Last updated: August 2026. Fee tiers, the Kurdistan Region portal and the federal e-visa rules were re-checked against evisa.iq, visit.gov.krd and KRG representation pages on 8 August 2026, alongside FCDO advice updated 22 July 2026.
Search for an Iraq visa on arrival and page one will still cheerfully tell you that you can land at Baghdad, join a queue, hand over a hundred and sixty dollars and walk out with a stamp. That stopped being true on 1 March 2025. People are still finding out at a check-in desk in Amman or Istanbul, three hours before a flight they paid for. For how this sits against the other routes in, see the full Iraq visa guide.
An Iraq visa on arrival is no longer available in federal Iraq for the 37 nationalities that used to have it — including British, American, Canadian, Australian, Japanese, South Korean and all EU passport holders. Those travellers must hold an approved federal e-visa before they board. Visa on arrival does still exist in the Kurdistan Region, at Erbil and Sulaymaniyah airports and the region’s land crossings, but a Kurdistan visa will not get you into the rest of the country.
That is the whole answer, and if it is all you needed, you can stop here and go and apply. What follows is the detail that actually decides whether your trip happens: exactly which routes and entry points still issue a visa on the spot, who qualifies and who does not, why your airline refuses you before Iraq ever gets the chance, what happens to the people who turn up anyway, and how to tell at a glance whether the page you are reading was written before or after the rules changed.
The short answer
| Question | Answer as of August 2026 |
|---|---|
| Can I get a visa on arrival at Baghdad? | No. Suspended 1 March 2025 for the 37 nationalities that held it. You need a federal e-visa before you fly. |
| Can I get one at Erbil or Sulaymaniyah? | Yes, if your passport is on the Kurdistan Region’s Country List A. Thirty days, issued at the counter. |
| Does a Kurdistan visa let me visit Baghdad? | No. It is valid in the Kurdistan Region only, and people have been turned back trying to head south on one. |
| Does a federal e-visa cover the Kurdistan Region? | Yes. This works in one direction only, which is why the federal visa is the one to buy if you want both. |
| Anyone still visa-free? | Iranian citizens. Turkish nationals in certain age bands get 30 days, though sources disagree on which bands. |
| What does it cost? | Federal: 151,000 or 206,000 IQD depending on visa class. Kurdistan Region: 100,000 IQD. |
| What if I show up without one? | Realistically the airline stops you at check-in. If you somehow reach Baghdad, you are refused entry and flown back. |
What changed on 1 March 2025, and why so many pages missed it
Between 15 March 2021 and 28 February 2025, Iraq ran one of the more surprising visa policies in the region. Citizens of 37 countries — the permanent members of the UN Security Council, every EU state, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland and most Gulf states — could arrive at an approved air, land or sea entry point, pay, and be admitted. No embassy, no forms, no waiting. For a country that had spent two decades being difficult to enter, it was a genuine opening, and the small community of people who travel to Iraq wrote about it enthusiastically.
On 1 March 2025 the Ministry of Interior suspended it. The wording used in the announcement was blunt: the issuance of a visa on arrival for nationals benefiting from this facility is suspended. Those same 37 nationalities were redirected to the electronic visa system, which had launched in April 2024 and which now became the only route in. The change was not accompanied by much of an international communications effort, and a lot of travel content simply never got updated.
There is a second layer of confusion on top of that. In March and April 2026 rumours circulated on social media that Iraq had suspended the e-visa system too, apparently connected to the abduction of the American journalist Shelly Kittleson in Baghdad on 31 March 2026. On 21 April 2026 the Interior Ministry’s spokesperson, Abbas al-Bahadli, told Rudaw that this was untrue and that visa issuance was ongoing. Some commercial visa-agency pages still carry a banner claiming the online system is closed and that you must go through a sponsor. As of 8 August 2026 that is wrong, and it tends to appear on sites that would very much like to sell you a sponsored visa.
So there are now two stale stories in circulation at once — one saying you can still get a visa at the airport, one saying you cannot get a visa online at all. Neither is right. The current position is dull and specific: apply on the government portal before you travel, unless you are going only to the Kurdistan Region.
