Iranian passport holders need an ETA approved before they fly from Tehran, Shiraz or Mashhad towards Colombo. It gives 30 days with two entries, and Iran is one of the 40 nationalities for which the government charge is waived.
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 Iranian citizens
Iran is one of the 40 countries whose citizens have not been charged Sri Lanka's government fee on a tourist ETA since 25 May 2026. An approved ETA is still required, and our service fee applies; see the live prices shown on this page.
Overview
Iranians drink more Ceylon tea than almost anyone, so the island's name is familiar in every household long before a holiday is discussed. In recent years tour operators in Tehran have added Sri Lanka to the short list of tropical destinations they sell for Nowruz, promoting green hills, elephants and Indian Ocean beaches as a change from the usual Gulf and Turkish resorts.
Travel from Iran has practical hurdles that visitors from elsewhere do not face, chiefly paying online and matching a Persian name to its Latin spelling. Neither is difficult once you know what the form expects, and both are covered in detail further down.
The entry document is an Electronic Travel Authorisation. Agencies often label it a Sri Lanka visa or e-visa, and in Persian you will see it advertised simply as a visa. Iran is on the list of 40 countries whose tourists stopped paying the Sri Lankan government charge in May 2026, yet the authorisation remains compulsory and must be issued before departure.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes. An Iranian citizen cannot board for Colombo without an approved ETA, and the fee waiver has not altered that. Check-in staff in Dubai, Doha or Istanbul, where your final sector begins, verify it against your passport before issuing a boarding pass.
Holidays and tours, visits to friends or family, wellness stays built around Ayurveda or yoga, and attendance at sporting or cultural events all sit under the tourist ETA. That covers the package trips sold from Tehran and Isfahan as well as independent travel.
Tea importers, carpet traders and other merchants travelling to negotiate with Sri Lankan suppliers require the business option. So do participants in conferences, exhibitions with seminars, workshops and training lasting under a month. It is selected at the start of the application, in place of the tourist type.
Taking a job, running a business locally or using successive visits to reside in Sri Lanka is forbidden on a tourist authorisation. Filming for broadcast, reporting, political activity and NGO projects each need prior consent from the Sri Lankan government and are unavailable through the online route.
Stay & validity
An Iranian tourist may stay 30 days from the first day of arrival and enter twice during that time. Tours from Iran sometimes pair Sri Lanka with the Maldives; returning to Colombo for the flight home is allowed, but you are readmitted only for the days not yet used.
The approval can be used to arrive at any time in the six months after it is granted, so applying in Bahman for a Nowruz departure is perfectly workable. The specific terms written on your approval override any general guidance.
Iranian passports are normally issued for five years, shorter than in many countries, so the six-month validity rule catches people out more often. Count from your landing date, not from the day you apply. A passport renewed through the police passport office comes with a new number, and the earlier ETA cannot be attached to it.
Extensions beyond 30 days are dealt with only inside Sri Lanka, by the Department of Immigration and Emigration at Battaramulla near Colombo, and must be requested before your authorised stay expires.
Pricing
Live fees for Iranian 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 Iran
Requirements
Everything Iranian 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.
Iranian applications tend to be decided within one or two days. Before submission we check the Latin spelling and the Gregorian dates against your passport image, as these are the entries most likely to slip. Some cases take longer, and nobody can commit to a fixed time.
Apply three to five days ahead at the very least. Sri Lanka is two hours ahead of Tehran throughout the year now that Iran no longer changes its clocks. Bear in mind that Thursday afternoon and Friday form the weekend in Iran, which can slow down any help you need from a bank or agency.
Nowruz is the pressure point. Flights and tours for the two-week holiday sell out early, and it falls within Sri Lanka's high season, so submit your application in good time before the year turns. Do the same ahead of the summer school holidays, and wait for any renewed passport to be issued first.
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
With no nonstop service between Iran and Sri Lanka, the journey runs through a hub to the south or west. Dubai is the commonest choice from Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport, followed by Doha, Sharjah, Muscat and Istanbul. Travellers from Mashhad, Shiraz and Isfahan can often join the same Gulf connections without passing through Tehran. Schedules in the region change at short notice, so confirm them when booking.
