Macau SAR passport holders can apply for the Indian eVisa entirely online — no consular appointment, no courier, no passport handed over. Approval typically arrives by email in 24 to 72 hours.
90 days
Maximum stay per visit
24–72 hrs
Typical processing time
Up to 5 years
Longest validity offered
Not eligible
Visa on Arrival
100% online
No embassy visit
Important for Macau SAR passport holders
Macau residents may hold a Macau SAR passport, a Portuguese passport, or a travel permit — and these are treated differently. This page covers Macau SAR passport holders. If you hold a Portuguese passport, apply as a Portuguese citizen instead, which has its own fees and entitlements. Whichever you choose, you must enter India on the same document the visa is issued against.
Overview
Macau's position is genuinely distinctive. As a Special Administrative Region it issues its own passport, but many Macau residents also hold Portuguese passports as a legacy of the pre-1999 administration, and some hold travel permits rather than passports. Which document you use changes the application, the fees and the entitlements.
Travel to India is mostly leisure and business, with Macau's gaming, hospitality and financial-services sectors generating a steady flow of professional travel. There is no nonstop service, so travellers connect through Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur — all short hops with extensive onward Indian networks.
Every Macau SAR passport holder needs a visa granted before departure. There is no visa-free entry and no visa on arrival. Macau SAR passport holders receive up to 90 days per visit on the tourist eVisa.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes. India extends visa-free entry only to Nepal and Bhutan, and Visa on Arrival only to Japanese, South Korean and Emirati nationals. Macau SAR passport holders must hold an approved visa before boarding, and your carrier will verify it at the gate.
Choose the category by purpose. Tourism, sightseeing and visiting friends fall under the tourist eVisa. Meetings, trade fairs, hospitality and gaming-sector business require the business eVisa. Treatment at an Indian hospital requires the medical eVisa. Employment, journalism, academic research and long-term study are outside the eVisa scheme and need a regular visa from an Indian mission.
The document question comes first, though. Decide which passport you are travelling on before you apply — Macau SAR or Portuguese — because the visa is tied to that specific document and you must enter India on it. Note that a Macau travel permit is not the same as a passport and may not support an eVisa application; check before assuming.
Stay & validity
Macau SAR passport holders are permitted up to 90 days per visit on the tourist eVisa. The 30-day version allows double entry, with its 30 days counted from your arrival date. The one-year and five-year versions are multiple-entry, and their validity begins on the date the Indian government grants the application.
If you hold a Portuguese passport instead, that route has its own entitlements — also 90 days per visit on the tourist eVisa, but with Portuguese fees, and with the additional Goan-descent nationality considerations that apply to Portuguese passport holders generally.
The eVisa is bound to a single passport number, so the document you apply on is the document you must present on arrival. Mixing them means arriving with a visa that does not match your passport.
The business eVisa allows up to 180 days per visit within a one-year multiple-entry window. The medical eVisa gives 60 days from first entry with triple entry.
Pricing
Live government fees and service charges for Macau SAR passport holders, shown all-in — nothing further is charged later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as Macau
Requirements
Everything Macau SAR passport holders need before starting an application. The first five items apply to every applicant; the rest are specific to your nationality or visa type.
Passport bio-data page — a clear colour scan or photo showing your photograph, full name, date of birth, passport number and expiry date
Recent passport-style photograph — square format, plain white background, full face visible, no shadows and no headwear other than for religious reasons
A valid credit or debit card to pay the government fee and service charge
Your return or onward ticket details, or at minimum your intended departure date
The address where you will be staying for your first night in India
Simple process
Four steps, entirely online, with our team checking every field before anything reaches the Indian authorities.
Enter your passport details exactly as printed, choose your visa type and duration, and upload your photo and passport data page.
Our team checks your photo dimensions, passport scan clarity, name spelling and date formats before anything is submitted.
Your application goes to the Government of India on your behalf, and we keep you posted at every status change.
Print it or keep it on your phone, and we explain exactly how to present it at your port of entry in India.
Standard processing takes 48 to 72 hours and express handling 24 to 48 hours. Both are business-day estimates, and Indian public holidays — numerous and often state-specific — extend them.
Apply at least a week before departure. Resolve the document question first, though — establishing which passport you are travelling on matters more than the processing time, and getting it wrong means starting again.
Separate from your eVisa, every foreign national entering India must complete the digital e-Arrival Card before boarding. It replaces the old paper disembarkation form and is required on every single visit, whatever visa you hold.
Getting there
Macau has no nonstop Indian service, but Hong Kong is under an hour away by ferry and has frequent nonstop flights to five Indian cities. Singapore, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur are the other main options. Total journey times run 7 to 13 hours.
Best time to go
October to March is India's dry season and the best window for the classic circuits. For Macau travellers, Lunar New Year in late January or February falls squarely inside it — ideal weather but the peak fare period, so book several months ahead.
For business travel to Mumbai or Bengaluru, note the monsoon from June to September brings very heavy rain to Mumbai and can disrupt flights, which matters for fixed meetings.