Can I get an Iraq visa on arrival? Status by route and entry point
This is the table most people actually came for. “List A” and “List B” below refer to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s own nationality lists, which are separate from anything the federal government publishes and which we break down further in the next section.
| Entry point | Visa on arrival? | What you need instead |
|---|---|---|
| Baghdad International Airport (BGW) | No, since 1 March 2025 | Federal e-visa issued in advance via the government portal |
| Basra (BSR), Najaf (NJF), Mosul (OSM), Erbil for federal entry | No | Federal e-visa. Same rule at every federally controlled airport |
| Federal land crossings (Jordan, Kuwait, Iran, Saudi) | No | Federal e-visa. Land crossings were included in the suspension |
| Erbil International Airport (EBL), Kurdistan Region entry | Yes, for List A nationalities | Passport valid six months plus; fee payable at the counter |
| Sulaymaniyah International Airport (ISU) | Yes, for List A nationalities | Same as Erbil, 30 days |
| Kurdistan Region land crossings (Ibrahim Khalil, Haj Omran, Bashmakh) | Yes, for List A nationalities | Same 30-day Kurdistan Region visa |
| Anywhere, for List B nationalities | No | A registered guarantor must apply on your behalf; roughly five working days |
One nuance worth flagging because it trips people up. Erbil is a Kurdistan Region entry point, but if you enter there on a federal e-visa you are entering Iraq, not just the region, and the stamp behaves accordingly. Same airport, two different legal doors, depending on which document you present.
Where an Iraq visa on arrival genuinely still exists: the Kurdistan Region
The Kurdistan Region of Iraq runs its own immigration system, its own portal at visit.gov.krd, and its own nationality lists. We fetched that portal on 8 August 2026 and it is live and issuing. Its own wording is unambiguous: citizens of Country List A can obtain an e-visa either through the portal or upon arrival at any entry point. The KRG’s UK representation says the same thing in plainer English — British citizens can either apply via the portal, or obtain a visa on arrival at any border point in the Kurdistan Region.
Who is on List A
The KRG representation in the United States publishes the working list, and it runs to roughly 46 countries: Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holy See, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. Other listings add Azerbaijan, Iran, Jordan, Malaysia and Turkey, and describe all EU and all Gulf Cooperation Council member states as covered.
If your passport is on that list, the Kurdistan Region visa on arrival is a real, current, working option, and it is one of the few places in this part of the world where the phrase still means what it used to mean.
Who needs a guarantor, and who is refused outright
List B nationals — most of the rest of the world — cannot turn up and pay. A guarantor registered with the Ministry of Interior, typically a law firm or a manpower company inside the region, has to submit the application, supply a verification code and pay on the applicant’s behalf. The stated turnaround is five working days. If you are applying from the United States or Canada, the KRG representation in Washington handles it directly for a fee of $72.26 and quotes 10 to 15 business days, which is a very different planning horizon from walking up to a desk.
Then there is a third category that most guides skip entirely. The KRG’s US representation states plainly that it cannot currently issue visas to holders of passports from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Uganda or Yemen. Note that this list includes India and Pakistan, which are absent from the equivalent list on Wikipedia. That discrepancy matters enormously if you hold one of those passports, and we could not resolve it from published sources — the honest advice is to email the KRG representation covering your country before you buy a ticket, and to look at the federal e-visa route instead, which operates under different rules.
Cost, validity and what the stamp actually says
| Item | Kurdistan Region visa | Federal Iraq e-visa |
|---|---|---|
| Fee | 100,000 IQD (about US$75) to the KRI Ministry of Interior | 151,000 IQD visit class, or 206,000 IQD ordinary class |
| Validity from issue | 90 days to travel | 90 days (visit) or 60 days (ordinary) |
| Length of stay | 30 days | 30 days (visit) or 60 days (ordinary) |
| Available on arrival | Yes, List A only | No |
| Valid in the other half of the country | No | Yes, including the Kurdistan Region |
| Refundable if refused | No | No |
The dollar figures floating around for the Kurdistan visa — $70, $72, $75 — are all conversions of the same 100,000 dinar administrative fee at different exchange rates. There is only one fee. Card payment is usually expected at the airport counter, and it is worth carrying a backup card, because payment failures are the single most common complaint we found from recent arrivals.
The Kirkuk 60-day footnote, and why we would not plan around it
Timatic-derived listings, including the reference tables most airlines and Wikipedia editors draw on, state that some List A nationalities can be issued a visa on arrival at Kirkuk Airport for 60 days rather than the usual 30. The nationalities excluded from that longer option include the UK, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland, Turkey, Albania, Azerbaijan, Brazil, China, Iceland, Jordan, Liechtenstein, Norway and the Vatican, which leaves Americans, Canadians, Australians, Russians, Iranians, Lebanese and Malaysians among those it would apply to.
We could not confirm this anywhere on the KRG’s own portal, and there is an obvious complication: Kirkuk has been under federal rather than KRG administration since October 2017, which makes a Kurdistan Region visa counter there an odd proposition. On top of that, the FCDO advises against all travel to Kirkuk province, so almost nobody reading this should be routing through it in the first place. Treat the 60-day Kirkuk option as a footnote that may be a leftover in a database rather than a live route, and do not build an itinerary on it.
