Irish passport holders need an approved ETA before flying to Colombo. It gives 30 days and two entries, and because Ireland sits outside Sri Lanka's fee waiver, the standard government rate applies to Irish adults.
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 Irish citizens
Ireland is not one of the 40 countries covered by Sri Lanka's waiver of the tourist ETA government charge. The standard rate applies to Irish passports; see the live prices shown on this page.
Overview
Irish travellers have been finding their way to Sri Lanka in growing numbers, drawn by winter sun at the tail end of a grey Atlantic season, by the surf at Weligama and Arugam Bay, and by a cricket connection that took the Ireland men's team to Galle for Test matches in 2023. It is a long way from Dublin, but the island packs beaches, tea estates, leopards and ancient cities into an area smaller than the island of Ireland itself.
Before any of that, every Irish citizen needs an Electronic Travel Authorisation. You will see it called a Sri Lanka visa or e-visa in search results and on travel forums, and for practical purposes it does the same job: permission, granted online before you leave Ireland, to arrive for a short stay. There is no trip to an embassy and nothing is stuck into your passport.
One point is particular to Ireland. Sri Lanka waived its government charge on tourist ETAs for 40 nationalities in May 2026, and Ireland is not among them, although the United Kingdom is. Irish applicants therefore pay the standard government rate, which matters for the many people on this island who are entitled to carry two passports. This page explains what the ETA allows, what to have ready and where Irish applications most often go wrong.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes. Irish citizens need an approved ETA for any short visit to Sri Lanka, whether that is a fortnight on the south coast, a week with relatives in Colombo or a yoga retreat in the hills. Ireland has no exemption arrangement, and holding an EU passport makes no difference to the Sri Lankan rules.
The tourist ETA covers what most Irish visitors actually go for: holidays and sightseeing, staying with friends or family, Ayurveda and other medical treatment, and taking part in or following sporting events. Anyone travelling from Ireland for meetings, a conference or a short training course needs the business option instead, and should say so when choosing the ETA type.
Paid or unpaid work is outside the tourist ETA, and the volunteering placements and teaching stints popular with Irish gap-year travellers can fall on the wrong side of that line. Journalism, political activity and work for a charity or NGO need clearance from the Sri Lankan government in advance and cannot be arranged through the online ETA. If your trip mixes a holiday with any of these, sort the permission out before you book.
Children need their own entry in the application, however young. Sri Lanka does not levy its government charge on under-12s for a tourist stay of up to 30 days, which softens the cost for Irish families travelling over the February midterm or at Easter, but the child must still be listed with their own passport details.
Stay & validity
The tourist ETA gives Irish visitors 30 days in Sri Lanka and two entries. The clock starts on the day you first land, and both entries have to fall inside those 30 days. If you fly to the Maldives for a week in the middle of your trip and come back through Colombo, you are given whatever is left of the original 30 days, not a new allowance.
Once approved, the authorisation can be used for a first arrival at any point in the following six months, so an ETA granted in October will cover a January departure from Dublin. The conditions printed on your own approval are what count if they differ from anything you have read elsewhere.
Your passport has to be valid for at least six months beyond the day you arrive. Irish adult passports run for ten years and children's for five, and it is the five-year child passport that most often turns out to be too close to expiry when a family checks the week before flying. Passport Online renewals are usually quick, but a renewed passport carries a new number, and an ETA issued against the old one is of no use.
Thirty days suits most Irish itineraries. If you want longer, perhaps for a career break or a slow loop of the island, an extension has to be requested from the Department of Immigration and Emigration at its head office in Battaramulla, on the edge of Colombo, before your stamped date runs out.
Pricing
Live fees for Irish 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 Ireland
Requirements
Everything Irish 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.
Most Irish applications are approved within a day or two, and many come back sooner. We check each one for mismatches against the passport image before it is submitted, which is where the avoidable delays tend to start. Nobody can promise a turnaround, so treat the usual timing as a guide and not a deadline.
Apply at least three to five days before you leave Ireland. Sri Lanka runs five and a half hours ahead of Dublin in winter and four and a half in summer, so a form completed late on a Friday evening in Ireland lands in the early hours of Saturday in Colombo. Leaving it to the night before a Sunday flight gives you no room at all.
Build in more time around Christmas and New Year, the February midterm and Easter, when Irish demand for long-haul sun coincides with peak season on Sri Lanka's south and west coasts. If you are renewing a passport first, wait until the new book has arrived before applying, because the ETA needs the new number.
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
There are no direct flights between Ireland and Sri Lanka, so every journey involves one change. From Dublin the simplest routings are through the Gulf with Emirates, Qatar Airways or Etihad, or through Istanbul with Turkish Airlines, each connecting onward to Colombo's Bandaranaike International Airport. Travellers from Cork, Shannon or Belfast usually add a short hop to Dublin or London Heathrow, where SriLankan Airlines operates a nonstop service to Colombo.
