Luxembourg nationals need an ETA for any short visit to Sri Lanka. It allows 30 days and two entries, is issued at the standard government rate, and depends on a passport with six months left on arrival.
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 Luxembourg citizens
Luxembourg is outside Sri Lanka's 40-country waiver of the tourist ETA government charge, unlike neighbouring Belgium, France and Germany. Luxembourg passports are processed at the standard rate.
Overview
Luxembourg sends only a small number of visitors to Sri Lanka each year, but those who go tend to travel well: two or three weeks, a private driver or a rented tuk-tuk, and an itinerary that takes in the tea hills, a national park and a stretch of coast. For a country whose residents are used to crossing three borders before lunch, the distance to Colombo is the real novelty.
The paperwork is light. Luxembourg citizens need an Electronic Travel Authorisation, often labelled a Sri Lanka visa or e-visa on booking sites, and it is obtained online before departure. There is no Sri Lankan embassy in the Grand Duchy and none is needed for this purpose.
It is worth knowing from the start that Luxembourg is not on the list of 40 countries whose tourists have had the Sri Lankan government charge waived since May 2026, even though Belgium, France and Germany all are. Luxembourg passport holders pay the standard rate. In a country where nearly half the residents hold a foreign passport and dual nationality is common, that makes the choice of travel document a practical question, and this page deals with it directly.
At a glance
Eligibility
They do. Every Luxembourg national arriving for a short visit must hold an approved ETA, regardless of age and regardless of how brief the stay. The Grand Duchy has no bilateral exemption with Sri Lanka, and EU citizenship carries no special treatment at Bandaranaike International Airport.
What decides the rules is the passport you travel on, not where you live. A Portuguese, French or Italian citizen resident in Luxembourg applies as a national of that country, and a Luxembourger living in Trier or Arlon applies as a Luxembourg national. A Luxembourg residence permit or identity card plays no part in the Sri Lankan assessment.
The tourist ETA is for leisure in the broad sense: holidays, visits to friends and relatives, Ayurveda treatment, yoga programmes, and sporting or cultural events. Staff of the financial sector or the European institutions on Kirchberg who are going for meetings, negotiations or a seminar should select the business option. Employment, self-employment and living in Sri Lanka through repeated visits are not permitted on a tourist ETA.
Minors need to be included in the application with their own passports. Sri Lanka does not collect its government charge for children under 12 on a tourist stay of up to 30 days, so a Luxembourg family with two children under that age pays the charge for the adults only.
Stay & validity
Luxembourg visitors are granted 30 days on a tourist ETA, starting from the first arrival, and may enter twice. A second entry does not reset anything: if you spend 12 days on the island, fly to Malé for five and return, 13 days remain.
The approval remains valid for travel for six months after it is issued. That is generous enough to apply as soon as flights are confirmed, which is sensible given that a mistake discovered after payment cannot be corrected and means starting again.
Pay close attention to passport dates. Luxembourg issues passports for five years to anyone aged four or over, and for only two years to younger children, among the shortest terms in Europe. With six months of validity required on arrival in Sri Lanka, a Luxembourg passport is effectively usable for this trip for four and a half years, and a toddler's for eighteen months.
A renewed passport from the Bureau des passeports comes with a new number, and the ETA does not follow it across. Anyone hoping to remain beyond 30 days must ask the Department of Immigration and Emigration in Battaramulla for an extension while their original permission is still running.
Pricing
Live fees for Luxembourg 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 Luxembourg
Requirements
Everything Luxembourg 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.
ETA decisions for Luxembourg applicants generally arrive within one or two days. The system is electronic, and delays nearly always trace back to a detail that does not match the passport, which is why we review each application before sending it.
Submit your application no later than three to five days ahead of travel. Because almost every journey from Luxembourg starts with a feeder flight or a drive to a larger airport, a missing authorisation is discovered at the first check-in desk, hours before the long-haul leg, and there is little time to recover.
Add a wider margin if you are travelling in the Christmas fortnight, at Carnival in February or over the two-week Easter break, when Sri Lanka's high season and Luxembourg's school holidays overlap. Typical timing is not a commitment, so a request made the evening before departure is a gamble.
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
Luxembourg Airport at Findel has no long-haul service to South Asia, so the journey to Colombo always includes at least one change and often two. The most direct option from Findel itself is Turkish Airlines through Istanbul. Many residents instead take a short flight to Frankfurt or Munich, or travel by road or rail to Frankfurt, Brussels or Paris and pick up a Gulf carrier or SriLankan Airlines from there.
