Malagasy passport holders must have an ETA approved before starting the journey from Antananarivo to Colombo. It allows 30 days and two entries, with the standard government rate applying to Madagascar.
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 Malagasy citizens
Madagascar is not among the countries whose government charge Sri Lanka has waived, so Malagasy applicants pay the standard rate. The live prices shown on this page give the current total.
Overview
The link between Madagascar and Sri Lanka runs through stones. Sri Lankan dealers have bought sapphires at Ilakaka and in the north of the island since the rush of the late 1990s, and a good share of Madagascar's rough gems are cut and sold in Beruwala and Ratnapura. Malagasy traders, students and a small but growing number of tourists make the journey in the other direction.
All of them need an Electronic Travel Authorisation first. French-speaking travellers generally search for a visa for Sri Lanka, and the ETA is the document that answers that search: an approval obtained online before departure and held against your passport number.
Travel from Madagascar to Sri Lanka is neither quick nor cheap, with at least one long connection, so an error in the paperwork is costly. The sections below cover who needs which type of ETA, how Malagasy names should be entered, and how to time the application around a difficult routing.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes. Every Malagasy citizen needs an ETA approved in advance for a short visit, and Madagascar has no special arrangement with Sri Lanka. The airline will look for the authorisation at Ivato before issuing a boarding pass for the first leg.
For a holiday, a visit to friends, a stay at an Ayurveda centre or a sporting event, the tourist ETA is the right choice. It suits Malagasy travellers curious about another large Indian Ocean island with its own rice terraces, highland railways and Buddhist heritage.
Gem trading is not tourism. Anyone travelling from Madagascar to show stones, meet cutters, negotiate with buyers in Beruwala or attend a gem fair in Colombo is doing business and must select the business option. The same applies to conferences and to training courses of under a month. Taking a job, paid or not, is excluded altogether, and journalism or NGO work needs clearance from the Sri Lankan authorities before travel.
A child from Madagascar is entered in the application like any adult, using the child's own passport. For under-12s making a tourist stay of up to 30 days, Sri Lanka does not collect its government charge, though the listing itself remains compulsory.
Stay & validity
On a tourist ETA a Malagasy visitor may stay 30 days and enter twice. The period is fixed by the first arrival, and a second entry receives only the unused days. Given the distance involved, most travellers from Madagascar make a single entry, but the second can be handy for a side trip to southern India.
From the date of approval there is a six-month window in which to arrive for the first time, and your approval notice carries the conditions that bind you. A Malagasy passport must be valid for six months counted from the arrival date. Because the authorisation follows the passport number, renewing your passport in Antananarivo after approval makes a fresh application necessary.
Staying longer than 30 days is possible only with an extension granted by the Department of Immigration and Emigration, whose head office is in Battaramulla near Colombo. The request has to be made before the permitted stay expires.
Pricing
Live fees for Malagasy 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 Madagascar
Requirements
Everything Malagasy 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.
Approvals for Malagasy applicants mostly arrive within one or two days. Each form is checked against the passport image before submission, and with names that can run past twenty letters, that check earns its keep. A decision time is never guaranteed.
Apply a minimum of three to five days before you leave, and preferably before you pay for flights that are hard to change. Sri Lanka is two and a half hours ahead of Madagascar, so an application sent at the end of the afternoon in Antananarivo reaches Colombo after offices have closed.
Add a margin around 26 June, when Independence Day celebrations slow everything in Madagascar including banks, and during the cyclone months early in the year, when power and internet cuts can interrupt an online form. If a relative abroad is paying by card on your behalf, agree a time when both of you are available.
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 is no direct service between Madagascar and Sri Lanka, and the choice of one-stop routes from Antananarivo is narrow. Emirates links the Malagasy capital with Dubai by way of Mahé, where the aircraft pauses without a change of plane, and Colombo is a short onward flight from Dubai. Turkish Airlines offers a longer path through Istanbul. Otherwise travellers piece together two connections, for example Addis Ababa and then a Gulf hub or Mumbai. From Nosy Be, Toamasina or Toliara, a domestic flight to Ivato comes first.
