Maldivians are now required to hold an ETA before flying from Malé or Gan to Colombo. Under the reciprocal arrangement between the two countries, a Maldivian is granted 90 days and Sri Lanka applies no government charge.
90 days
Stay on a tourist ETA
Double
Entries permitted
6 months
Passport validity needed
3 options
Tourist, Business, Transit
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No embassy visit
Important for Maldivian citizens
Maldivian citizens must now hold an approved ETA before travelling to Sri Lanka. The 90-day stay under the reciprocal arrangement continues, and no government charge is applied.
Overview
For Maldivians, Sri Lanka is less a foreign holiday than a second home across a short stretch of sea. Colombo is about ninety minutes from Malé, and people make the trip for hospital appointments, specialist consultations, school and university visits, shopping for a wedding or a new house, or simply a week somewhere with hills and cooler air. Many families have relatives or a flat in Colombo, Dehiwala or Mount Lavinia.
Because the journey has always been so routine, the main change catches people out. Maldivians are now required to hold an Electronic Travel Authorisation before they travel, in the same way as other foreign nationals. Many still call it a visa, and for years no advance paperwork was needed at all, so regular travellers who have flown the route dozens of times are the ones most likely to miss it.
What has not changed is the special treatment. The Maldives and Sri Lanka have a reciprocal arrangement, and under it a Maldivian is granted 90 days where most nationalities receive 30. Sri Lanka also applies no government charge to Maldivian applicants. The ETA is a new step in the process, not a reduction in what Maldivians are entitled to.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes, Maldivians now need one. The reciprocal arrangement decides how long a Maldivian may stay and removes the government charge, but it no longer removes the need for an approved ETA. Staff at Velana International Airport check for it at the counter, so a habit of buying a ticket and turning up is no longer safe.
The Maldives is one of only three countries with a reciprocal arrangement of this kind, alongside Singapore and Seychelles, and it is the only one of the three with a 90-day allowance. This is separate from the 40-country fee waiver introduced in May 2026, which the Maldives is not part of and does not need.
Most reasons Maldivians travel are covered. Medical treatment is an accepted purpose of a tourist ETA, as are family visits, holidays, Ayurveda programmes and sporting events, so a patient and the relatives accompanying them apply on the same basis. Attending a business meeting, a conference or a short training course calls for the business option.
There are limits that matter to Maldivians in particular. An ETA is not permission to work in Sri Lanka, and it is not a basis for living there through repeated or successive visits. Families who intend to settle in Colombo for a child's schooling over several years are in effect residing there, and should raise that with the Department of Immigration and Emigration instead of relying on back-to-back ETAs.
Stay & validity
A Maldivian is granted 90 days, the longest allowance Sri Lanka gives any nationality under the ETA system. The period is counted from the day you first arrive. For a course of medical treatment with follow-up appointments, or a long stay with family over a school break, that covers most needs without any further formality.
The tourist ETA is a double-entry authorisation, and the conditions printed on your approval set out exactly what you have been given. If you fly home to Malé partway through and then return, treat the days as running from your first arrival unless your approval states otherwise. Frequent travellers should read each approval and not assume it matches the last.
An approved ETA may be used for travel within six months of being issued. Sri Lanka also requires six months of validity on your passport on the day of arrival, and Maldivian passports are issued for comparatively short terms, so regular visitors reach that threshold sooner than they expect. A renewed passport has a new number and needs a new ETA.
Maldivians who need more than 90 days, for instance during prolonged treatment, must ask the Department of Immigration and Emigration for an extension at its head office in Battaramulla. Many Maldivians already know the building. The request has to be made before the 90 days end.
Pricing
Live fees for Maldivian 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 Maldives
Requirements
Everything Maldivian 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.
Applications from Maldivians are usually approved within a day or two. The Maldives is half an hour behind Sri Lanka, so both countries keep practically the same working hours, although the Maldivian weekend falls on Friday and Saturday while Sri Lanka's is Saturday and Sunday. No specific turnaround is promised.
Apply three to five days before you fly, even though the flight itself is short and frequent. The difficulty for Maldivians is the urgent trip: a sudden referral to a Colombo hospital leaves little time. If someone in your family has ongoing treatment in Sri Lanka, it makes sense to keep an approved ETA in hand, given that each one stays usable for six months.
