Last updated: August 2026. The evisa.iq fee tiers, the KRG’s own published nationality lists, the MEA’s emigration-clearance guidance and the Indian mission contacts were all re-checked on 8 August 2026.
Almost every English-language page about the Iraq visa for Indian citizens is really a page about somebody else’s passport, lightly edited. It opens with the end of visa on arrival. That story does not apply to India. When Iraq handed visa on arrival to 37 nationalities in March 2021, Indians were not among them, and when Iraq took it away again on 1 March 2025, Indians lost nothing, because they had never had it. The general process behind these nationality-specific steps is covered in our Iraq visa guide.
So here is the direct answer. An Iraq visa for Indian citizens is compulsory for every purpose of travel, has always been compulsory, and is now obtained either through the government e-visa portal at evisa.iq or in person at the Iraqi Embassy in New Delhi. The e-visa route costs roughly ₹14,400 to ₹19,700 depending on which tier you buy. The embassy route is far cheaper in fee terms but demands an application form typed in Arabic and a trip to Vasant Vihar. Neither route needs a guarantor for straightforward tourism or pilgrimage. Business and employment do.
What has genuinely changed for Indians since March 2025 is not the requirement but the mechanism. Before the e-visa existed, an Indian passport holder had exactly one path: the embassy, in Arabic, in Delhi, usually via an agent, often on the strength of an invitation from someone in Iraq. The e-visa opened a second path that can be walked from a laptop in Kochi or Lucknow. That is a real improvement, and it is also the source of most of the confusion now circulating, because agents who built their business on the old route still quote old prices.
This guide takes the questions in the order they actually arrive: whether you need a guarantor and what one costs, the fees in rupees with the government portion separated from the agency portion, the Kurdistan question, which is unresolved and which we are not going to pretend otherwise about, and then the part no travel blog gets right — what your passport’s ECR or ECNR endorsement does to your trip, and why a ziyarat traveller and a construction worker on the same flight face completely different rules at the Indian end.
The short answer
| Question | Answer for an Indian passport holder, August 2026 |
|---|---|
| Do I need a visa? | Yes, for every purpose. India has no visa-free or visa-on-arrival arrangement with Iraq and never has. |
| Where do I apply? | evisa.iq (submissions at eservice.evisa.iq), or the Embassy of Iraq, A-15/14 Vasant Vihar, New Delhi. |
| Government fee | 151,000 IQD (about US$114 / ₹10,900) for the 30-day visit visa; 206,000 IQD (about US$160 / ₹15,300) for the 60-day ordinary visa. Health insurance is bundled in. |
| Do I need a guarantor? | Not for tourism or pilgrimage. Yes for business and employment, where an Iraqi sponsor must obtain ministry pre-approval first. |
| How long does it take? | Official processing is 24 hours to five working days. Plan on one to two weeks, and six to eight around the pilgrimage seasons. |
| Does it cover the Kurdistan Region? | A federal e-visa is valid across all of Iraq. Whether Indian passport holders are admitted at Erbil in practice is disputed — see below before you book. |
| Does my passport type matter? | Yes. ECR versus ECNR decides whether you need emigration clearance for a work deployment. It does not affect a tourist or ziyarat trip. |
| What does the Indian government say? | Travel is permitted except to five named provinces. Register with the Embassy in Baghdad or the Consulate in Erbil before you go. |
Why 1 March 2025 meant something different for Indians
Between 15 March 2021 and 28 February 2025, citizens of 37 countries could land at Baghdad, Basra or Najaf and buy a visa at the counter. The list was the usual one: all EU member states, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, China, Russia, Switzerland and most Gulf states. India was not on it. Neither was Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal or Sri Lanka. For four years, roughly a fifth of humanity watched a facility that was never offered to them get discussed as though it were universal.
On 1 March 2025 Iraq suspended it and made the e-visa compulsory for those 37 nationalities. For an American or a Briton that was a downgrade — a thing they used to be able to do at the airport now had to be done in advance, and our guides to what American passport holders now face and the British equivalent deal with that loss. For an Indian it was the opposite. The same reform that closed the airport counter opened an online portal that accepts Indian applications. Net effect: better than before.
