Madagascar Visas – Requirements & More
Majority of visitors will require a visa to enter Madagascar. Since obtaining a visa on arrival is not guaranteed, we recommend all travelers obtain a visa prior to their journey.
Typical Passport Requirements
Most countries in Africa require a passport with a minimum validity of six months from the date of travel and between 2 – 6 consecutive blank pages. Please verify the exact requirements prior to travel.
General Documents required for obtaining a Madagascar tourist visa
- Valid passport
- Visa application duly filled out, dated and signed.
- Two (02) recent photographs
- A copy of the round trip ticket (bearing the name of the applicant)
- Payment of the visa fee (Cash, money order or cashier’s check, no personal check)
- A yellow fever vaccination certificate is required if the traveler stayed in an affected area six (06) days prior to the trip
Source: http://www.us-madagascar-embassy.org/consular-services
Madagascar Visa requirements for US citizens
US citizens require a visa to enter Madagascar. Please check requirements with the Embassy of Madagascar closest to you.
Madagascar Visa requirements for Indian citizens
Indian citizens require a visa to enter Madagascar. Please check requirements with the Embassy of Madagascar closest to you.
Madagascar visas and entry: common questions
Do I need a visa in advance for Madagascar?
No. Both Indian and US passport holders can get a visa on arrival, and Madagascar operates eVisa counters at the airport, so pre-applying online is a convenience rather than a requirement. Only tourist visas are offered online, as a single entry for a maximum of 60 days, and the online price is the same as the price on arrival. Total stay can be extended to a 90-day maximum.
Which website is the official one?
evisamada.gov.mg, and this deserves more care in Madagascar than anywhere else on this site. The official service carries its own warning about hacker websites, and there is a dense thicket of near-identical domains — variants with a hyphen, with .com, with .info, all quoting the official wording. Accept no substitute for evisamada.gov.mg. A warning that applies to every country on this site: commercial reseller sites consistently outrank the official portals in search results, because the government portals are JavaScript applications that index badly while the copycats are static pages that index beautifully. They charge a markup for filling in the same form. Check the domain before you pay anyone.
Is there a free short-stay option?
Stays of up to 15 days are free of the visa charge, though a small administration fee is collected on arrival. Longer 30- and 60-day tourist visas are purchasable on arrival. Bring cash — dollars, euros or ariary are accepted, and card payment is not available at the arrival counter. One caution: the free 15-day band tempts people to stretch a stay, and overstaying risks detention or deportation.
What else gets checked at the border?
Passport validity of six months and at least two blank pages. Your onward or return ticket is explicitly checked, so have it accessible rather than buried in an email. A yellow fever certificate applies if you are arriving from a country with transmission risk, including transits over twelve hours — with Addis Ababa and Nairobi being the main connections into Antananarivo. Children under 18 travelling without their parents need written parental authorisation.
Anything else worth planning around?
Not a visa matter, but it shapes every Madagascar itinerary more than paperwork does: domestic aviation is limited and schedules change. We build slack into internal flights for exactly this reason. We do not apply for or arrange visas — what we do is make sure you know what your routing requires early enough to act on it.