Colombians travelling to Sri Lanka need an ETA approved online before departure from Bogotá or Medellín. The tourist ETA covers 30 days and two entries, and is matched at Colombo airport to the passport number you applied with.
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
A Colombian who knows the Eje Cafetero will recognise something in Sri Lanka's hill country: steep green slopes, pickers working by hand, a small-town railway and a national drink grown at altitude. Here it is tea instead of coffee, and the comparison is one reason the island has started to appear on Colombian itineraries through India and South-East Asia.
Getting in takes one piece of preparation. Sri Lanka issues an Electronic Travel Authorisation to all foreign visitors, Colombians included, and expects it to be approved before travel. Search results in Spanish usually call it the visa para Sri Lanka or an e-visa. For a holiday, the tourist ETA is what you are being asked for.
Colombian travellers have gained visa exemptions across Europe and much of Asia over the past decade, so an advance permit can feel like a step back. It is a short online form. The parts worth care are specific to Colombia: two surnames, a passport distinct from the cédula, a ten-and-a-half-hour time gap and connections on two continents.
At a glance
Eligibility
Colombian citizens need an ETA to enter Sri Lanka for any short stay. The government-charge waiver that began on 25 May 2026 names forty countries and Colombia is absent from it, which places Colombian passports on the standard government rate. The amounts are in the live prices shown on this page.
Colombians living abroad are a different case only if they hold another nationality. A Colombian who is also a Spanish or United States citizen and travels on that passport is assessed as a national of that country, and both are on the waiver list. A foreign residence card, by contrast, changes nothing; nationality is what counts.
Use the tourist ETA for holidays, family or friends, yoga and Ayurveda, sporting events and cultural performances. Colombian musicians and dancers invited to an arts event, exporters meeting buyers and anyone attending a seminar should select the business option, because those purposes fall outside tourism.
Children are not waved through. Each needs to be on an application with their own passport — a tarjeta de identidad is not enough — though for under-12s the government fee on a tourist ETA of up to 30 days is not charged.
Stay & validity
For Colombians the tourist ETA means a stay of 30 days and permission to enter twice. The count begins at your first arrival stamp and does not pause when you leave. Come back from a side trip and the officer grants only the days that remain.
Travel can take place at any point in the six months after the ETA is issued. Colombians who buy tickets in a promotion months ahead can apply straight away without wasting the allowance, since the 30 days are counted from arrival and not from approval. Where the approval's own wording says otherwise, follow the approval.
Colombian passports are valid for ten years, and Sri Lanka requires at least six months of that to be left when you land. If you expect to need longer than a month in the country, the route is an extension from the Department of Immigration and Emigration in Battaramulla, requested while your current stay is still valid.
Pricing
Live fees for Colombian 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 Colombia
Requirements
Everything Colombian 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.
From Colombia, expect an answer in a day or two in the normal run of things. Give yourself three to five days at the very least, and do not read that as a deadline that someone has committed to; incomplete or inconsistent details slow any application.
Colombo runs ten and a half hours ahead of Bogotá, with no daylight saving on either side to shift it. When you finish lunch, Sri Lanka is approaching midnight. If a clarification is needed, each round of messages can cost a full day, which is why early applications matter more from the Americas than from Europe.
Demand bunches around Semana Santa, the mid-year break in June and July, the October semana de receso and the weeks either side of Christmas. Colombians also travel heavily on puentes festivos. If your flight leaves in one of those windows, apply at the moment you book.
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
Sri Lanka cannot be reached nonstop from Colombia. The neatest option is Turkish Airlines from Bogotá to Istanbul and onward to Colombo; otherwise Colombians cross the Atlantic to a European hub and change again in the Gulf. Passengers from Cali, Cartagena or Barranquilla usually join these flights at El Dorado.
Best time to go
The December and January holidays are the classic time for the south-west: dry beaches at Unawatuna and Mirissa, clear mornings in the tea country, and blue whales offshore. Rooms are at their dearest then, so book well ahead if Christmas or New Year is fixed.
Semana Santa generally lands in late March or April, the end of the dry season on that same coast. Go early in the week if you can. The Sinhala and Tamil New Year follows in mid-April and closes much of the country for family celebrations.
June and July belong to the east. While Colombo is rainy, Trincomalee and Pasikudah are calm and sunny, and Arugam Bay draws surfers. Late July and August add the Kandy Esala Perahera, a procession of drummers, dancers and elephants that Colombians who love a good carnival tend to rate highly.
The October school week is the awkward one, falling in the inter-monsoon period when showers can appear anywhere. It still works for wildlife and ruins. Someone from Bogotá will also notice the altitude in reverse: Sri Lanka's lowlands are hot and humid, more Cartagena than the capital, so pack accordingly.
Avoid these
Problems are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the ones that come up most often on applications from Colombia — worth a minute now rather than a new application later.
Colombian passports show the holder's cédula as a personal number near the passport number, and the two are easily confused under pressure. Only the passport number identifies your ETA. Read it from the top of the photo page and check it against the machine-readable line.
If the passport says Juan Sebastián Rodríguez Gómez, an application for Juan Rodríguez is a different person as far as a matching system is concerned. Enter all four elements. Leave the accents out, as the bottom lines of the page do.
Itineraries from Colombia can pass through the United States or the United Kingdom, both of which apply their own entry or transit requirements to Colombian passports. A Sri Lankan ETA does not help there. Confirm each stop before paying for a ticket.
Salsa instructors, DJs and musicians are sometimes invited to hotels and festivals. Taking part in a cultural performance as a visitor is one thing; being engaged to work is employment, which the tourist authorisation does not allow.
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
As far as we know there is no Sri Lankan embassy in Bogotá, and Colombia is covered from a regional mission; Brasília hosts the nearest embassy. No Colombian tourist needs to deal with it for an ETA, which is handled online from application to approval.
FAQs
The questions Colombian passport holders ask most often about travelling to Sri Lanka.
Colombians need an ETA — an Electronic Travel Authorisation — which serves as the entry permit often called a Sri Lanka visa. It has to be approved before you fly. The tourist version gives 30 days and two entries, at the standard government rate.
Not on a Colombian passport, which is outside the forty-country waiver. The only general exception is for children under 12, who are not charged the government fee for a tourist ETA of up to 30 days.
A single connection in Istanbul with Turkish Airlines is the simplest. The alternative is two connections, usually Madrid, Paris or Frankfurt followed by Doha or Dubai. Compare total journey time, not only the fare.
Health entry rules are set separately from immigration ones, and travellers arriving from countries with yellow fever risk are commonly asked for a vaccination certificate. Carry yours and check the latest requirement with the airline before departure.
The rules follow the passport you travel on. With only a Colombian passport, the standard rate applies even if you hold Spanish residence. If you have become a Spanish citizen and use that passport, the government charge on a tourist ETA is waived.
Thirty days from the date of first entry. A second entry is possible within those same 30 days. Longer stays need an extension approved by the Department of Immigration and Emigration.
Three to five days before flying is the minimum we suggest, and several weeks is better around Semana Santa and December. Approval commonly takes a day or two but is never guaranteed within a set time.
The ETA stays attached to the old number and cannot be transferred. You would need to submit a new application with the new passport, and the government charge already paid is not refunded.
Your nationality is already set to Colombia. 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.