This matters practically, because it tells you which pages to trust. If an article about an Iraq visa for Indian citizens leads with “visa on arrival has been suspended”, the writer has taken a generic Iraq page and swapped the nationality. The suspension is real, it is covered in detail in our piece on who still qualifies for visa on arrival, and it is irrelevant to your application.
What the old route actually looked like
It is worth knowing, because plenty of Indian agents still sell it. The Embassy of Iraq in New Delhi is the only Iraqi mission in India, so an applicant in Chennai or Kochi had to travel to Delhi or pay someone in Delhi to go. The form must be typed in Arabic — not handwritten, not in English — which is a Consular Department requirement and the commonest reason Indian applications are handed back at the counter. Submission and collection run 9am to 3pm, Monday to Thursday.
The fees on that route are genuinely low — around US$30 for a group tourist visa, US$40 for an individual regular visa, US$100 for multiple entry, plus roughly ₹1,770 in service charges. That is where the ₹5,000-ish figures on Indian agent websites come from. They are not fictional. They are the embassy fee, quoted without mentioning that the embassy route also requires the Arabic form, seven to fifteen working days, and a physical passport lodged in Delhi.
Do Indians need a guarantor for the Iraq e-visa?
For a straightforward tourist or pilgrimage application, no. India is accepted on the federal e-visa platform, you select India as your nationality, and there is no requirement to have an Iraqi person or company vouch for you. What the portal does want is proof that you have somewhere to stay: a confirmed hotel booking with a reference number, or a notarised invitation letter from an Iraqi host showing their full address and contact details. Some agencies describe the hotel as your “guarantor” for the first night. That is loose language for a document requirement, not a legal sponsorship.
Where a real guarantor appears is business and employment. An Iraqi business visa requires a sponsor — a registered Iraqi company, a government body or a business entity — and that sponsor must obtain pre-approval from both the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before you can lodge anything. Budget 15 to 20 working days for the sponsor’s approval and another six or seven for the visa itself, so five to eight weeks end to end. Employment goes further still: an Iraqi employer, Ministry of Labour approval, and a work permit issued before you start work under Chapter V of Iraqi Labour Law No. 37 of 2015.
The sponsored-visa detour of spring 2026
One more thing belongs here because it explains some strange quotes still circulating. In April 2026 Iraq paused e-visa approvals for several weeks. The trigger, according to a named Iraqi security officer speaking in May, was the abduction of an American journalist in Baghdad on 31 March and her release on 7 April. Shafaq reported the freeze on 20 April; an Interior Ministry spokesman denied a suspension the following day. During those weeks handling agencies quietly moved applicants onto a sponsored visa product costing around US$250. The portal was working normally when we checked it on 8 August 2026, and resumption notices had appeared from late June, but a handful of commercial sites still run a banner claiming the e-visa is suspended for all nationalities. It is not, and that banner is a sales tactic.
Two eligibility exclusions are worth stating plainly because they catch people out. Journalists and NGO workers cannot use the e-visa at all and must apply through an Iraqi embassy or consulate — that includes an Indian correspondent on assignment and an Indian aid worker on a short mission. And Israeli nationals are barred from entering or transiting Iraq, including without leaving the aircraft. Our step-by-step walkthrough of the e-visa application itself covers the form field by field.
What an Iraq visa for Indian citizens actually costs
This is where nearly every Indian page goes wrong, in a specific and expensive way: it quotes one number. There are at least four numbers, they are charged by different bodies for different products, and an agency invoice will often merge them.
