Citizens of the Federated States of Micronesia must hold an ETA before travelling to Sri Lanka. It covers 30 days and two entries, and can be arranged online from Pohnpei, Chuuk, Yap, Kosrae or abroad.
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
Overview
The Federated States of Micronesia stretch across nearly three thousand kilometres of the western Pacific, and a citizen of Yap may have less in common with one from Kosrae than either expects to find in Sri Lanka. What draws the few Micronesians who go is contrast: a large, crowded, mountainous island with more than two thousand years of recorded history, Buddhist and Hindu shrines, and trains that climb through tea estates.
Getting in requires an Electronic Travel Authorisation, which you may also see advertised as a Sri Lanka visa or e-visa. Sri Lanka applies it to all foreigners, and holders of the FSM passport apply online before departure like everyone else.
Because the country spans four states, two time zones and a single trunk air route, the practical advice differs depending on whether you start in Pohnpei, Chuuk, Kosrae or Yap. The sections below take those differences into account, along with the position of Micronesians who live in Guam, Hawaii or the mainland United States.
At a glance
Eligibility
Micronesian citizens cannot enter Sri Lanka as tourists without an ETA. The requirement holds for all four states and for every age, and the approval needs to be in place before you check in for the final flight into Colombo.
The FSM is charged at the standard government rate. Forty countries have had that charge waived since May 2026, and the list does not extend to Micronesia. Applicants also pay a service fee for our assistance, with both amounts displayed in the live prices shown on this page.
Tens of thousands of Micronesians live in Guam, Hawaii and elsewhere in the United States under the Compact of Free Association. If that is you, the application is still made as an FSM national, because Sri Lanka looks at the passport and not the home address. Children born in the United States who travel on American passports are a separate case and apply with those documents.
Choose the tourist option for a holiday, a visit to friends, a sports tournament or a spell of Ayurvedic treatment. Teachers, church workers and government staff going to a seminar, a symposium or training lasting under a month fall under the business option. Work for a non-governmental organisation is different again; it needs prior government approval and cannot be arranged through the online ETA.
Stay & validity
A Micronesian visitor's tourist ETA covers 30 days in Sri Lanka, measured from first arrival. Once approved, it can be used for travel during the following six months, which is helpful when the journey has to be pieced together from several separate tickets.
You are allowed to enter twice. Micronesians who include Sri Lanka in a wider tour of South Asia can therefore go to India or the Maldives and come back, with the proviso that the 30 days keep running while you are away and the second stay is limited to what is left.
For more time, the Department of Immigration and Emigration, headquartered at Battaramulla close to Colombo, considers extension requests from visitors already in the country. Apply before your stay runs out and follow the date stamped in your passport on arrival, as that is the one that binds you.
Pricing
Live fees for Micronesian 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 Micronesia
Requirements
Everything Micronesian 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.
For most Micronesian applicants the answer comes within a day or two of submission. That pattern is common but not guaranteed, and requests for a clearer passport image are the usual reason for a slower result.
The baseline is to apply three to five days before you fly. From the FSM, where the island-hopping flight calls only a few times a week and a typhoon warning can cancel it, two to three weeks is a safer habit. Have the approval before leaving Kosrae or Chuuk, not while waiting in Guam.
Time differences vary by state. Yap and Chuuk are four and a half hours ahead of Sri Lanka, Pohnpei and Kosrae five and a half. In either case messages sent from Colombo in office hours reach you in the afternoon or evening, so an end-of-day inbox check is enough while your application is open.
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
All four state airports are served by United, and nearly every international journey from the FSM passes through Guam. Pohnpei, Kosrae and Chuuk are stops on the island-hopping service between Honolulu and Guam, while Yap has its own link to Guam. From Guam the two sensible paths to Colombo are via Tokyo Narita, where SriLankan Airlines operates a nonstop, or via Manila and a South-East Asian hub.