Demand climbs around the school holidays, in the days after Ramazan when many families travel for Eid, and in December. Seats between Malé and Colombo sell out on those dates, and applications should go in earlier than usual.
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
The Maldives has the shortest and most frequent air link to Sri Lanka of any country. SriLankan Airlines flies between Malé and Colombo several times a day, the national carrier Maldivian also serves the route, and FitsAir offers a low-cost option. Travellers from Addu and the southern atolls can use the SriLankan service from Gan without passing through Malé.
Best time to go
Weather is rarely the reason a Maldivian chooses a date, since both countries share the same monsoon pattern. Iruvai, the dry north-east season from December to April, is also the best period for Colombo, the south coast and the hills. During hulhangu, from May to October, the south-west of Sri Lanka is as wet as Malé.
What Sri Lanka offers that the atolls cannot is altitude. Kandy, Nuwara Eliya and Ella are cool, green and mountainous, and for Maldivian families they are the real attraction. A few days upcountry after finishing appointments in Colombo is the classic pattern, and the hill country is at its most pleasant between January and April.
School breaks and the weeks following Ramazan are the busiest times. During the fasting month itself Colombo is an easy place for Maldivians, with mosques, halal restaurants and iftar available across the city, though hospital and clinic hours stay the same as usual.
Check the Sri Lankan calendar before fixing medical or official appointments. Monthly Poya full-moon days are public holidays, the Sinhala and Tamil New Year in mid-April closes offices and many clinics for several days, and Vesak in May does the same. An appointment booked on one of those dates is likely to be moved.
Avoid these
Problems are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the ones that come up most often on applications from Maldives — worth a minute now rather than a new application later.
Maldivians who have made the crossing for years without advance paperwork are the travellers most often caught by the new requirement. The ETA is now needed before departure, and discovering this at Velana with a hospital appointment the next morning is an expensive way to learn it.
In the Maldives the national ID number is used for almost everything, and people type it from memory. The ETA is recorded against the passport number only. An approval issued against an ID card number matches nothing the immigration officer can scan.
Mohamed and Mohammed, Hussain and Hussein, Aishath and Aisha are used interchangeably in daily life. The form needs the exact Latin spelling from the passport. A different transliteration from the one in the machine-readable zone creates a mismatch, even though everyone knows who is meant.
Ninety days is generous, and it is tempting to leave briefly and return to begin again. Sri Lanka does not allow living in the country through successive visits on ETAs. Maldivians based in Colombo for schooling or long-term care should regularise their stay through the immigration department.
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 a High Commission in Malé. Maldivians do not need to call there to obtain an ETA, which is applied for and approved online. The High Commission remains useful for questions about long-term residence, study and other arrangements that fall outside a short visit.
FAQs
The questions Maldivian passport holders ask most often about travelling to Sri Lanka.
Maldivians now need an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) for Sri Lanka, which must be approved before travel. Under the reciprocal arrangement between the two countries, a Maldivian is granted 90 days and no government charge is applied. Travelling without the ETA is no longer possible.
Ninety days, counted from the date of first arrival. That is three times the 30 days given to most other nationalities and reflects the reciprocal arrangement. A longer stay requires an extension from the Department of Immigration and Emigration in Battaramulla.
Sri Lanka does not apply a government charge to Maldivian applicants. A service fee for our application assistance does apply, so it would be wrong to describe the whole process as free. The live prices shown on this page set out what you pay.
Yes. Medical treatment, including Ayurveda, is one of the purposes a tourist ETA covers, and this is the most common reason Maldivians apply. Family members accompanying a patient each need their own ETA. Carry the appointment or referral letter with you.
Most approvals come through within a day or two, but nobody can commit to a time. If you or a relative travel regularly for treatment, apply in advance: an approved ETA can be used for six months, so it can be ready before an urgent referral arises.
Always the passport number. The ETA is linked electronically to the passport you travel with, and the national ID card number plays no part. If you renew your passport, the number changes and you need a new ETA.
An ETA is meant for visits, not residence. A short stay during a school break is fine, but living in Sri Lanka term after term on successive ETAs is not what the authorisation permits. Families in that position should speak to the Department of Immigration and Emigration about the right status.
SriLankan Airlines flies between Gan in Addu City and Colombo, so travellers from the southern atolls do not have to route via Malé. The ETA requirement is the same whichever Maldivian airport you leave from.
Your nationality is already set to Maldives. 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.