Born in Iraq? You may not need a visa at all
This one is genuinely useful and almost nobody covers it. The KRG’s position is that if your place of birth is Iraq, regardless of which passport you now hold, you do not need a visa for the Kurdistan Region. It extends to accompanying children born abroad to an Iraq-born parent. The representation publishes a printable exemption letter specifically so you can show it to the airline ticketing agent at check-in, which tells you something about where the friction actually occurs — not at the border, but at the departure gate. If this applies to you, print it and carry it.
The asymmetry that catches people out
Here is the rule that decides most itineraries, stated in the direction that matters. A federal Iraqi e-visa is valid across the entire country, including the Kurdistan Region. A Kurdistan Region visa is not valid in federal Iraq. It works one way and one way only. If you plan to see both halves of the country — Erbil and Baghdad, or Sulaymaniyah and Karbala, or the mountains and the marshes — you buy the federal visa and you are done.
Travellers have been refused when trying to move south from the region on a Kurdistan-only visa. The classic failure is the Erbil-to-Mosul road, where the federal checkpoints on the approach are the ones that check documents seriously, and where the answer to “this is an Iraqi visa, it says Republic of Iraq on it” is that the stamp names a Kurdistan Region entry point and the officer knows exactly what that means. If you want to understand how these road controls work in practice, our guide to Iraqi checkpoints and what officers ask for covers the routine.
You will find operators and blogs claiming that since January 2025 a Kurdistan visa permits onward travel into federal Iraq for anyone who would have been eligible for the federal e-visa anyway. We have not found a single official Iraqi or KRG source that confirms this, and there are 2026 reports of travellers being turned back. Plan around the restrictive rule. If the permissive version turns out to be true, you have lost nothing but the price difference.
One merger, approved but not implemented
On 30 September 2025 Iraq’s Council of Ministers approved the federal e-visa platform as the single portal for all Iraqi entry visas, explicitly extending that to the Kurdistan Region, with the KRG to stop issuing independently. Nearly a year later, the KRG portal is still up and still issuing. So the merger is approved on paper and unimplemented in practice. That is an unstable arrangement and it is the single most likely thing on this page to change without notice. Before you pay for anything, open both portals and see which one is actually taking applications for your nationality that week.
Who is still visa-free, and who cannot enter at all
Separate from visa on arrival, a small number of nationalities do not need a visa at all.
Iranian citizens currently enter Iraq visa-free, which reflects the volume of pilgrim traffic between the two countries more than anything else. Given that several million Iranians crossed for Arbaeen alone this year, any other arrangement would be unworkable.
Turkish nationals get 30 days visa-free, but the sources conflict on the age bands. One says under 15 only; another says under 15 and over 50. We could not reconcile them from official material, and if you hold a Turkish passport and fall near either boundary you should check with the Iraqi consulate rather than trusting a table on the internet, including ours.
Israeli nationals are banned from entering or transiting Iraq, including without leaving the aircraft on a same-plane transit. That is the position; it is not a grey area.
There is also a scattered claim in some visa databases that Bahraini nationals can still obtain a visa on arrival specifically at Basra and Najaf airports. We could not verify this against an Iraqi government source and would treat it as low confidence.
Why the airline stops you before Iraq does
Most people who get caught by the visa on arrival change never reach Iraq. They get stopped at a check-in desk, often in a third country, by an agent who is reading a screen and has no discretion whatsoever.
The screen is Timatic, IATA’s travel information database. Every airline that carries international passengers checks passport, visa, onward ticket and health requirements against it before issuing a boarding pass. The agent types your nationality, your document, your destination and your route; the system returns either boarding permitted or boarding not allowed. If it says not allowed, the agent cannot override it, and arguing that a website said something different will not change the output.
The reason airlines are so rigid about it
Carrier liability. If an airline flies you somewhere you are not admissible, that airline is fined by the destination state and is obliged to fly you back at its own cost, sometimes with an escort. The economics are one-sided: refusing one passenger costs the airline a seat, carrying an inadmissible one costs it a fine plus a return flight plus paperwork. No airline gambles on that, and the ones flying into Iraq are more cautious than most.
The practical consequences for you are worth spelling out. Your e-visa approval needs to be in your own hands, printed and on your phone, before you get to the airport. If you booked through an agent, get the actual approval document from them rather than a confirmation that they have submitted something. And if you are connecting through Amman, Istanbul, Dubai or Doha, the check happens at the first check-in, not at the Iraq-bound leg, so a document problem surfaces before you have flown anywhere.
