Travelling from Ouagadougou or Bobo-Dioulasso to Colombo starts with an ETA. Burkinabe passport holders receive 30 days and two entries on the tourist option, requested entirely online and linked to the passport number you enter.
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
Overview
Burkina Faso and Sri Lanka sit about nine thousand kilometres apart and share almost no direct traffic. The Burkinabe who do go are a varied group: couples choosing an unusual honeymoon, staff of international organisations taking leave, traders curious about tea and spices, and members of the diaspora in Italy or France adding an Asian holiday to a year abroad.
Whatever the reason, the paperwork is the same. A Burkinabe citizen needs an Electronic Travel Authorisation, the ETA, before boarding for Colombo. Search engines and travel agents in Ouagadougou often call it the Sri Lanka visa or e-visa. It is not a sticker in the passport but an electronic record held against your passport number.
Burkina Faso is landlocked, so an island with beaches on every side is part of the appeal, and so is the hill country, where temperatures drop to levels a visitor from the Sahel rarely meets. Below you will find the rules as they apply to the Burkinabe passport, the practical routes out of Thomas Sankara International Airport, and advice on timing.
At a glance
Eligibility
They do. Sri Lanka requires an ETA from all foreign nationals making a short visit, and holders of the passport of Burkina Faso are included. The authorisation has to be approved before you travel, which in practice means before you reach the check-in counter in Ouagadougou.
On cost, Burkina Faso falls in the standard category. The waiver of the government charge introduced on 25 May 2026 names forty countries and Burkina Faso is not one of them, nor does it benefit from a reciprocal or SAARC rate. Our service fee is added for preparing and checking the application; both elements are set out in the live prices shown on this page.
One concession applies to every nationality and is worth knowing for Burkinabe families: a child under twelve pays no government fee on a tourist ETA of up to thirty days. The child still appears in the application, with the details from his or her own passport.
Choose the type by what you will actually do. Sightseeing, staying with friends, a yoga or Ayurveda programme and attending a sports event are tourist purposes. A Burkinabe exporter negotiating with a buyer, or an official attending a workshop of under a month, needs the business option. Paid or unpaid work is not permitted on a tourist ETA under any circumstances.
Stay & validity
The tourist ETA grants Burkinabe visitors 30 days in Sri Lanka, counted from the first arrival, and permits a second entry within that same window. Leaving for Chennai on day ten and returning on day fifteen leaves you fifteen days, not thirty.
Approval remains usable for six months from the date it is issued. A Burkinabe traveller planning a January holiday can therefore apply in the autumn, once flights are fixed, without the authorisation lapsing first. The wording on the approval notice prevails if it differs from what you expected.
Passports of Burkina Faso are issued for five years. Sri Lanka insists on six months of validity remaining on the day you land, so in effect only the first four and a half years of a Burkinabe booklet are usable for this trip. Check the date d'expiration before anything else.
If a month is not enough, extensions are handled in person by the Department of Immigration and Emigration at Battaramulla, near Colombo. Visitors from Burkina Faso should not assume one will be granted, and should not book a return flight beyond the thirtieth day on that assumption.
Pricing
Live fees for Burkinabe 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 Burkina Faso
Requirements
Everything Burkinabe 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.
A decision on a Burkinabe application usually comes back within one or two days. Some are quicker, a few take longer, and none carries a guaranteed time. Files are slowed mainly by passport photographs that are cropped or blurred.
Send the application at least three to five days before leaving Burkina Faso. Add a further margin for travel over Christmas, New Year and Easter, which are public holidays at home and fall in the busiest months on Sri Lanka's south-west coast.
Ouagadougou keeps Greenwich time all year and Sri Lanka is five and a half hours ahead, so a query raised at lunchtime in Burkina Faso lands in the early Colombo evening. If your bank must enable the card, remember that branches close on 11 December, 5 August, Tabaski and the end of Ramadan.