The government fee is set in Iraqi dinars, converted to dollars at the point of payment, and only then does it become a rupee figure. There are two tiers, and the difference between them is not what most people assume.
| What you are paying for | Set in | US$ | Approx. ₹ at ₹95.35/US$ | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Government “visit” e-visa | 151,000 IQD | ~114 | ~10,900 | 30-day stay, travel within 90 days of issue, health insurance bundled |
| Government “ordinary” e-visa | 206,000 IQD | ~160 | ~15,300 | 60-day stay, travel within 60 days of issue, health insurance bundled |
| Agency handling on top of either | Quoted in ₹ or US$ | 0-90 | ~2,000-8,500 | Form-filling, document checks, follow-up. Not a government charge. |
| Embassy visa, New Delhi (individual) | US$40 + ₹1,770 | ~40 | ~5,600 total | Arabic form, in person, 7-15 working days, no insurance included |
| Embassy group tourist visa | US$30 + ₹1,770 | ~30 | ~4,600 total | Arranged through an authorised Iraqi tourism company only |
| Embassy multiple entry | US$100 + ₹1,770 | ~100 | ~11,300 total | Business use in practice; sponsor approval still required |
| Sponsored visa (agency product) | Quoted in US$ | ~250 | ~23,800 | Sold during the spring 2026 freeze; ask why it is being offered |
Rupee conversions above use the 8 August 2026 rate of about ₹95.35 to the dollar and will drift. Two things follow from the table. First, the counter-intuitive one: the cheaper visit visa gives you a longer window to travel but a shorter stay. Ninety days to use it, thirty days on the ground. The dearer ordinary visa flips that — sixty days to use it, sixty days on the ground. If your ziyarat is three weeks and you are booking four months out, the cheap tier is also the flexible one.
Second, when an Indian agent quotes you ₹6,000 to ₹8,000 for an Iraq tourist visa, they are quoting the embassy fee, not the e-visa fee. Both are real prices for real products. They are not the same product. Ask the agency to itemise the invoice into government fee and handling fee, and ask which route they are actually filing on. If the answer is vague, that is your answer.
The health insurance you are now buying whether you want it or not
On 30 September 2025 Iraq’s Council of Ministers approved a change announced the next day: the federal e-visa platform now issues the entry visa together with a mandatory health insurance certificate, and the money collected flows to Iraq’s Health Insurance Authority. No ministry or KRG representation may issue an entry visa without it. This is why the e-visa costs so much more than the old embassy fee, and it is why the embassy route still requires you to arrange cover separately.
Do not mistake that certificate for travel insurance. It is an Iraqi domestic health cover attached to your visa. It will not repatriate you, it will not cover a cancelled flight, and it is not what a hospital in Kerala will bill against if something goes wrong after you get home. Our guide to travel insurance for Iraq explains what an ordinary policy will and will not do for a country in this advisory band.
The Kurdistan question, which is genuinely unresolved
We are going to lay this out as two conflicting positions rather than pick one, because getting it wrong strands people at an airport 4,000 kilometres from home.
Position one, from the KRG itself. The Kurdistan Regional Government’s Representation in the United States publishes the region’s nationality lists. Country List A gets an e-visa online or on arrival. Country List B must apply through a KRG representation with a registered guarantor. And then there is a third category, stated in the KRG’s own words: “If your country is not listed in either of those lists (A or B), including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Uganda, or Yemen, KRG is unable to issue a visa at this time.” That page was last modified in September 2025 and was still live on 8 August 2026. There is one stated exception: if you work for an international institution or NGO and need to visit for work, the representation asks you to write to its consular address with proof of affiliation.
Position two, from the federal system. The federal e-visa is valid across the whole territory of Iraq, and that includes the Kurdistan Region. This is the asymmetry that catches everybody: a federal visa works everywhere, a Kurdistan-only visa does not work in federal Iraq. The KRG’s own FAQ is blunt about the second half — try to travel south on a Kurdistan visa and “you could find yourself deported back to your home country, or at worst face criminal charges”. Several operators and Wikipedia’s nationality table simply do not list India as excluded, and at least one tour operator page states that Indians holding a federal e-visa can fly into Erbil without buying anything extra.
And a third voice, from Delhi. India’s own Ministry of External Affairs advisory says Indian nationals may travel, study and conduct business in all 14 Iraqi provinces outside the five named ones, “including those in Iraqi Kurdistan (capital Erbil)”. India maintains a Consulate General in Erbil. India’s position is plainly that Indians can go there.