What if the airline is wrong?
Occasionally it is. Timatic entries lag policy changes, and the Kurdistan Region’s separate regime is exactly the kind of thing that confuses a database. The remedy is documentary, not verbal: carry a printout of your visa approval, carry the KRG exemption letter if you were born in Iraq, and if you are flying to Erbil on a Kurdistan visa be ready to show the approval with the QR code on it. Being polite and having paper beats being right and having an argument.
What actually happens if you arrive without the right visa
Assume you slip through — a smaller carrier, a land crossing, an agent who did not check properly. What then?
At federal immigration you are refused entry. There is no counter where this gets resolved, because the visa on arrival facility that would have resolved it no longer exists for your nationality. You are held in the airside area, your passport is retained, and you are put on the next available flight back to your point of origin, at your own expense if the airline can show it warned you. Depending on the schedule, that wait can run overnight. Your embassy can be notified but cannot admit you to Iraq.
At a Kurdistan Region entry point the failure mode is different and gentler: if you are List A you get issued the visa there and then, which is the entire point. If you are List B you are refused, because the guarantor process cannot be improvised at a border post.
The land-crossing version is the one to be most careful about. Arriving at a federal crossing from Jordan or Kuwait without a valid e-visa leaves you in a genuinely awkward position, because there is no aircraft to put you back on and re-entry to the country you just left is not automatic. If you are crossing overland, the document has to be right before you leave the previous country.
What to do instead: the federal e-visa in brief
If you are one of the 37 nationalities, this is your route, and we have a full walkthrough in our step-by-step Iraq e-visa application guide. The essentials:
The official portal is evisa.iq, run by the Ministry of Interior’s Directorate of Civil Status, Passports and Residence, with applications submitted at eservice.evisa.iq. It operates in Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Kurdish and Chinese. There is a healthy ecosystem of lookalike commercial sites with names built around the words “evisa” and “iraq” that will take your application, add a markup and forward it. They are not illegal and some are competent, but you should know which you are using.
Two government fee tiers appear in Iraqi sources, and conflating them is why you see wildly different numbers quoted:
| Class | Government fee | Travel window | Stay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visit visa | 151,000 IQD (about US$114) | One entry within 90 days of issue | 30 days |
| Ordinary visa | 206,000 IQD (about US$160) | One entry within 60 days of issue | 60 days |
| Via an agency | Typically US$160–190 | Varies | Varies |
| Sponsored nationalities via an agency | Up to US$250 | Varies | Varies |
Ask any agency to itemise the government fee separately from its handling fee. If it will not, that tells you something. Processing is commonly quoted at 24 to 48 hours but we would not book a non-refundable flight against that; leave a fortnight.
Two further traps. Health insurance is now mandatory and bundled into the fee: Iraq’s Council of Ministers approved this on 30 September 2025, and the platform issues the entry visa together with a health insurance certificate, with no ministry or KRG representation permitted to issue an entry visa without it. And journalists and NGO workers are not eligible for the e-visa at all — they must apply through an Iraqi embassy or consulate. If you are travelling on a media or humanitarian purpose and you quietly tick “tourism”, you are creating a problem for yourself at the border rather than avoiding one. The wider paperwork picture is covered in our guide to Iraq’s entry requirements.
How to tell if a page is out of date
You are going to keep meeting stale advice, so here is a quick filter. A page is almost certainly pre-March-2025 if it says any of the following: that you can pay for your visa at Baghdad airport; that the fee is “$77 on arrival”; that visa on arrival is available at Basra or Najaf for Europeans; that the FCDO advises against all travel to the whole of Iraq, which stopped being true on 22 July 2026 when the advice was regionalised; that Mosul airport is closed, when it reopened to scheduled flights in November 2025; or that al-Nuri mosque is still a ruin, when it and the al-Hadba minaret reopened at the turn of September 2025.
Two more tells. A page that gives a single flat figure for the federal visa fee has not looked at the two-tier structure. And a page that does not mention the mandatory bundled health insurance has not been touched since at least October 2025. Our running summary of what the advisories currently say is a faster way to sanity-check a date than trusting a “last updated” stamp, which is trivially easy to fake.
The rest of the picture, briefly
A visa is permission to be admitted, not a judgement about whether going is wise, and the two questions get tangled together constantly. The FCDO’s advice was regionalised on 22 July 2026 and now varies by province: against all travel to Kirkuk, Ninawa, Salah al-Din, most of Anbar and Diyala; against all but essential travel to Baghdad province outside Sadr City, to Karbala, Najaf, Basra and the whole of the Kurdistan Region. Travelling against that advice invalidates most travel insurance, which is the practical consequence that matters more than the wording — our page on getting insured for Iraq goes through what that actually means for a claim.
