Austrian passport holders need an approved ETA before departure for Sri Lanka. The government charge is waived for Austrian tourists, and the authorisation gives 30 days with two entries for holidays, round trips and Ayurveda cures.
30 days
Stay on a tourist ETA
Double
Entries permitted
6 months
Passport validity needed
3 options
Tourist, Business, Transit
100% online
No embassy visit
Important for Austrian citizens
The Sri Lankan government charge on tourist ETAs has been waived for Austrian citizens since 25 May 2026. An approved ETA is still needed to board.
Overview
Austrians know what a proper winter is, which may be why so many of them leave it for a fortnight in Sri Lanka. The island is firmly established in the Austrian long-haul market as a place for Ayurveda cures, round trips by car and driver, and unhurried beach days at the end. Travel agencies from Vienna to Bregenz often pair it with the Maldives as a two-centre holiday.
To enter, Austrian citizens need an Electronic Travel Authorisation. German-language sites call it the Sri Lanka Visum or e-Visum, and the ETA is that document. It is requested online before departure and stored against your passport number, with nothing to collect and no appointment to attend.
Austria appears on the list of 40 countries whose tourists no longer pay the Sri Lankan government charge, an arrangement in force since 25 May 2026. That makes the trip a little cheaper but does not make the ETA optional. Below you will find the rules for an Austrian passport, the details that differ from what Austrians are used to in Europe, and practical notes on flights, seasons and payment.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes. An Austrian Reisepass does not exempt you, and the fee waiver has not changed that. Every Austrian traveller needs an approved ETA, from a pensioner on a three-week cure to a baby on a parent's lap, and the airline in Vienna will look for it before boarding.
The tourist ETA suits nearly all Austrian visitors. It covers holidays and sightseeing, visits to friends and relatives, medical treatment, Ayurveda and yoga stays, and participation in sports events or cultural performances. A Panchakarma programme of two or three weeks at a resort near Bentota is a typical example.
Business travel is treated separately. Austrians going for meetings with suppliers, a conference, a seminar or a training course of less than a month should choose the business option. Taking up work, including unpaid work in a guesthouse or surf school in return for board, is not allowed on a tourist ETA, and reporting assignments for ORF or a newspaper require approval from the Sri Lankan government beforehand.
Children must be part of the application. Austrian parents sometimes remember the era when children were entered in a parent's passport; that has not been possible for years, and each child needs a personal passport whose number goes into the ETA. No government charge applies to Austrian tourists, adults or children.
Stay & validity
An Austrian tourist receives 30 days in Sri Lanka from the first day of arrival, with two entries. A popular Austrian itinerary is a round trip of the island followed by a week in the Maldives; if you then fly home via Colombo and want a final night or two there, that return counts as the second entry and must fall inside the 30 days.
You may travel at any point within six months of the approval date. Booking in September for the Semesterferien in February and applying straight away is therefore fine. Where your approval states specific conditions, those are the ones that apply.
The passport must remain valid for six months after you arrive. Austrian passports last ten years for anyone aged twelve or over, five years for children from two to eleven and just two years for infants, so the youngest family member's document is usually the one nearest expiry. A new passport from the Passamt or Magistrat has a new number and needs a new ETA.
Guests on a long Ayurveda cure or retirees spending the winter away occasionally want more than 30 days. That requires an extension from the Department of Immigration and Emigration in Battaramulla, applied for during the initial stay. Simply leaving and returning does not create a second 30-day period.
Pricing
Live fees for Austrian passport holders, shown all-in — any government charge that applies to your passport and our service fee together, with nothing added later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as Austria
Requirements
Everything Austrian passport holders need before starting an application. The first five items apply to every applicant; the rest are specific to your nationality.
Passport valid for at least six months from the date you arrive in Sri Lanka — the same passport you will travel on
A clear image of the passport bio-data page, with every corner visible and no glare over the photograph
A working email address, which is where the approval is sent and which you should be able to open while travelling
A credit or debit card for online payment
Your intended arrival date and an address in Sri Lanka, such as your first hotel
Simple process
Four steps, entirely online, with one form per traveller and a full review before you pay.