Best time to go
Luxembourg's school year runs from mid-September to mid-July, with breaks that fit Sri Lanka's two coasts rather neatly. The Christmas fortnight, the Carnival week in February and the two weeks at Easter all coincide with dry, sunny weather on the south and west coasts and clear mornings in the tea country.
The Pentecost week at the end of May, a holiday few neighbouring countries share, arrives just as the south-west monsoon is setting in. Use it for the east coast, where the season at Trincomalee and Pasikudah is beginning, or for the Cultural Triangle, which stays relatively dry. Vesak, the full-moon festival of lanterns, often falls in the same month.
The long summer break from mid-July to mid-September belongs to the east as well. Arugam Bay is at its liveliest, the sea off Nilaveli is flat enough for snorkelling, and the Kandy Esala Perahera fills the hill capital with drummers and elephants in July or August. Colombo and Galle are wet in these months, though seldom for the whole day.
The All Saints week falls during the inter-monsoon showers of October and November and is the least predictable of Luxembourg's holidays for a beach trip. Whatever the month, the time difference is modest by long-haul standards, three and a half hours in summer and four and a half in winter, so jet lag after the flight east is rarely worse than a late night.
Avoid these
Problems are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the ones that come up most often on applications from Luxembourg — worth a minute now rather than a new application later.
Friends in Metz, Saarbrücken or Arlon may tell you the Sri Lankan government charge no longer exists for them. That is true for French, German and Belgian passports, and it does not extend to Luxembourg ones. Budget for the standard rate and check the live prices on this page instead of relying on what a colleague across the border paid.
Luxembourg has one of the highest shares of foreign residents in Europe, and application forms that ask for nationality and country of residence side by side invite confusion. Nationality must be that of the passport you will present. A Portuguese citizen who has lived in Esch-sur-Alzette for twenty years is still a Portuguese applicant.
With a five-year term, every Luxembourg passport spends a tenth of its life inside Sri Lanka's six-month validity rule. Travellers renewing in a hurry then apply with the old number out of habit, or apply first and renew afterwards. Either way the ETA ends up linked to a document that no longer exists.
Dual nationals sometimes show one passport to the airline in Luxembourg and another on arrival, a habit picked up on trips where it does no harm. For Sri Lanka the ETA sits against a single passport number. Use that passport at every desk from Findel to Colombo and back.
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
There is no Sri Lankan embassy in Luxembourg City; the Grand Duchy is served by the embassy in Brussels, about three hours away by train. ETA applicants in Luxembourg never need to make that journey, because the authorisation is requested and delivered entirely online. Contact with the embassy is only required for matters beyond a short visit, such as long-term residence or work that needs government approval.
FAQs
The questions Luxembourg passport holders ask most often about travelling to Sri Lanka.
Yes, Luxembourg citizens need an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) before they travel, which serves as the visa for a short visit. It is applied for online and gives a 30-day stay with two entries. Luxembourg is not covered by Sri Lanka's 2026 fee waiver, so the standard government charge applies.
Sri Lanka chose 40 countries for its waiver of the tourist ETA charge from 25 May 2026, and Luxembourg was not included while several of its neighbours were. The requirement to hold an ETA is the same for all of them. Only the government portion of the cost differs, and current totals appear in the live prices shown on this page.
Apply as a Portuguese citizen, using your Portuguese passport details. Sri Lanka looks at the nationality of the travel document, not your place of residence, and a Luxembourg residence card is not part of the application. Give your Luxembourg address where the form asks where you live.
You may use either, but only one. French passports are covered by the government-charge waiver and Luxembourg passports are not, so the French document is usually the cheaper route. The passport named on the ETA must be the one you check in with and present to immigration in Colombo.
It must have six months of validity left on the day you arrive. Since Luxembourg passports are issued for five years, or two years for children under four, check the date early. A passport renewed after the ETA is issued requires a new application.
Up to 30 days from first arrival, with a second entry permitted during that period. The days are counted continuously, including any you spend outside the country between the two entries. An extension can be requested from the immigration department in Battaramulla if you want to stay on.
There are no direct flights. The usual choices are Turkish Airlines from Findel via Istanbul, a feeder flight to Frankfurt or Munich, or travelling overland to Frankfurt, Brussels or Paris for a Gulf airline or SriLankan Airlines. Allow 14 to 17 hours in total.
Children under 12 are not charged the Sri Lankan government fee for a tourist stay of up to 30 days. They must still be added to the application with their own passport, and our service fee is shown in the live prices on this page. Remember that under-fours in Luxembourg hold two-year passports, which expire quickly.
Your nationality is already set to Luxembourg. 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.