Best time to go
Madagascar lies south of the equator, so its cool, dry winter runs from about June to September, the reverse of Europe's. That is also when Malagasy schools usually take their long break. In Sri Lanka those months belong to the east coast: Trincomalee, Pasikudah and the surf point at Arugam Bay are dry while Colombo and the south-west get the monsoon.
The Malagasy rainy season, with cyclones most likely from January to March, matches the best weather on Sri Lanka's west and south coasts and in the tea hills. Travellers who can get away then will find Mirissa's whale-watching boats running and the highland trains between Kandy and Ella at their most scenic.
For people in the gem trade, seasons matter less than the market calendar, and Beruwala's street market operates through most of the year. It does go quiet for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year in mid-April and around the end of Ramadan, since many of the dealers there are Muslim.
Visitors interested in culture could aim for Vesak at the May full moon, when Colombo is lit with lanterns, or the Kandy Esala Perahera in July or August.
Avoid these
Problems are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the ones that come up most often on applications from Madagascar — worth a minute now rather than a new application later.
Surnames of fifteen or twenty letters are normal in Madagascar, and applicants used to abbreviating them on everyday forms do the same here. An ETA issued to Rakoto when the passport says Rakotondrabe will not be recognised. Type the full name even if it feels excessive.
Some Malagasy passports carry one name only. Faced with two boxes, applicants sometimes cut that name in half or repeat it. Follow the passport: put the name where the document puts it and tell us if a field has to stay empty, so it can be handled correctly before submission.
A dealer carrying samples and a list of appointments in Ratnapura is not on holiday. Declaring tourism for a trading visit is a breach of the ETA conditions and can lead to refusal at the border. The business option exists for this purpose.
Many cards issued in Madagascar are set up for domestic use and decline foreign internet transactions by default. Ask your bank to activate international online payments before you start, or arrange for a cardholder abroad to pay. A declined payment leaves the application unsubmitted, not pending.
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 does not have an embassy in Antananarivo, and Madagascar is covered by the Sri Lankan High Commission in Seychelles. Malagasy applicants for an ETA have no reason to write to it or travel there, because nothing in the process is done on paper. It is the point of contact only for matters outside the ETA.
FAQs
The questions Malagasy passport holders ask most often about travelling to Sri Lanka.
Yes, Malagasy citizens need an Electronic Travel Authorisation, which is what most people mean by a Sri Lanka visa. It has to be approved before departure. The tourist version allows 30 days and two entries, and Madagascar pays the standard government rate.
You can. The whole application is made online, and that is fortunate, because the nearest Sri Lankan mission responsible for Madagascar is in Seychelles. You need your passport, an email address and a card that works for international payments.
Enter the name as the passport presents it and do not split or duplicate it to fill both boxes. Let us know when you apply, and we will set the fields so that the ETA matches the machine-readable lines of your passport. Your airline booking should use the same form.
The business option. Meetings, negotiations and trade in gemstones are business purposes and fall outside a tourist ETA. If you are simply visiting Ratnapura's mines and museums as a sightseer, with nothing to sell or buy commercially, the tourist ETA is appropriate.
It does not. The waiver in force since 25 May 2026 applies to 40 listed nationalities, and Madagascar is not on the list. Children under 12 are the exception, as no government charge is taken for them on a tourist stay. Totals are in the live prices shown on this page.
It affects the charge. France is among the countries covered by the waiver, while Madagascar is not. You may apply with either passport, provided it has six months of validity and is the one you travel on from start to finish.
Plan for 16 to 22 hours in total. The most practical routing is Emirates through Mahé and Dubai, with Turkish Airlines via Istanbul as an alternative.
Thirty days, starting on the day of first arrival, with two entries permitted inside that time. A longer stay needs an extension from the immigration department in Battaramulla, requested before the 30 days end.
Your nationality is already set to Madagascar. 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.