So: the federal rule says the visa covers the territory, the Indian government says go, and the Kurdistan authority that runs the immigration desk at Erbil airport says it cannot issue Indians a visa. Those can all be true at once if the federal visa is honoured at KRI entry points, and all three can still leave you refused if the officer applies the KRG list. We could not find a 2026 traveller report either way for an Indian passport specifically.
What to do about it. If Erbil, Sulaymaniyah or Duhok are on your itinerary, email the KRG representation in your region before you book a flight, and ask them in writing whether an Indian passport holding a valid federal Iraqi e-visa will be admitted at a KRI entry point. Keep the reply. If you cannot get one, route through Baghdad or Najaf, where your federal e-visa is unambiguous, and treat any northern leg as provisional. Our guide to how the Kurdistan visa regime differs explains the mechanics of the KRI system, and the wider picture of travel in the Kurdistan Region is worth reading before you commit, alongside the current thinking on how safe the region actually is after the drone attacks of July 2026.
ECR, ECNR and eMigrate: the trap at the Indian end
Everything above is about getting into Iraq. This section is about getting out of India, and it is the part that actually stops people boarding. It is also almost completely absent from travel blogs, which treat the visa as the whole problem.
Under the Emigration Act 1983, Indian passports carry one of two endorsements. ECR — Emigration Check Required — means you must obtain clearance from a Protector of Emigrants before travelling to certain countries for employment. ECNR, or non-ECR, means you do not. Eighteen countries are notified as ECR destinations, and Iraq is on the list, at number four, sitting alongside Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Indonesia, Afghanistan and Yemen.
Two conditions have to be met together before emigration clearance bites: an ECR passport and travel for employment to an ECR country. Miss either and the requirement does not apply to you.
| Who you are | Purpose of trip | Emigration clearance needed? | eMigrate registration? |
|---|---|---|---|
| ECNR passport holder | Tourism, ziyarat, business, work | No, in every case | Employer/agent registers you if travelling for employment |
| ECR passport holder | Tourism or family visit | No | No |
| ECR passport holder | Declared ziyarat to Iraq | No — explicitly exempt | No |
| ECR passport holder | Employment in Iraq | Yes, and Iraq’s status is contested — see below | Yes, before departure |
| Woman under 30, ECR passport | Any employment abroad | Clearance is not granted at all | Not applicable |
| Any Indian national | Employment in any of the 18 ECR countries | Depends on endorsement | Yes, at least 24 hours before departure |
The pilgrim exemption almost nobody mentions
Buried in the MEA’s own emigration guidance is a line that matters enormously to this readership. Emigration clearance is not required for “the pilgrims going for Haj and Umrah to Saudi Arabia and those pilgrims travelling with the declared purpose of performing Ziarat to Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Yemen.”
Read that carefully. An ECR passport holder travelling to Najaf and Karbala for ziyarat, with that declared as the purpose, does not need emigration clearance — even though Iraq is an ECR country. If a recruiting agent or a “visa consultant” tells a pilgrim that they must buy emigration clearance or a POE service for a ziyarat trip, they are selling something the rules do not require. Ask them to show you the provision.
How to check which endorsement you have, and how to change it
Look at the second-last page of your passport. If there is a stamp reading “EMIGRATION CHECK REQUIRED”, you are ECR. If the page is blank, or says ECNR, you are not. Newer booklets print the status on the data page.
The thirteen exemption categories that entitle you to ECNR are broad, and most educated or salaried travellers already qualify without knowing it: anyone who has passed class 10 or higher, all income-tax payers in their individual capacity, professional degree holders, gazetted government servants, diplomatic and official passport holders, nurses registered under the Indian Nursing Council Act, holders of two- or three-year recognised diplomas, seafarers with a CDC, permanent residents of the UK, US or Australia, spouses and dependent children of several of those categories, anyone over 50, anyone who has lived abroad for more than three years, and children under 18. If you qualify, apply to a Regional Passport Office for the endorsement to be changed. It is a straightforward reissue, not a fight.