Best time to go
The FSM school year follows the American pattern, so June and July are when families and teachers are free. At that time of year Sri Lanka's east coast is the dry side. Fly into Colombo, cross to Trincomalee or Pasikudah, and leave the south-western beaches for another visit.
December is the other window, and it suits the classic circuit: Colombo, Kandy, the tea country, then the southern coast from Galle round to Mirissa, all at their best until March or April. Typhoons can disrupt western Pacific flying late in the year, so allow a spare day at the start for a delayed departure from Yap or Chuuk.
People from Pohnpei, one of the rainiest inhabited islands in the Pacific, will find even monsoon-season Sri Lanka manageable. What is new is cool air. At Nuwara Eliya the nights are chilly enough for a jacket, something few Micronesians pack for a tropical holiday.
Sri Lanka's festival calendar is worth a look before fixing dates. The Sinhala and Tamil New Year arrives in mid-April, Vesak lights up towns at the May full moon, and each monthly Poya is a public holiday without alcohol sales. Constitution Day on 10 May can be stretched into a trip that catches Vesak.
Avoid these
Problems are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the ones that come up most often on applications from Micronesia — worth a minute now rather than a new application later.
Years of living, studying or serving in uniform in the United States lead some Micronesians to tick the American box. If the passport in your hand says Federated States of Micronesia, that is your nationality for this application, and the standard charge applies.
Single names are normal in parts of Yap State. Applicants sometimes repeat the name or insert a father's name because a form seems to demand two parts. Enter what the passport carries and let us know it is a single name, so the record matches the machine-readable lines.
Guam is where the journey stops feeling remote, so it is tempting to do the paperwork there. By then you are committed to onward tickets. An approval that is still pending when the Tokyo or Manila flight closes cannot be hurried.
Micronesian households abroad often hold a mixture of FSM and US passports, with children on one and parents on the other. Each traveller's entry must use that traveller's own document and nationality. Check every line of a family application individually before paying, because a paid entry cannot be corrected.
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 Palikir or anywhere else in the FSM. Tokyo and Manila host the resident Sri Lankan embassies closest to the routes Micronesians use, but a tourist ETA never requires contact with them. Everything is done online, and the approval reaches you by email.
FAQs
The questions Micronesian passport holders ask most often about travelling to Sri Lanka.
Yes. Citizens of the Federated States of Micronesia need an Electronic Travel Authorisation, commonly called a Sri Lanka visa, before they travel. It is issued online, allows a tourist to stay 30 days and can be used for two entries within that time.
No. The government charge is waived for forty specified countries and the FSM is not included, so the standard rate applies in addition to our service fee. For children under 12 the government fee is not charged on a tourist visit of up to 30 days.
Apply with your FSM passport and give the Federated States of Micronesia as your nationality. Living in Hawaii under the Compact does not alter that. Your routing will be easier than from the islands, with connections from Honolulu through Tokyo to Colombo.
United to Guam, Guam to Tokyo Narita, and the SriLankan Airlines nonstop from Narita to Colombo. An alternative runs from Guam through Manila and Singapore. Both involve at least two connections and generally take more than a day door to door.
Thirty days from the date of first entry on a tourist ETA. The same authorisation lets you re-enter once during those 30 days. A longer visit needs an extension granted by the Department of Immigration and Emigration before the initial period expires.
The passport spelling, always. Sri Lanka matches the authorisation to the travel document, and other papers are not consulted. If the passport spelling is one you no longer use, it still has to be the one entered, because any difference can stop you at check-in.
If the group is sightseeing or visiting friends, yes. If it is attending a religious event or symposium, the business option is the appropriate one for each member. Decide according to what the group will actually be doing, and apply the same way for everyone to avoid inconsistent answers at the border.
Each child must be included with their own passport details, whether that passport is from the FSM or the United States. A child under 12 is not charged the government fee for a tourist stay of up to 30 days. US-passport children fall under the American waiver in any case.
Your nationality is already set to Micronesia. 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.
