Pakistan visas and entry

Almost everyone reading this needs a visa, and almost everyone gets it online without letting go of their passport. Find your passport in the table below.

Don't plan around visa on arrival. Both arrival schemes stopped on 1 January 2026, the free pre-arrival visa for 126 nationalities among them.

Who the online scheme covers

Nearly everyone, which makes the short list the useful one. Nationals of roughly 191 countries can apply through the Pakistan Online Visa System; India, Armenia and Taiwan can't. The covered group takes in the whole EU and EEA, the UK, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, China, Turkey, the Gulf states and most of Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia. Pick your nationality on the portal's first screen and it tells you where you stand: visa.nadra.gov.pk.

You're expected to apply from the country that issued your passport, so if you live elsewhere, ask the mission covering your residence first. Business and work categories also want an invitation endorsed from the Pakistani side. Tourists don't. Trekkers: read tours and treks first.

Applying online, step by step

1. Open an account with an email address you'll keep watching. The portal wants two-factor authentication, so put an authenticator app on your phone.
2. Set nationality, residence and mission. The mission covering where you live handles your file. Pick the wrong one and it lands on the wrong desk.
3. Choose the category. Tourist covers ordinary travel, and switching later means starting the application again.
4. Fill in the form: travel dates, address in Pakistan, employment details. Your name has to match the passport exactly, middle names and all.
5. Upload the passport bio page, scanned flat and legible, corners included.
6. Upload the photograph. Up to 200 KB, white background, full face, no hat, no sunglasses. There's a photograph guide under the portal's help tab.
7. Upload proof of where you're staying: a confirmed hotel booking in your name covering your arrival date, or a signed invitation from a host in Pakistan with their address and a copy of their identity card.
8. Pay by card, then answer any follow-up fast. Los Angeles asks some applicants for an employment letter, bank statements and proof of residence.

Back comes an electronic visa grant notice by email. Print it and carry the paper. Your passport never leaves you, and the missions are firm: don't book flights until that notice lands.

Three things bounce applications. Passport validity: the UK wants six months beyond your application date, Canada six months beyond departure, so satisfy the stricter. Silence: Washington cancels after seven days. And a scan off spec.

How long it takes, and what it costs

Allow a month between applying and flying. The missions publish seven to ten working days for a first-time entry, and since January files have run longer, out to roughly twenty business days at the slow end. It varies because your application sits in one mission's queue and their volume isn't yours to control.

Fees are set per nationality and per category, and a few nationalities pay nothing for most categories. The portal quotes your figure before you pay, so check it there. Anything published elsewhere is a guess about another passport.

Extensions and overstaying

Extensions happen inside Pakistan, at the immigration directorate, not at the mission that issued the visa. A tourist visa can be extended by up to three months, taking you to six in total. Past a year, it's the Ministry of Interior.

Overstaying is charged on a published scale: nothing for the first fortnight, then it steps up by band and climbs steeply past three months. Canada puts it harder than the fee table does, with legal action or a ban on returning.

Restricted areas and No Objection Certificates

In March 2019 the Interior Ministry abolished the No Objection Certificate for foreigners, and Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Chitral were declared non-restricted. Narrow strips stayed closed: ten miles from the Chinese and Afghan borders, five miles from the Line of Control, ten along the Siachen line. Hunza, Skardu and Gilgit sit well clear.

Gilgit-Baltistan's tourist services directorate still tells foreign visitors to register locally on arrival. It routes trekking permits through its own office, mountaineering through the Alpine Club of Pakistan and restricted-area access through the Interior Ministry. Practice in Chitral and on the Karakoram Highway shifts with security posture, so ask a licensed operator close to the day.

The first hour on the ground

Immigration at Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi is unremarkable and usually quick. Do one thing without fail: get the passport physically stamped. The UK puts it flatly, that leaving Pakistan will be difficult without an entry stamp.

Customs runs a mandatory declaration covering currency above a published threshold, jewellery, precious stones and restricted goods, and the revenue board runs an online module you can fill in instead of queueing. Check the threshold on its own travel guide, not on a forum. Alcohol and pork can't be brought in.

One exit rule catches people. Canada says a stay over four weeks needs proof of polio vaccination on departure, obtained in the previous twelve months; the UK frames it as something to show if a vaccination team asks. Staying a month? Get the certificate.

Before you book anything you can't cancel

The portal is the authority on your visa, and your own foreign ministry on everything around it. See is Pakistan safe for how the advisories bite. This page carries a date at the top.