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
Burkina Faso has no direct air link with Sri Lanka. Travellers from Ouagadougou normally connect once in Istanbul with Turkish Airlines, or twice using Royal Air Maroc or Ethiopian Airlines and a Gulf carrier. From Bobo-Dioulasso, add the road or a domestic hop to the capital first.
Best time to go
The Christmas and Easter breaks in Burkina Faso line up neatly with the dry season on Sri Lanka's west and south coasts, which runs from December to March or April. That is the time for Galle Fort, the beaches south of Colombo, whale watching off Mirissa and the tea country around Ella.
In odd-numbered years many Burkinabe stay home in late February for FESPACO, the film festival in Ouagadougou. If you travel just afterwards, March is still dry in the south-west of Sri Lanka, and mid-April brings Sinhala and Tamil New Year, when many shops and offices close for several days.
The grandes vacances from July to September coincide with the rains across Burkina Faso and with the south-west monsoon in Sri Lanka. The island's east coast is the answer: Trincomalee and Pasikudah are dry and calm then, and Arugam Bay has its surf season. Kandy's Esala Perahera in July or August is an extra reason to go.
Wildlife is a year-round draw. Burkinabe visitors used to elephants at Nazinga will find Sri Lanka's parks very different, with leopards the prize sighting at Yala and Wilpattu.
Avoid these
Problems are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the ones that come up most often on applications from Burkina Faso — worth a minute now rather than a new application later.
Burkinabe passports often carry three or four prénoms, including a saint's name and a traditional one. Dropping any of them, or swapping their order, creates a mismatch. With so many people named Ouédraogo, the full given names are essential.
The é in Kaboré, Compaoré or Sédogo is not part of the machine-readable zone. Type the plain letters shown in the two lines at the bottom of the photo page of your Burkina Faso passport.
The six months are measured from the date you land in Sri Lanka, not the date you apply in Ouagadougou. A five-year Burkinabe booklet that looks acceptable in October may be short by a January arrival.
A Burkinabe businessperson who ticks the tourist box and then explains at the border that the trip is to meet suppliers has declared the wrong purpose. Meetings, negotiations and conferences belong under the business option.
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
Ouagadougou has no resident Sri Lankan mission, and Burkina Faso is looked after from the High Commission in Nairobi. Burkinabe ETA applicants have no need to write to or visit it: there is no interview and no document to post. It remains the contact point for questions that fall outside the online ETA.
FAQs
The questions Burkinabe passport holders ask most often about travelling to Sri Lanka.
Yes. Burkinabe citizens need an approved ETA, Sri Lanka's electronic travel authorisation, before travelling for a short visit. People commonly call it a visa or e-visa. It must be in place before you leave Burkina Faso.
Thirty days on the tourist ETA, starting from your first arrival, with two entries allowed. A second arrival uses up what remains of the same thirty days.
No. The government charge is waived for forty named countries and Burkina Faso is not on that list, so the standard government rate applies. Children under twelve are the exception. What a Burkinabe adult pays is in the live prices shown on this page.
Burkina Faso is covered by the Sri Lanka High Commission in Nairobi, Kenya. You will not need it for an ETA, which is applied for and delivered online.
Enter the date exactly as your Burkina Faso passport records it, including in the machine-readable zone, and do not invent a day or month that is not printed. If the form will not accept the entry, contact our support team before paying so the application is not submitted with a guess.
The simplest routing from Ouagadougou is through Istanbul with a single change. Options via Casablanca and Doha, or Addis Ababa and Dubai, involve two. Allow roughly a day of travel in each direction.
No. Conferences, workshops, seminars and business meetings fall under the business option, which Burkinabe delegates should select when applying. The tourist ETA is limited to leisure, family visits, medical treatment and cultural or sporting events.
It changes the charge, not the requirement. Italy is among the countries whose citizens have the government charge waived, while Burkina Faso is charged the standard rate. Apply with whichever passport you will present at Colombo, because the ETA cannot be transferred between them.
Your nationality is already set to Burkina Faso. 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.
