Sri Lanka's entry rules changed meaningfully this year, and mostly in your favour. Since 25 May 2026, citizens of 40 countries can get a 30-day tourist visa through the Electronic Travel Authorisation system free of charge. If you are reading this from the UK, the United States, Australia, Canada, India, Japan, China or most of the European Union, your visa now costs nothing. It is worth understanding exactly how it works, because a great deal of what you will find online still quotes the old fee.
Who travels free
The free 30-day ETA covers nationals of Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Nepal, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. Singapore and the Seychelles also receive 30 days free under separate arrangements, and Maldivian nationals get 90 days.
What everyone else pays
- ◆Applying online in advance - $50. The standard tourist ETA for nationalities outside the free list.
- ◆On arrival at the airport - $60. Ten dollars more, plus a queue at the end of a long flight.
- ◆Extensions are handled separately by the Department of Immigration and Emigration once you are in the country, and the fee varies by nationality.
Apply on the official site, and only the official site
The one official address is eta.gov.lk. Search for a Sri Lankan visa and you will meet a wall of near-identical commercial sites that look official, rank well, and charge $60 to $100 to fill in a form you could complete yourself in ten minutes. They are not illegal, and they usually do submit the application, but you are paying a large mark-up for nothing and handing your passport details to a company you have never heard of. If the address does not end in gov.lk, it is not the government.
How it works in practice
- ◆Apply a week or two before you fly. Approvals usually arrive within 24 to 48 hours, but leave yourself room.
- ◆You will need your passport details, your arrival date and an address in Sri Lanka. Your first hotel is fine.
- ◆Your passport needs at least six months of validity from the date you arrive. This is the single most common reason people are stopped at check-in.
- ◆Save the approval as a PDF and keep a screenshot on your phone. Airport wifi is not something to rely on.
- ◆The 30 days run from the date you first arrive, not from the date the ETA was approved.
Staying longer than 30 days
Thirty days is enough for a thorough first trip, but plenty of people want longer, and Sri Lanka is an easy country to slow down in. Extensions are applied for in person at the Department of Immigration and Emigration in Battaramulla, on the edge of Colombo, and are granted to tourists as a matter of routine. Go early, take your passport, your ETA approval and a local address, and set aside most of a morning. Start a few days before your 30 days expire rather than on the final afternoon.
Once the visa is settled, the enjoyable part begins. Our trip planner will build a day-by-day route around the time you have, and the month-by-month guide will tell you which coast to aim for when you land.