Is emigration to Iraq banned or not? An honest answer
This one deserves care, because the published sources contradict each other and people’s livelihoods depend on it.
India banned emigration clearance to Iraq entirely on 15 April 2004 on security grounds, and from 9 August 2005 the Protectors of Emigrants stamped “NOT VALID FOR TRAVEL TO IRAQ” into passports issued clearance for Gulf destinations. The ban was lifted in May 2010 and Indian worker numbers in the Kurdistan Region rose sharply. It was re-imposed in June 2014 after ISIS took Mosul and 39 Indian workers were abducted there; their remains came home in April 2018. The travel advisory was revised in February 2019 and again in February 2020 to permit travel outside five provinces.
Here is the unresolved part. The MEA’s published emigration guidance still lists Iraq as “presently suspended” among the ECR countries and still contains the line “No clearance is given for Iraq because the Government has temporarily banned emigration to Iraq.” At the same time, the 2020 advisory tells Indians travelling for employment to “come through e-migrate portal only”, the Embassy in Baghdad maintains an active eMigrate page, and there are thousands of Indian workers legally employed on Iraqi projects — more than 5,000 on the Karbala refinery alone by the embassy’s own reckoning, plus several hundred nurses recruited by Iraq’s health ministry.
The most likely reconciliation is that the blanket suspension has been superseded in practice by a case-by-case system running through eMigrate and the mission in Baghdad, but the older guidance document has never been rewritten. We could not find a notification formally rescinding it. If you hold an ECR passport and are being recruited for work in Iraq, do not take an agent’s word for the position. Ring the nearest Protector of Emigrants office — there are ten, at Chandigarh, Cochin, Chennai, Delhi, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kolkata, Raebareli and Trivandrum — and ask them directly whether clearance is being granted for Iraq for your trade. Get the answer before you pay anyone a rupee.
One further change is coming. The Overseas Mobility (Facilitation and Welfare) Bill, 2025 is intended to replace the Emigration Act 1983 wholesale, with an emigrant worker registry, mandatory ₹10 lakh insurance for ECR-category workers and penalties up to ₹2 crore for unlicensed intermediaries. The draft was out for public comment until 30 November 2025 and remains contested. Until it is in force, the 1983 framework described above is what applies.
What the Indian government says about going at all
Nothing about an Iraq visa for Indian citizens depends on India’s own advisory, but the advisory is markedly more permissive than the British or American ones, and Indian travellers should understand why before they compare notes with a European on the same tour.
| Government | Position on Iraq, August 2026 | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| India (MEA) | Travel permitted except Nineveh, Salahuddin, Diyala, Anbar and Kirkuk. Register with the mission before travelling. | No obstacle to a Baghdad-Najaf-Karbala trip. Mosul and Tikrit are out. |
| UK (FCDO) | Regionalised since 22 July 2026. “All travel” against Ninawa, Kirkuk, Salah al-Din, most of Diyala and parts of Anbar; “all but essential” almost everywhere else, including Baghdad, Karbala, Najaf and Kurdistan. | Broadly the same five provinces, with more granularity and a harder tone. |
| United States | Level 4, Do Not Travel, reissued 2 March 2026. Non-emergency US government staff ordered to leave. | Not binding on you, but it drives what most international insurers will underwrite. |
The overlap between the Indian and British lists is striking: both single out essentially the same northern and western belt. The difference is tone and consequence. A British traveller who goes against FCDO advice voids a standard policy. An Indian traveller faces no such automatic penalty, but also gets less consular protection than the volume of Indian nationals in Iraq might suggest. We compare the wording of all the major advisories in our piece on what the travel advisories actually say, and the broader question of how safe Iraq is right now is worth reading alongside it.
One honest note. The Embassy of India in Baghdad maintains an “Advisory” page on its website. On 8 August 2026 that page read “Data is coming soon…”, on a site whose footer said it was last updated on 5 August 2026. The operative advisory is the MEA’s, not the mission’s, and you should not assume a blank embassy page means there is nothing to know.