Avoid the northern plains in May and June, when temperatures exceed 45°C — considerably hotter and drier than Macau's humid summer. India is 2.5 hours behind Macau time, so there is effectively no jet lag.
Avoid these
Refusals are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the problems that come up most often on applications from Macau — we check for every one of them before submitting.
The defining Macau-specific problem. Many Macau residents hold both, and the eVisa is tied to one specific passport number — you must enter India on the document the visa was issued against. Applying on the Macau SAR passport and then travelling on the Portuguese one, or vice versa, means arriving with a visa that does not match your passport. Decide before you apply and use one document consistently across visa, ticket and boarding.
A Macau travel permit is not a passport and may not support an eVisa application. If that is your only travel document, confirm your position before applying rather than assuming the eVisa route is open.
Chinese names in Macau passports are romanised in a specific form, sometimes with a hyphen, and family name comes first. Match the passport's printed form and field layout exactly, and keep your airline booking consistent.
Practical but significant. Hong Kong is under an hour from Macau by ferry and has frequent nonstop service to five Indian cities, against a two-connection routing from Macau itself. That is usually both faster and cheaper.
Macau SAR passport holders receive 90 days per visit on the tourist eVisa, not the 180 days granted to American, British, Canadian and Japanese nationals. The eVisa cannot be extended from inside India.
Photo rejected on technical grounds
By far the most common cause of delay. The photograph must be square, on a plain white background, with your full face visible and no shadow behind your head. Cropped selfies and phone photos taken against a cream wall are routinely bounced back.
Passport scan unreadable
Glare across the machine-readable zone, a cut-off corner, or a scan where the passport number is blurred will stall the application. Photograph the page flat, in daylight, with no flash.
Applying too close to departure
The eVisa must be granted before you fly, and airlines check it at the gate. Applications submitted the night before a flight leave no room for a document re-upload.
Conditions
These conditions are set by the Government of India and do not vary by nationality. They are worth reading before you book, because two of them — the port-of-entry rule and the restricted-areas rule — catch out a lot of otherwise well-planned trips.
Validity is measured from your date of arrival in India, not from the date you apply. You also need at least two blank pages for immigration stamps.
The India eVisa is accepted at India's designated eVisa airports and authorised seaports. It cannot be used to cross a land border, so overland arrivals from Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh or Pakistan need a different visa.
Every person travelling needs their own eVisa and their own passport, including infants and children. Children cannot be added to a parent's application.
An eVisa does not grant access to Protected Areas, Restricted Areas or Cantonment Areas. Parts of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Sikkim, Ladakh, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep require a Protected Area Permit or Restricted Area Permit in addition to your visa.
You cannot extend an eVisa from inside India or convert it into another visa category. If your plans change, you must leave and apply again.
Diplomatic, official and service passports are not eligible for the eVisa route, and neither are international travel documents or refugee travel documents.
Consular services
Macau is served by an Indian mission in the region rather than by a resident post. That has no bearing on your eVisa, which is entirely online — but confirm coverage if you need a student, employment or research visa, or an OCI card, before travelling to a consulate.
FAQs
The questions Macau SAR passport holders ask most often about applying for an Indian eVisa.
Decide before you apply, and then use that one document consistently. The eVisa is tied to a specific passport number and you must enter India on that passport. The two routes have different fees and, in the Portuguese case, additional nationality considerations if you have Goan descent. Mixing them means arriving with a visa that does not match your document.
A travel permit is not a passport and may not support an eVisa application. Confirm your position with us before applying rather than assuming the route is open — we will check what applies to your specific document and tell you if a consular application is needed instead.
Up to 90 days per visit on the tourist eVisa. The 30-day version allows 30 days with double entry; the one-year and five-year versions are multiple-entry with a 90-day cap per visit. The business eVisa permits up to 180 days per visit within a one-year window, and the medical eVisa 60 days from first entry with triple entry.
Hong Kong is usually the better choice — it is under an hour away by ferry and has frequent nonstop service to Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata, against a two-connection routing from Macau itself. That is generally faster and cheaper. Check the current ferry-to-airport transfer arrangement when you book.
Exactly as romanised on the passport you are travelling on, including any hyphen, with the family name in the surname field and given name in the given-name field — matching the passport's own layout rather than spoken order. Then make sure your airline booking uses the same arrangement.
Fees are set by nationality and duration, so the pricing panel on this page loads live figures for Macau SAR passport holders across all available options. Note that the figures differ if you apply on a Portuguese passport instead. The amount shown is the full cost including our service fee.
No. Indian Visa on Arrival is limited to Japanese, South Korean and Emirati nationals. Macau SAR passport holders need an approved visa before boarding, and your airline will verify it at the gate.
No. The eVisa cannot be extended or converted from inside India. If you need longer, either split the trip across two entries on a multiple-entry visa — leaving India by air and returning — or apply for a regular visa through an Indian mission before you travel.
Your nationality is already set to Macau. Complete the form in under ten minutes, and our team will check every detail before it reaches the Indian authorities.
Other nationalities
Stay limits, fees and requirements differ by passport. Here are the guides for other nationalities.