Best time to go
Nowruz, beginning around 20 March, is the main travel season for Iranians and falls at the end of the dry period on Sri Lanka's south and west coasts. Beaches at Bentota, Mirissa and Unawatuna are still calm, the hill country is clear, and the two weeks up to Sizdah Bedar are enough for a full circuit of the island.
Stay into mid-April and you meet the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, a spring festival that Iranians will find oddly familiar, with families gathering, special sweets and businesses shut for several days. Book transport ahead for those dates, because trains and buses are full of people returning to their home villages.
Iranian schools close from late June until late September. In those months the south-west monsoon wets Colombo and Galle while the east coast is dry, so choose Trincomalee, Nilaveli or Pasikudah for swimming. The Kandy Esala Perahera in July or August brings drummers, dancers and decorated elephants to the hill capital.
Winter breaks, including the Yalda period and university holidays in Dey and Bahman, coincide with the best beach weather of all and with whale watching off the south coast. Visitors from Iran's dry plateau should expect high humidity all year, and should note that no alcohol is sold on monthly Poya days, which will not trouble most Iranian tour groups.
Avoid these
Problems are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the ones that come up most often on applications from Iran — worth a minute now rather than a new application later.
There are several accepted ways to write most Persian names in Latin script, and Iranians often use one on social media, another on a university certificate and a third in the passport. Seyed, Seyyed and Sayed are a typical example. The ETA must carry the passport version character for character, and your airline ticket should as well.
Applicants who work out their own Gregorian birth date from a Shamsi one are frequently a day out, especially for birthdays near the turn of the year. Your passport already shows the Gregorian date beside the Iranian one. Use that, and apply the same care to the passport's issue and expiry dates.
Iranian debit cards are confined to the country's own payment system, so an attempt to pay with one simply fails. Arrange an internationally usable card beforehand, perhaps through a family member overseas. If someone else pays, the traveller's own details must still be the ones entered on the application.
Many Iranians living in Canada, Germany, Sweden, Britain or the United States hold a second nationality. Those countries are on the waiver list too, so either passport qualifies, but the authorisation is bound to the one you name. Present a different passport at check-in and the airline will see no ETA on file.
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 Tehran. Iranian citizens seeking an ETA do not have to attend it, hand in a passport or provide fingerprints there, as the authorisation is applied for and received online. The embassy is the place to turn for longer-stay visas and for work that needs clearance from Colombo in advance.
FAQs
The questions Iranian passport holders ask most often about travelling to Sri Lanka.
Yes, Iranian citizens need an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA), widely referred to as a Sri Lanka visa, and it must be approved before the journey. For tourism it grants 30 days and two entries. Iran is among the 40 countries exempt from the government charge.
Sri Lanka waived its government charge on tourist ETAs for Iranian nationals from 25 May 2026. The ETA itself is still obligatory, and we charge a service fee for preparing and submitting it, as set out in the live prices shown on this page.
You need a credit or debit card enabled for international online payments. Cards that operate only on Iran's domestic network will not go through, so applicants commonly use a card belonging to a relative or friend outside Iran.
Thirty days counted from first arrival, with two entries permitted inside that period. On a second entry you receive only the remaining days. A longer stay needs an extension from the immigration department near Colombo.
Not at present. Iranians usually connect in Dubai, Doha, Sharjah or Muscat, with Istanbul as a longer alternative. Total travel time from Tehran is typically nine to twelve hours.
Gregorian dates only, copied from the passport. Do not enter Solar Hijri dates from your national card or birth certificate, and do not convert them yourself when the passport already gives the answer.
Not if the trip involves business. Meetings with exporters, auctions, negotiations and trade events come under the business option. A tourist ETA is right only when the visit is purely for leisure or family.
Apply with the passport you will travel on and show to Sri Lankan immigration. It needs six months of validity from arrival. You cannot switch passports afterwards without making a new application.
Your nationality is already set to Iran. 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.