The Indian Embassy in Baghdad and the Consulate in Erbil
India has two posts in Iraq, and the MEA advisory asks you to inform one of them before you travel. Do it. It takes five minutes and it is the difference between being a name on a list and being a stranger if something happens.
| Post | Where | Contact |
|---|---|---|
| Embassy of India, Baghdad | House No. 22, Street No. 16, District No. 609, Al Mansour | Online registration at eoibaghdad.gov.in; after-hours distress and lost-passport line +964 7716 511185 |
| Consulate General of India, Erbil | 1010 Dream City, Erbil | [email protected]; open Sunday to Thursday, 09:00-17:30 |
| Indian visa and passport services in Iraq | Outsourced | VFS, +964 662 407677 |
| Consular grievances | Anywhere | MADAD portal, run by the MEA |
The Consulate in Erbil opened in August 2016, largely because so many Indian workers were in the Kurdistan Region. That is worth holding in mind next to the KRG’s published nationality list: India considers Erbil important enough to staff a consulate there.
If you are travelling for ziyarat
Around 100,000 Indians visit Baghdad, Karbala, Najaf and Samarra for pilgrimage each year, according to the Indian mission’s own figures. That dwarfs Indian leisure travel to Iraq by a factor most tourism pages would find embarrassing. A few things follow.
Declare pilgrimage as your purpose, on both sides. On the Iraqi form, religious visits sit inside the tourist or visit category, so there is no separate pilgrimage e-visa to hunt for. On the Indian side, as above, a declared ziyarat purpose is what triggers the emigration-clearance exemption for ECR passport holders.
Consider the group route if you are travelling with a jamaat. The Iraqi Embassy in New Delhi issues a group tourist visa at around US$30 a head, but it must be arranged through an authorised Iraqi tourism company, not by the group itself. For a party of thirty that is a substantial saving against thirty individual e-visas — the sort of arithmetic that decides whether an older relative comes along. Operators who handle this properly are a small set; our overview of how organised tours to Iraq work covers what to check before you hand over deposits.
Time it around Arbaeen, deliberately. Arbaeen 2026 fell on 5 August, and more than 22 million people entered Karbala, roughly five million of them from outside Iraq. Processing times for Iraqi visas lengthen considerably in the run-up; agencies advise applying six to eight weeks ahead for pilgrimage travel rather than the usual one to two. If you are planning for Arbaeen 2027, start the visa in spring. If you would rather see the shrines without the crowds, almost any other month is calmer, and our notes on when to visit Iraq set out how the religious calendar reshapes the whole country. The wider practicalities of shrine travel are in our guide to pilgrimage in Iraq.
Budget for the ground, not just the visa. Najaf has direct flights from Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad, which is why many Indian groups fly there rather than Baghdad. Karbala is around 80 kilometres from Najaf by road. Between the two you will pass checkpoints, and the way those work is worth knowing in advance — see our piece on what happens at Iraqi checkpoints. Rough costs for food, transport and hotels are in our breakdown of what a trip to Iraq costs.
If you are going for work
A work deployment is a different animal from a tourist trip, and the differences are not obvious from the outside. Five of them matter.
The visa is not an e-visa. Employment visas go through the Iraqi Embassy in New Delhi on the strength of employer sponsorship and Ministry of Labour approval — four to eight weeks for the ministry, then processing on top.
You will be blood-tested after arrival. Anyone in Iraq on anything other than a visit visa must take an HIV and hepatitis test within ten days of arrival and every 90 days after. That is in the published entry requirements, and the cheap 30-day visit visa is the only tier without the obligation.
Check the recruiting agent’s registration. Only agents holding a certificate from the Protector General of Emigrants may lawfully recruit for overseas work. Ask for the certificate number and verify it at emigrate.gov.in or a POE office. Unregistered recruitment is a cognizable offence, and the people harmed are almost always the workers.
Get the paperwork before you leave India. Demand letter, power of attorney from the Iraqi employer, and an employment contract you have read and signed here. For unskilled workers and for women, the contract must be attested by the Indian Mission. Do not sign a blank sheet on arrival, and do not hand your passport to an employer.
