🇲🇻 Maldives — Visa Documents for Indians

Step 1 of 4

The one thing you must file before you fly

This is the part most people get wrong, and it is the reason this page changed. The Maldives grants the visa at the border, so there is no visa application — but Maldives Immigration requires every foreigner to submit a Traveller Declaration on the IMUGA portal before arrival. It is not optional, it is not a formality your airline handles, and it is checked at immigration when you land.

• Submit it within 96 hours of your flight time. IMUGA words it as flight time; the immigration site words it as arrival. Either way it is a four-day window, not something to do at the airport.
• One per traveller. Children and infants each need their own, and each child needs their own passport too.
• Keep the completed declaration to show at immigration when you land.

🔴 Maldives Immigration publishes a warning about this, so we repeat it in their words: there have been reports of websites and individuals charging a fee to submit the Traveller Declaration. It is free. It is a self-declaration you fill in yourself, no agent or middleman is required, and no payment is asked for at any point. Submit it only at imuga.immigration.gov.mv, and do not enter your passport details or card details anywhere else.

Source: Maldives Immigration

Step 2 of 4

Your passport, and three rules that surprise people

The Maldives asks less of your passport than almost anywhere else, and two of its three rules are ones you would not guess.

• One month’s validity from the day you enter — not six. If a website told you six months for the Maldives, it was not reading the immigration page. Check what your onward destination needs though, because that rule is separate and often stricter.
• The passport must have a machine-readable zone — the two lines of characters at the bottom of the photo page. Very old or hand-written passports do not have one.
• 🔴 A passport whose validity has been EXTENDED is refused. Maldives Immigration says it plainly: "passengers with an extended validity in their passports are not allowed to enter". If your passport was extended rather than reissued, renew it before you book.

The tourist visa itself needs no pre-approval: it is granted at the border once an immigration officer is satisfied you meet the entry requirements. That decision is theirs — Maldives Immigration says a complete travel itinerary does not guarantee entry, and points at sections 7 and 8 of the Maldives Immigration Act 2007. Since 15 April 2025 entry is not granted on Israeli passports.

Source: Maldives Immigration

Step 3 of 4

What to carry — and the one place the list forks

Everyone brings these

• A passport with a machine-readable zone and at least 1 month’s validity from the day you enter — and not one whose validity was extended
• Your IMUGA Traveller Declaration, submitted within 96 hours of your flight — one per traveller, infants included
• A confirmed return or onward journey ticket

The rest of the list depends on your situation. Pick yours to shorten it — or read all of them.

If someone in the Maldives is hosting you, they can sponsor your entry instead — and that matters here, because a large Indian community works in the Maldives and a professional-category work visa holder is allowed to sponsor. The sponsor does this, not you, and only while you are still outside the country.

• The sponsor must be a Maldivian citizen, or a foreign national holding a valid professional category work visa.
• They file form IM20 on IMUGA with your passport copy, their own national ID or work permit card, proof of your relationship where that applies, and a company seal if the sponsor is a company.
• Normally five working days. Once approved you must enter within 30 days — and Immigration’s own advice is to buy tickets only after the approval comes through.

And these, if they apply to you

• A yellow fever vaccination certificate, if you are arriving from — or have recently travelled through — a country with a risk of yellow fever transmission. Children under one year old are exempt. India is not a risk country, so this is about where you have been, not where you are from

Build these files with the checklist above

Source: Maldives Immigration

Step 4 of 4

At the border, and afterwards

One requirement on the list is not about the Maldives at all: you must meet the entry requirements of your next destination, including its visa rules and its passport validity rule. If the Maldives is a stopover, the strict passport rule is the other country’s, not this one’s.

🔴 We are not going to tell you how long you can stay, because Maldives Immigration does not say. Our own page used to promise "a free 30-day visa on arrival", and we have taken that out: we read the tourist visa page, the traveller declaration page, the IMUGA portal, the FAQs, the sponsorship page and the extension announcement, and none of them states a length of stay or a visa fee. The only "30 days" anywhere on the site is the window a SPONSORED visitor has to enter after their sponsorship is approved — a different thing entirely. The regulations that would settle it are listed on the Downloads page with their file sizes and no working link. Ask at the counter, or take what an agent tells you as unverified. (checked 2026-09-10)

Extensions are applied for on IMUGA, and were simplified in April 2026: your passport and accommodation details fill themselves in, you upload a passport-size photograph taken within the last 12 months, and the application is processed within 48 hours. The passport biodata page is only needed if your passport was renewed or the details do not match what Immigration already holds.

Source: Maldives Immigration Also drawn on: what the official site did when it was checked.