Tanzania visa and entry requirements: eVisa or visa on arrival

Every month we walk guests through the same two airport questions: do we need a Tanzania visa before we fly, and how bad is the queue at Kilimanjaro. The short answers are yes, you need a visa, and the queue is entirely optional.

Tanzania gives you two legal routes in. You can apply online for an eVisa through the government portal before you travel, or you can land, join the line, and buy a visa on arrival for cash. Both end with the same stamp in your passport — the difference is 45 to 90 minutes of your first evening.

This guide covers the whole entry picture as we brief our own guests on it: fees we have verified for 2026, the six-month passport rule, yellow fever (which most visitors do not need), Zanzibar, Kenya side trips and the drone rule that surprises photographers. For what happens after you clear the arrivals doors, read our day-by-day first safari guide.

Two legal ways in, one clear winner

Almost every visitor needs a visa, and there are two ways to get one. The eVisa is applied for online before you travel, through the official portal at visa.immigration.go.tz. The visa on arrival is bought at the immigration desk after you land — and yes, it still exists in 2026.

Both are the same visa at the same price. What differs is your first hour in the country: at Kilimanjaro (JRO), the visa-on-arrival and baggage queues together commonly add 45 to 90 minutes after landing, while eVisa holders move through a faster line. After nine hours in economy, that difference matters more than it sounds.

The eVisa, start to finish

Apply only at visa.immigration.go.tz — that is the government's own portal. Search results are full of lookalike third-party sites that file the same form for a marked-up fee, and some are simply not legitimate. Type the address yourself.

The application asks for your passport photo page, a passport-style photo, your flight details and where you are staying. You pay online by card and approval arrives by email; print two copies and carry them with your passport, because immigration officers want paper and airline check-in staff at your departure airport sometimes ask to see it too.

Apply as soon as your flights are booked. Approvals often come through quickly, but not always, and we would rather our guests have a month of buffer than refresh their inbox at the packing stage.

What the visa costs in 2026

The ordinary single-entry tourist visa is USD 50, valid for stays of up to 90 days. A multiple-entry visa is USD 100 and runs for a year. United States passport holders are the exception: Tanzania requires them to take the USD 100 multiple-entry visa, a reciprocity rule, so budget accordingly.

Fees do change, so treat these numbers as a 2026 snapshot and confirm on the official portal when you apply. The visa is one of the few genuinely fixed costs of a Tanzania trip — for how the rest of the budget behaves, our safari cost guide breaks it down line by line.

The visa on arrival desk, honestly

The visa on arrival works, and plenty of our guests have used it without drama. You fill a short form, queue, pay and get stamped. The desk prefers US dollars in cash — crisp notes printed in 2013 or later — because the card machine is best treated as a pleasant surprise rather than a plan.

The real cost is time. After a long-haul flight, with a driver waiting and dinner at your Arusha lodge going cold, 45 to 90 minutes in a fluorescent-lit hall is a rough start. We recommend the visa on arrival only when the trip came together too fast for the eVisa, or when the portal rejects a particular passport for reasons nobody can explain.

The six-month passport rule

Tanzania requires your passport to be valid for at least six months beyond your arrival date, with at least one blank page for the stamp. Airlines enforce this at check-in, which means the problem surfaces at the worst possible counter.

Check the expiry dates the day you book, not the week you fly. Children's passports catch families out most often, because many countries issue them with shorter validity than adult ones. If a renewal is needed, do it first — everything else on this page depends on the passport number staying the same.

Yellow fever: most visitors don't need the certificate

Here is the rule as it actually stands: Tanzania asks for a yellow fever vaccination certificate only if you are arriving from a country where yellow fever is endemic, or you transited through one for 12 hours or more. A direct flight from Europe, the Gulf or North America does not trigger it.

Where it does apply is multi-country African itineraries and long layovers in endemic countries. If your route touches other African states before Tanzania, check the current endemic list against your stops and carry the yellow card with your passport. Health officers check certificates before the immigration desk, so it is the first queue, not the last.

Zanzibar is Tanzania — with one extra fee

Zanzibar is part of the United Republic of Tanzania, so your visa covers it. Flying from Arusha to Zanzibar, or adding beach days after the parks, needs no second visa; you will pass a passport check on the islands, but it is an internal formality.

There is one genuine extra since October 2024: Zanzibar requires all foreign visitors to buy its own inbound travel insurance from the Zanzibar Insurance Corporation, currently USD 44 per adult and USD 22 for children aged 2 to 17, valid for up to three months. It applies even if you already hold comprehensive travel insurance. Buy it online before you fly and it is one less counter on arrival.

Kenya side trips need a plan, not a hope

The USD 50 ordinary visa is single entry. Cross into Kenya for Amboseli or Nairobi and your return to Tanzania becomes a re-entry question, and how that is handled at the border can vary. Our advice is boringly conservative: if your itinerary crosses a border and comes back, either hold the USD 100 multiple-entry visa or budget time and money for a fresh visa on the way home.

Kenya also requires its own electronic travel authorisation, arranged before you reach the border. And note that the East Africa Tourist Visa you may have read about covers Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda — Tanzania is not part of that scheme.

Crossing at Namanga

Most overland Kenya connections use the Namanga border, about 105 km and two hours north of Arusha. It is a one-stop border post, so both countries' formalities happen in one building; allow 30 to 90 minutes depending on the day's traffic.

Door to door, Arusha to Nairobi runs five to seven hours including the border. It is a workable day, but it is a full one — plan nothing ambitious on either side of it.

Customs: drones, plastic bags and dollars

The rule that catches photographers: you cannot simply bring a drone and fly it. Tanzania requires a permit from the civil aviation authority, and the national parks require their own separate permission on top; a drone without paperwork can be held at customs until you leave. Most of our guests conclude the honest answer is to leave it at home — our packing guide covers what earns its place in the bag instead.

Two smaller notes. Plastic carrier bags have been banned in Tanzania since 2019, so unpack duty-free purchases from them before landing; resealable toiletry bags for transit are tolerated. And bring US dollar notes printed in 2013 or later — older series are routinely refused, at the visa desk and everywhere else.

Landing at JRO: your first 90 minutes

Kilimanjaro arrivals are pleasingly small-scale: down the stairs, across the tarmac, into the hall. Health check first if yellow fever applies to your route, then immigration — the fast line with an eVisa, the slow one without — then baggage, then customs.

Your driver should be waiting with a name board; ours track the inbound flight, so a delay costs you nothing. Arusha is about 50 km away, one to one and a half hours by road. Our rule of thumb: plan nothing for arrival evening except dinner and sleep, and let the safari start properly the next morning.

Our two-weeks-out paperwork checklist

Here is the list we send guests a fortnight before travel. Passport valid six months past arrival, with a blank page. eVisa approved and printed twice. Yellow fever card in the passport wallet if your route touches an endemic country. Zanzibar insurance bought online if the islands are on the itinerary. Kenya eTA sorted if you are crossing at Namanga.

Then the small stuff: US dollars in crisp post-2013 notes, the drone left at home unless permits are genuinely in hand, and duty-free out of its plastic bag. None of this is difficult; all of it is easier from your kitchen table than from a queue at Kilimanjaro.