Best time to go
The months when Ireland is darkest are the months when Sri Lanka's west and south coasts are at their best. From December to March the sea is calm at Mirissa, Unawatuna and Bentota, the hill country around Ella and Nuwara Eliya is clear, and whale-watching boats go out from the southern tip. A fortnight in January or February swaps dark Galway afternoons for evenings on the ramparts of Galle Fort.
The Irish school calendar lines up well with that season. The February midterm, the St Brigid's and St Patrick's bank holiday weekends and the two-week Easter break all fall within the dry months on the south-west side of the island. Easter can run into the Sinhala and Tamil New Year in mid-April, when many shops and restaurants close for a few days and trains are packed with families heading home.
Summer is different. With secondary schools finished from early June and primary schools from the end of the month, Irish families travelling in July and August should look east, to Trincomalee, Pasikudah and Arugam Bay, where it is dry and the surf is working while the south-west monsoon soaks Colombo and Galle. The Kandy Esala Perahera, held in July or August, is the island's great procession and worth planning around.
The October midterm is the awkward one, since it falls in the inter-monsoon period when heavy afternoon showers can turn up anywhere. It is still a reasonable week for the Cultural Triangle and for wildlife at Yala or Wilpattu if you accept some rain. Whenever you go, remember that monthly Poya full-moon days are public holidays on which no alcohol is sold, which has surprised more than one group of Irish visitors.
Avoid these
Problems are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the ones that come up most often on applications from Ireland — worth a minute now rather than a new application later.
Plenty of people born in Northern Ireland, or with a parent from Britain, hold both an Irish and a British passport. The ETA is tied to the number you enter, and the government charge differs between the two nationalities. Apply with the Irish book and present the British one at check-in, or the reverse, and the airline will find no authorisation against it.
The Irish Passport Card has its own number and is valid only for travel within the EU, the EEA, Switzerland and the UK. Applicants sometimes copy the card number because the card is what lives in their wallet. Sri Lanka needs the passport book, and the ETA must carry the book's number.
A passport issued as Seán Ó Murchú and a flight booked as Sean Murphy describe the same person to everyone except a check-in system. Enter the name as the passport shows it, without the fadas, and make sure the airline ticket follows the passport too. The same care applies to Ní, Nic and Mac prefixes and to the spacing in names like Mc Carthy.
Irish children's passports last five years, and Sri Lanka wants six months of validity left on the day of arrival. Families booking Easter in the sun often discover in March that a nine-year-old's passport expires in July. Renewing means a new number, so the ETA should only be applied for once the replacement has been delivered.
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 has no resident embassy in Dublin, and Ireland is covered from its High Commission in London. Irish applicants for an ETA do not need to contact it, post a passport across the Irish Sea or attend an interview, because the whole application is handled online. The High Commission becomes relevant only for matters outside the ETA, such as residence visas or activities that need prior approval from Colombo.
FAQs
The questions Irish passport holders ask most often about travelling to Sri Lanka.
Yes, Irish citizens need an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA), which is the online permission most people mean when they talk about a Sri Lanka visa. It must be approved before you travel and gives a tourist stay of 30 days with two entries. Ireland is not on Sri Lanka's fee-waiver list, so the standard government rate applies.
No. The waiver Sri Lanka introduced on 25 May 2026 covers 40 countries and Ireland is not one of them, so Irish adults pay the standard government charge together with our service fee. Children under 12 are not charged the government portion on a tourist stay of up to 30 days. The current totals are in the live prices shown on this page.
Either is acceptable, but you have to commit to one. British passports fall under the government-charge waiver and Irish passports do not, so the British book will usually cost less. Whichever you choose must be the passport you check in with, show on arrival in Colombo and leave on, and it needs six months of validity from your arrival date.
No. The Passport Card is only accepted within the EU, the EEA, Switzerland and the UK. For Sri Lanka you need the full passport book, and the ETA application should use the book's number, not the number on the card.
Thirty days from the date of first arrival, with a second entry allowed inside that same period. Leaving for a few days and returning does not restart the count. A longer stay needs an extension from the Department of Immigration and Emigration in Battaramulla, requested before the date stamped in your passport.
Three to five days before departure is a sensible minimum, and a couple of weeks is better for Christmas, the February midterm and Easter. Most approvals come through within a day or two, but that is typical timing, not a promise. The approval stays usable for six months, so there is little reason to wait once flights are booked.
No. Flights from Dublin connect through Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi or Istanbul, and the full journey to Colombo usually takes 14 to 16 hours. Some travellers fly to London Heathrow first and take the SriLankan Airlines nonstop from there. Whichever way you route, expect the airline to look for your ETA at the first check-in desk.
Not on the tourist ETA. It excludes employment whether or not you are paid, and work with charities or NGOs needs approval from the Sri Lankan authorities before you travel. Irish volunteers should ask the host organisation to arrange the correct permission, and use the tourist ETA only for holiday time.
Your nationality is already set to Ireland. 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.