Know where the site is. If the job sits in Nineveh, Salahuddin, Diyala, Anbar or Kirkuk, it is inside the five provinces the MEA advises against and inside both the Indian and British hardest bands. That is not a technicality — it is the same geography in which 39 Indian workers were killed in 2014. Our page on Mosul and what has and has not reopened shows the current state of the north.
Documents, briefly
The document list for an Iraq visa for Indian citizens is short and unsurprising: a passport valid at least six months beyond entry with one or two blank pages, a clear scan of the bio page with all four corners visible, a digital photograph on a white or light grey background, a hotel booking with a reference number or a notarised invitation letter, a return or onward ticket, three months of bank statements, and a card enabled for international online payment. Indian agents usually quote 35 × 45 mm for the photo with the face filling 70-80% of the frame; the embassy separately asks for two 51 × 51 mm prints.
Applications go through eservice.evisa.iq, which runs in Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Kurdish and Chinese. Commercial lookalike domains exist purely to intercept searches for the official site and add a markup; if the URL is not evisa.iq, you are not on the government portal. Print the approved visa in colour and carry it with the passport — check-in staff in India will ask for it, and our rundown of Iraq’s entry requirements covers what else the desk wants.
One conflict to plan around: evisa.iq’s own front page describes visas as single or multiple entry, while every handling agency we found says tourist e-visas are single-entry in practice. Assume single entry, and do not build an itinerary that depends on leaving Iraq and getting back in on the same visa.
Mistakes that cost Indian applicants money
Five recur, and four of them cost money rather than time.
Submitting the New Delhi embassy form handwritten or in English. It must be typed, in Arabic. Applications are handed back at the counter for this more than for any other reason. Related: paying for an “urgent” e-visa service. The portal does not sell speed; agencies sell attention.
Assuming the e-visa fee is the figure an agent quoted from the embassy price list, then finding a five-figure gap the week before travel. Ask which route they are filing on.
Buying a Kurdistan visa product from a third party on the assumption it gets you to Baghdad. It does not, and the KRG says so in writing. If you want both halves of the country, hold the federal visa.
Booking a Baghdad-to-Erbil onward flight on your international arrival day. Iraqi airspace has closed at short notice more than once in 2026, and EASA’s bulletin advising operators against the Baghdad flight information region runs to 31 August 2026 unless reviewed earlier. Our practical tips for travelling in Iraq and the piece on getting around the country cover the domestic transport reality.
Skipping the vaccination conversation because it is “only two weeks”. Hepatitis A and typhoid are standard, a polio booster is commonly advised, and Iraq has an active Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever outbreak — 313 confirmed cases and 24 deaths nationally as of early August 2026, concentrated in Dhi Qar. It spreads by tick bite and by contact with infected livestock, so it matters for anyone visiting animal markets or abattoirs and barely at all for someone eating cooked food in a hotel. Detail in our guide to vaccinations for Iraq.
Frequently asked questions
Can Indians get an Iraq visa on arrival?
No, and they never could. India was not among the 37 nationalities granted visa on arrival between March 2021 and February 2025, so the suspension of that facility on 1 March 2025 did not change anything for Indian passport holders. Apply online at evisa.iq or in person at the Iraqi Embassy in New Delhi.
How much is an Iraq visa in Indian rupees?
The government fee for an Iraq visa is 151,000 IQD (around ₹10,900) for the 30-day visit tier or 206,000 IQD (around ₹15,300) for the 60-day ordinary tier, with health insurance included, at August 2026 rates. Agency handling is charged on top. The embassy route in New Delhi is cheaper in fee terms — roughly ₹4,600 to ₹11,300 all in — but requires an Arabic-language form and a physical submission.
Do Indian citizens need a sponsor or guarantor for Iraq?
Not for tourism or pilgrimage. You need proof of accommodation, which can be a hotel booking or a notarised invitation letter, but no registered guarantor. Business and employment visas do require an Iraqi sponsor who must obtain pre-approval from the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs first.