Pick the Tourist, Business or Transit option that matches the real purpose of your trip, and add every traveller in your party to the same application.
Give each traveller's details exactly as printed on the passport, plus the intended arrival date and an address in Sri Lanka. Entries are made in English.
Check every name, date and passport number on the review screen before paying. Corrections are simple at this stage and difficult afterwards.
The approval is linked electronically to your passport number. Keep a copy on your phone and a printout with your travel documents for check-in and arrival.
For Austrian applicants the ETA normally comes through in one to two days. It is an electronic process with no documents to post, but the timing is not guaranteed and occasionally an application takes longer.
Apply a minimum of three to five days before departure. If you are travelling on a package, do not assume the tour operator has arranged the ETA; Austrian operators usually mention it in the travel documents and leave it to the customer. Check the booking confirmation as soon as it arrives.
The busiest weeks are Christmas to Epiphany and the staggered Semesterferien in February, when Vienna and Lower Austria travel first and the other federal states follow over the next two weeks. Both fall in Sri Lanka's peak season. Applying a couple of weeks ahead costs nothing in validity and removes the pressure.
On arrival
An approved ETA gets you on the plane. This is what happens once you land, and how to make the arrival as quick as possible.
Bandaranaike International Airport at Katunayake, about 30 kilometres north of Colombo, handles nearly all international arrivals. Follow the signs to immigration and join the foreign passport queue.
The officer retrieves your ETA from the passport number. Have the approval email to hand as a backup, on paper or saved offline, since airport connectivity is not guaranteed.
You may be asked where you are staying, how long for and when you leave. A hotel confirmation and your return ticket answer all three in a few seconds.
Your passport is endorsed with the date you must leave by. Read it at the counter — that date, not the length of your booking, is what counts if your plans change.
Getting there
Most Austrians reach Sri Lanka from Vienna with a single change in the Gulf or in Istanbul, arriving in Colombo the following morning. Emirates, Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines all serve Vienna daily and connect to Bandaranaike International Airport. Travellers from Salzburg, Tyrol and Vorarlberg often find Munich or Zurich more convenient than Vienna, and those from Graz, Linz, Klagenfurt or Innsbruck can add a feeder flight to Vienna or Frankfurt.
Best time to go
Sri Lanka's main season and the Austrian winter are the same months. Between December and March the south and west coasts are dry and sunny, the sea is calm and the highlands are clear, with cool nights in Nuwara Eliya that will feel familiar to anyone from the Alps. This is the time for Ayurveda on the coast, the train from Kandy to Ella and whale watching from Mirissa.
The Semesterferien are the obvious window. Each federal state has one week in February, and families who add a few days either side get a comfortable twelve-day trip in the best weather of the year. The Christmas holidays, running to 6 January, work equally well but are the most heavily booked period of all.
Austria's nine-week summer holiday in July and August falls in the south-west monsoon. Head for the east coast, where Pasikudah and Trincomalee are dry and Arugam Bay draws surfers from May to September, and combine it with the Cultural Triangle. If your dates fit, the Kandy Esala Perahera in July or August is one of Asia's great processions.
The Herbstferien at the end of October coincide with inter-monsoon rain and are better for culture and wildlife than for the beach. Easter can overlap with the Sinhala and Tamil New Year in mid-April, when the country slows down for several days. And note the Poya days: every full moon is a public holiday without alcohol sales, so the sundowner that evening may be a fresh lime soda.
Avoid these
Problems are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the ones that come up most often on applications from Austria — worth a minute now rather than a new application later.
Austrians are used to seeing Mag. or Dr. in front of their names on official documents, and the passport can carry it too. It is not part of the name for international travel and does not appear in the machine-readable zone. Leave titles out of the ETA and out of the flight booking.
A surname like Pölzl or Weiß has a fixed transliteration in the passport's machine-readable lines: POELZL and WEISS. Dropping the dots or writing WEIS produces a name that is not on your passport. Look at the bottom two lines of the photo page and copy what is there.
Package holidays remain popular in Austria, and customers reasonably expect the price to include the formalities. In most cases the ETA is the traveller's own responsibility. Read the small print of the booking, and apply yourself if it is not explicitly included.
