Syria tourist and visit visa: what is officially known

Visas and border entry fall under the Ministry of Interior. Its Directorate of Immigration and Passports deals with passports and entry and exit procedures and staffs an immigration and passports centre at Damascus International Airport; the ministry's directorate for airport and border security works at the crossings. In 2026 these directorates met foreign embassies on visa and migration questions: a Canadian team responsible for immigration and visa files for Syria in May, a British delegation on international migration in May, and the Iraqi embassy in July on entry visas for Iraqi nationals who own property or hold residence in Syria.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, which runs Syria's embassies and consulates, lists on its website only services for Syrian citizens: passports, consular registration, civil status, powers of attorney and legalisation. It publishes no visa service for foreigners, and its website could not be reached directly when we checked on 25 October 2026.

Syria does not publish a list of nationalities that need a visa or are exempt, and no current official fee schedule is online. The Damascus International Airport website states only that passengers need a valid passport and, for international travel, any visa required for their nationality, and that entry requirements depend on nationality and should be checked with the relevant embassy before travelling.

In practice this means each traveller should ask a Syrian embassy or consulate, before booking, whether their passport needs a visa, how it is issued and what it costs. Keep the written answer with your travel documents.

An e-visa website at evisa.sy shows only a coming-soon notice; an archived copy from 28 August 2026 shows the same page, and it could not be reached directly on 25 October 2026. No Syrian authority has announced on its official channels that online applications are open, so we cannot confirm a form, required uploads, fees or eligible nationalities. Until that changes, the channel is a Syrian embassy or consulate.

The Syrian foreign ministry's list of missions gives an email address for almost every mission, many of them on the mofaex.gov.sy domain. Write to the mission responsible for your country of residence, state your nationality, passport type, purpose and dates of travel, and ask which documents and fee apply.

Customs allowances and declarations follow Syrian customs regulations. According to the Damascus International Airport website, arriving passengers must declare goods, currency above the declared threshold and restricted items, and a currency exchange operates at the airport. The airport warns that damairport.gov.sy is its only official website.

The Ministry of Interior set up a Tourist Police directorate in 2025 to protect tourist sites and visitors; its first officers graduated in June 2025 and work at major sites and events.

The Ministry of Interior publishes its announcements, including new immigration and passports centres, on its verified official channel. Damascus International Airport answers passenger questions at info@damairport.gov.sy. For visa questions the contact point is the Syrian embassy or consulate listed for your country on the foreign ministry's missions page. Read your own government's travel advice and check that your insurance covers the trip.