Can Indians visit the Kurdistan Region of Iraq?
This is unresolved and we would rather say so. The KRG’s own published guidance lists India among nationalities to which it “is unable to issue a visa at this time”. The federal e-visa is nominally valid across all of Iraq including the Kurdistan Region, and India’s own advisory tells its citizens they may travel to Iraqi Kurdistan. Write to the KRG representation in your country before booking, keep the reply, and have a plan that works if the answer is no.
Does an ECR passport stop me travelling to Iraq?
Not for tourism, a family visit or a declared ziyarat — the MEA guidance explicitly exempts pilgrims travelling to Iraq from emigration clearance. It only bites if you are travelling for employment, and even then only if your passport carries the ECR endorsement. If you have passed class 10, pay income tax, hold a professional degree or are over 50, you are entitled to ECNR and can apply to a Regional Passport Office to have the endorsement changed.
How long does an Iraq visa take for Indians?
Officially between 24 hours and five working days for the e-visa; some sources quote eight to eighteen business days for slower-processed nationalities. Given the disruption to the system in spring 2026, plan on one to two weeks, and six to eight weeks if you are travelling around Ashura or Arbaeen when volumes spike.
Is Indian travel insurance valid for Iraq?
Most standard Indian policies exclude countries under active government advisories or apply war and terrorism exclusions that gut the cover for Iraq. The health insurance certificate bundled into your Iraqi e-visa is Iraqi domestic cover, not travel insurance, and will not repatriate you. Read the exclusions before you assume you are covered.
Can I use one visa for both federal Iraq and Kurdistan?
A federal Iraqi visa is valid across the whole country, including the Kurdistan Region. A Kurdistan-only visa is not valid in federal Iraq, and the KRG warns in its own FAQ that travelling south on one risks deportation or criminal charges. The asymmetry runs one way only. If you want both, buy the federal visa.
What happens if I overstay?
Overstays are levied as a daily fine, usually collected at the airport on exit, and can turn an oversight into a long argument at a counter while your flight boards. If your plans slip, deal with it at a residency office rather than at departures.
Are there direct flights from India to Iraq?
Iraqi Airways has operated Delhi-Baghdad services and there have been Najaf routes to Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad, which is why pilgrimage groups often fly into Najaf rather than Baghdad. Schedules have been unreliable through 2026 because of repeated airspace closures. Confirm directly with the airline and never book a same-day onward connection.
Final thoughts
The useful thing to take from all this is that an Iraq visa for Indian citizens is two separate problems wearing one name. The Iraqi half is now easier than it has been in twenty years: a working government portal, a published fee, a decision in days, no guarantor for a shrine visit. The Indian half is the one with the sharp edges, and it is the half that nobody writes about — an endorsement on page two of your passport that decides whether a recruiting agent can lawfully put you on a plane, a suspension notice from 2004 that has never been formally withdrawn, and a pilgrim exemption that saves ECR passport holders money if they know to ask for it.
Then there is Kurdistan, where we have given you a genuine gap rather than a confident answer. That is deliberate. Two governments and one regional authority are saying different things, none of them is obviously out of date, and the cost of guessing wrong falls entirely on the traveller. Write the email. Wait for the answer. Book after.
If this is your first trip, read our overview of the Iraqi visa system for the shape of the whole thing, then the wider guide to travelling in Iraq for what the country is actually like once you are through the airport. If you are going for work rather than for a holiday, the section on the laws visitors most often fall foul of is the one to read twice, because the rules that get foreigners into trouble in Iraq are rarely the ones they expected.
Photo credits
Imam Ali Shrine, Najaf — Goudarz.memar (CC BY-SA 4.0). Indian passport cover — Vikassinghhhh (CC BY-SA 4.0). Erbil International Airport — Erbil International Airport (CC BY 4.0). Imam Husayn Shrine interior, Karbala — photographer not named on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). Kadhimayn shrine, Baghdad — Media Office of the Iraqi Prime Minister (CC BY 3.0). All images sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
