arrangement.

It is a tourist authorisation. It covers sightseeing, holidaying, visiting family and friends, and similar. It does not cover paid employment of any kind, and the boundaries around remote work on a tourist authorisation are not something we can advise on with confidence; if you intend to work while in Sri Lanka, check your position with the Department directly rather than relying on any travel article.

For most itineraries, 30 days is comfortable. A well-paced Sri Lanka trip is 10 to 21 days, and if you are trying to fit more than that in, you are probably moving too much rather than staying too long.

Passport validity: standard practice is at least six months beyond your date of entry. Check yours now rather than at the airport.

The application is straightforward and takes minutes. What matters is where you do it.

There is one official government channel for ETA applications, operated by the Department of Immigration and Emigration. Apply there and nowhere else.

You will need: your passport details, approximate travel dates, an address in Sri Lanka such as your first hotel, and an email address. You generally do not need to upload photographs, bank statements, hotel confirmations, insurance documents or flight tickets for a standard tourist application.

Match the name on the application to the name on the passport exactly, including middle names and the order they appear in. Mismatches are the single most common cause of problems on arrival.

Apply as a group if you are travelling as a family, but note that each traveller is a separate application within it, and each needs their own passport.

Save and print the approval notice. It costs nothing to have it on paper and it removes a category of problem at check-in.

Apply comfortably ahead of travel. Approval is often quick but is not instant, and volume affects it. Leaving it until the week of departure is an avoidable risk.

There is an entire industry of websites that take Sri Lankan ETA applications, submit them to the government portal on your behalf, and charge a substantial service fee for doing so.

They are not illegal and they are not, strictly, scams. They are also entirely unnecessary, and the fee waiver has made them considerably more profitable, because they can now charge a service fee for a government process that costs nothing at all.

How to recognise them. They rank prominently in search results, often as paid placements above the official site. They use domain names built from words like visa, ETA, Sri Lanka and official. They present a total that mixes an invented processing fee with the government fee without separating the two. They frequently promise expedited processing, which they cannot deliver, because the processing is done by the Department at the Department's pace.

The specific risk for travellers from the 40 free countries: you may pay a third-party site a service fee believing it is the government fee, and never learn that your ETA was free.

There is a second risk, which is data. You are handing full passport details to an unknown commercial operator.

The rule is simple and it applies to every country's visa system, not just this one: government services are found on government domains. If the address does not end in a government suffix, close the tab.

This is also worth telling parents specifically, because families applying for four people at once, in a hurry, are the most reliable customers these sites have.

Nationals of countries outside the 40 continue under the general ETA rules and pay the standard tourist processing fee.

On the amount: published figures for the standard tourist ETA fee vary across sources, commonly cited around USD 50 when applied for online and higher on arrival. We are not going to state a single number as fact, because the fee has changed more than once in recent years and secondary sources have consistently lagged behind. The figure shown to you at checkout on the official portal is the one that governs.

Applying online in advance is materially better than arriving and sorting it out at the airport, for cost, for time, and because airlines may not board you without one.

Some nationalities are subject to additional requirements, including application through a local sponsor rather than the standard route. If your nationality falls into that category the official portal will indicate it.

The practical point: being outside the free list changes what you pay, not whether you can come. The ETA process itself is the same.

Anyone who obtained a free visa and wants to stay beyond 30 days may apply for an extension on payment of the applicable fee. That is the Department's own wording and it is the reliable part.

Beyond that, the picture in secondary sources is genuinely inconsistent and we are going to say so rather than pick a number. Some sources describe a maximum stay of 180 days, others describe a staged structure reaching 270 days through successive extensions, and others refer to six months. These cannot all be right, and we have not been able to verify the current maximum against a primary source.

What we can say safely: extensions are applied for through the Department of Immigration and Emigration, online or in person in Colombo, they cost money regardless of whether your initial visa was free, and they require approval rather than being automatic.

If a long stay is central to your plans, contact the Department directly before booking. This is not a question to resolve from travel articles, including this one.

Do not overstay. It carries penalties and it complicates future entry.

One practical detail worth knowing: the free scheme's double-entry facility operates within the original 30-day validity. Leaving the country and returning does not reset the clock into a fresh 30 days.

Every traveller needs their own ETA. That includes infants and newborns. There is no arrangement under which a child travels on a parent's authorisation.

Every child therefore needs their own passport.

The fee position for children mirrors the adult one under the current scheme: if the child holds a passport from one of the 40 countries, their ETA is processed free of charge. Separately, children under 12 have been treated as exempt from the ETA processing fee in reporting on the general system, but the two things are easy to conflate and the position that matters is what the portal shows at checkout for that child's nationality.

The common failure is not the fee. It is a family submitting three applications for four people, discovering it at check-in, and being unable to fix it in the time available.

Apply for each family member individually, check each approval notice separately, and print all of them.

If a child is travelling with only one parent or with someone who is not a parent, additional documentation such as a consent letter may be requested. Requirements vary and this is worth checking with the Department and with your airline in advance.

A passport with sufficient validity, generally at least six months beyond your entry date, and blank pages.

A printed copy of your ETA approval notice. Phone batteries die and airport wifi is not a plan.

Proof of onward or return travel. This is not always requested and is occasionally requested firmly.

An address for your first night. The immigration form asks for it, and 'we'll find somewhere' is not an answer that speeds things up.

Sri Lanka's main entry point is Bandaranaike International Airport near Negombo, with Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport as the secondary international gateway.

Allow buffer time on tight connections. Additional checks happen, queues vary enormously by arrival bank, and a missed connection is a worse outcome than an hour spent waiting.

If something is wrong with your ETA, it is far easier to resolve at the departure airport than at the arrival one. Check your approval notice against your passport the week before you fly, not on the day.

Assuming 'free visa' means no application. It does not. The ETA is mandatory for every foreign national including all 40 free countries.

Assuming your nationality is covered because a headline said Europe or the West. Check the list. Ireland, Portugal, Greece and much of Eastern Europe are not on it.

Paying a third-party site for something that is free, and never finding out.

Applying with a name that does not match the passport exactly.

Submitting one application short for a family group.

Assuming a free-visa scheme announced in one year still applies in the next. Sri Lanka has run several of these and the terms have changed each time.

Budgeting a 2027 trip on the assumption the waiver continues. It may. The notice says nothing either way, and the Cabinet described the programme as six months.

Leaving the application until the week of travel.

Expecting a refund for a fee paid before 25 May 2026. Those are explicitly non-refundable.

Visa policy is the area where travel articles do the most damage, because they are written once, rank for years, and are read by people making non-refundable decisions. This one included.

So here is how to check the position independently, which takes about two minutes.

Go to the Department of Immigration and Emigration's website and find the notice for short-term visitors. It is published in English, Sinhala and Tamil, and the English notice is a plain document listing the countries and the terms.

Read the list for your own nationality rather than for a region.

Then open the official ETA application portal and begin an application. The fee shown at checkout for your nationality is the operative figure. If it shows zero, you are covered. If it shows a fee, you are not, whatever any article says.

That second step is the one worth doing, because it tests the position against the live system rather than against a published notice that may have been superseded.

Do this again if you are booking well ahead. A check made in September 2026 tells you about September 2026.

We will update this article when the position changes and we know about it. We would rather you did not rely on that.