An Austrian passport issued to a child under two expires after two years, and Sri Lanka requires six months beyond arrival. A passport obtained for a first family holiday is often unusable for the second. Check it before you book, renew if needed, and apply for the ETA only with the new number.
Passport number mistyped
The authorisation attaches to the number you enter. One wrong character produces an ETA that does not match the passport handed over at the counter, and a paid application cannot be edited afterwards.
Passport with under six months left
Sri Lanka expects six months of validity counted from the day you arrive, not the day you apply. A passport that falls short is refused at check-in regardless of the ETA.
The wrong ETA type
Attending meetings or a conference on a tourist ETA is outside its conditions. Choose the option that matches what you will actually do in the country.
Conditions
These conditions are set by Sri Lanka's Department of Immigration and Emigration and do not vary by nationality.
Sri Lanka requires an Electronic Travel Authorisation for short visits by all foreign nationals, and it should be approved before you travel. Even where the government charge is waived, the authorisation itself is still required.
The authorisation is recorded against the passport number you enter. If that passport is lost, replaced or renewed before you travel, the ETA does not move across and a new application is needed.
A tourist ETA allows two entries. The stay period runs from your first arrival, so a second entry is granted only the balance of that period rather than a fresh allowance.
A tourist ETA covers holidays, family visits, medical treatment and cultural or sporting events. Business meetings, conferences and short training need the business option, and a stopover of up to two days uses the transit option.
Immigration officers at the port of entry may ask for a confirmed return or onward ticket and evidence that you can support yourself for the length of your stay.
An approved ETA lets you travel to Sri Lanka. The decision to admit you is made by an immigration officer on arrival, and the conditions printed on your approval govern your stay.
Consular services
Sri Lanka maintains an embassy in Vienna, which also represents the country at the United Nations offices and other international organisations in the city. Austrian holidaymakers do not need to contact it for an ETA, as the application is made online and no passport is sent anywhere. The embassy deals with residence visas, permissions that need prior government approval and consular questions outside the scope of a short visit.
FAQs
The questions Austrian passport holders ask most often about travelling to Sri Lanka.
Yes, Austrian citizens need an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) for a short stay, which is what is generally meant by a Sri Lanka visa. Since 25 May 2026 no government charge has been collected from Austrian tourists, but the ETA must still be approved before departure. It gives 30 days and two entries.
The government charge is waived for Austrian tourists. If you apply through us, a service fee covers preparing, checking and submitting your application, and it is displayed in the live prices shown on this page. The authorisation itself remains a requirement for boarding.
No. Titles such as Mag., Dr. or Ing. are not part of your name in the machine-readable zone of an Austrian passport. Enter only your given names and surname, spelled as in those two lines at the bottom of the photo page.
Usually not. Austrian package holidays tend to leave entry formalities to the traveller, although the operator will point out that an ETA is needed. Check your booking documents, and if the ETA is not listed as included, apply for it yourself at least three to five days before you fly.
Thirty days from the date you first enter. A second entry is allowed within those days, for instance after a week in the Maldives. To stay longer you need an extension from the Department of Immigration and Emigration in Battaramulla, obtained before the 30 days run out.
At least six months from your arrival in Sri Lanka. Adult passports last ten years, but children's passports last five years, or two for infants, so check every family member's expiry date. The Personalausweis is not accepted.
Scheduled services generally involve one change, most often in Dubai, Doha or Istanbul, with a total travel time of 12 to 14 hours. Seasonal nonstop flights have operated in some past winters, so it is worth checking the current timetable. From western Austria, Munich and Zurich are practical alternatives.
Yes. Medical treatment, including Ayurveda and yoga programmes, is one of the stated purposes of the tourist ETA. A cure of up to 30 days fits within it; a longer programme needs an extension arranged in Sri Lanka before the initial period expires.
Your nationality is already set to Austria. Complete the form in around ten minutes, review every detail, and receive your ETA by email.
Other nationalities
Charges, routes and the practical details differ by passport. Here are the guides for other nationalities.