The US State Department maintains a Level 4 Do Not Travel advisory, reissued 2 March 2026. Aviation is its own variable: EASA’s Iraq bulletin CZIB-2026-05, issued 8 July 2026 and running to 31 August 2026 unless reviewed, advises operators not to use the Baghdad flight information region, and Iraqi airspace has closed at short notice more than once this year. Whatever visa you hold, do not book a same-day onward connection out of Iraq.
If you are weighing up whether the trip is realistic at all rather than just how to get the paperwork, start with our assessment of how safe Iraq actually is for visitors and the overview of whether Iraq is open to tourists, both of which take the advisories seriously rather than waving them away.
Frequently asked questions
Is visa on arrival really gone at Baghdad airport?
Yes, for the 37 nationalities that previously held it. It was suspended on 1 March 2025 and there is no counter to pay at. Sites still describing the Baghdad visa on arrival process are describing 2024.
Can I get an Iraq visa on arrival if I am only visiting Erbil?
If your passport is on the Kurdistan Region’s List A, yes — 30 days, issued at the airport for a 100,000 IQD fee. That covers the Kurdistan Region only. Flying onward to Baghdad on it is not permitted.
Which is cheaper, the Kurdistan visa or the federal e-visa?
The Kurdistan Region visa, at 100,000 IQD against 151,000 or 206,000 IQD. But the federal visa covers the whole country including the region, so for most itineraries the extra cost buys considerably more freedom.
How long does the federal e-visa take?
Commonly quoted as 24 to 48 hours, and often faster. We would still allow two weeks before a non-refundable booking, because payment failures and photo rejections are routine and each one costs you a resubmission.
Do I need a visa if I was born in Iraq?
For the Kurdistan Region, the KRG says no, whatever passport you hold now, and it publishes an exemption letter to show at check-in. Children born abroad to an Iraq-born parent are covered too. The federal position is less clearly documented, so ask the consulate.
Can I extend a visa once I am in Iraq?
Extensions are handled at the residency office in the governorate you are staying in, and the procedure differs between federal Iraq and the Kurdistan Region. Overstaying is fined per day and collected on exit, so it is not something to leave to the airport.
Does a Kurdistan visa let me visit Mosul?
No. Mosul is in Ninawa province and is federally administered, so it needs a federal visa. It also sits in an FCDO advise-against-all-travel zone, which is a separate question from admissibility — see our page on the current situation in Mosul.
Are pilgrims treated differently?
In practice yes. Ziyarat traffic to Karbala and Najaf is largely handled through group arrangements and approved operators, and temporary arrangements are announced around Arbaeen each year, usually late. Our guide to pilgrimage travel in Iraq covers how those routes work.
Is the e-visa system suspended?
No. Iraq’s Interior Ministry publicly denied that on 21 April 2026 and the portal is issuing. Pages saying otherwise are usually selling a sponsored visa service.
Final thoughts
The frustrating thing about this particular piece of misinformation is how confidently it is repeated. Visa on arrival was a real and generous policy for four years, enough people wrote about it that the phrasing embedded itself in the internet’s memory of Iraq, and the correction has never travelled as far as the original. The result is a steady trickle of people discovering the change at a check-in desk with a non-refundable ticket in hand.
The practical rule is short. Going anywhere in federal Iraq: get the e-visa first, and it covers the Kurdistan Region as well. Going only to the Kurdistan Region and holding a List A passport: you can still do it on arrival, and it remains one of the easiest borders in the region to cross. Everyone else: start earlier than you think you need to, because a guarantor process is not something you improvise. And check both portals before you pay, because the two systems are supposed to merge and nobody has said when.
When the paperwork is sorted, the more interesting planning starts. Our complete guide to Iraqi visas is the parent to this page and covers every route in one place; the main Iraq travel guide is where to go for the trip itself; and if you are trying to work out whether to base yourself in the north or the south, our guide to the Kurdistan Region and the notes on visiting Baghdad lay out what each actually offers. For the logistics between them, see how to get around Iraq, and for what it all costs, our breakdown of typical trip budgets.
Photo credits
Baghdad International Airport arrivals concourse and terminal kerbside by Kasir (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons. Ibrahim Khalil border crossing by Joao Leitao (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons. Kurdistan Region visit stamp by Levi Clancy (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons. Erbil International Airport terminal building by Jeffrey Beall (CC BY 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons.
