A Bangladeshi passport needs an ETA for Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh is priced in the SAARC column: US$20 applied online at eta.gov.lk, or US$25 if you wait and get it at the airport. Either way you get 30 days with double entry. No photos, no bank statement, no hotel booking are uploaded — the ETA asks for almost nothing. What it does ask is that every letter of your passport details matches, because a mismatch means paying twice.
Is Sri Lanka free for Bangladeshi tourists in 2027?
No — and this is the single most common mistake we see. With effect from 25 May 2026, Sri Lanka's Department of Immigration and Emigration made the 30-day tourist ETA free for nationals of forty countries. The list includes India, Nepal, Pakistan and Malaysia. It does not include Bangladesh.
That matters because so much of the "Sri Lanka free visa for South Asians" content circulating online is written for an Indian audience and then reshared here as if it applied. It does not. What Bangladesh does get is the SAARC rate, and that is worth knowing in its own right: the tourist ETA for a Bangladeshi passport is US$20, not the US$50 that applies to most other nationalities.
Which route is yours — online, or at the airport?
Both are genuinely open to you. The government prices both and staffs both. The difference is smaller in money than people expect, and larger in everything else.
US$20 at eta.gov.lk. The Department of Immigration's own guidance names that one address and warns travellers to make sure payment is made on the official site.
- No documents, photos or passport copies uploaded
- Can be obtained even before booking a ticket
- A reference number you can check from home
- Needs a Visa, Mastercard or Amex that works online
US$25. The Ports Branch of the Department lists "granting ETA at the ports to the foreigners who arrive into Sri Lanka without obtaining ETA" among its current duties, so the counter is real.
- US$5 more, and a queue at Bandaranaike
- No card needed in advance
- The government's own portal now tells everyone to apply first
- If anything goes wrong, you are already abroad
| Item | Online | On arrival |
|---|---|---|
| Fee | US$ 20 | US$ 25 |
| Stay | 30 days | 30 days |
| Entries | Double | Double |
| Card needed | Yes | No |
| Check before flying | Yes | No |
| Business ETA | Not available | Available |
That last row surprises people. A Business ETA cannot be obtained online at all — the Department states it is issued only at a Sri Lankan overseas mission, at its head office in Colombo, or on arrival. Bangladeshi businesspeople heading to Colombo routinely try the online form and fail, because they are using the wrong channel rather than filling it in wrongly.
How much is it, in taka, and what else will you pay?
US$20 is roughly ৳2,460, and US$25 roughly ৳3,075, at the rate on 29 September 2026 (US$1 ≈ ৳122.98). That is our arithmetic, not a figure the Sri Lankan government publishes — it prices everything in US dollars.
Many Bangladeshi debit cards are not enabled for international e-commerce, and the ETA portal takes only Visa, Mastercard and American Express. The official answer is not to give up and pay US$25 at the airport. The Department's fee table prices submission "by third party" at the same US$20 as applying yourself — a travel agent, an airline, a friend or a relative may lodge it for you. What you pay that person for their time is a separate, legitimate service charge. The government fee does not change.
The fee schedule grants a free tourist ETA to children under 12 of any nationality, for stays up to 30 days. Beyond 30 days, the ordinary extension fees for their nationality apply. For a family of four from Bangladesh with two young children, that is US$40 rather than US$80 — worth knowing before someone quotes you a per-head price.
What do you actually need to show?
Remarkably little, and that is the honest answer. The ETA system asks for no uploads: in the Department's own words, "no passport copies, documents or photographs are required." What it does require is that you can produce three things at the port of entry.
- A passport valid for not less than 6 months from the date of arrival
- A confirmed return ticket
- Sufficient funds to meet your expenses during the stay
- A JPG of your passport bio page — not asked for by the ETA system, but the Department's Tourist Visa page lists it, so carry one
- No yellow fever certificate is needed from Bangladesh; the requirement applies only to arrivals from 46 listed African and South American countries
Nobody can tell you how much money is "sufficient"
We looked. Across the ETA portal, the terms and conditions, and every relevant page of the Department of Immigration and Emigration, the requirement is stated as "sufficient funds to meet the expenses during the stay" and "evidence of sufficient funds" — and no amount, no per-day rate and no bank-balance threshold is published anywhere.
So if you read a blog quoting "US$X per day for Sri Lanka", that number was invented. What an immigration officer is actually doing is a judgement call against your trip: how long, where staying, who paying. That judgement is worth preparing for, and it is a conversation rather than a number.
What does the process look like, start to finish?
The Department's homepage carries a tile reading "Complete online Arrival / Departure card". Look at the page source and the whole block is commented out and carries no link; the URL it would point to returns a 404. Meanwhile the Ports Branch still lists "issuance of Immigration / Emigration forms to be completed by the passengers at the ports" among its duties. It is a paper form, handed out on the aircraft or at the counter. Anyone charging you to "pre-fill your Sri Lanka arrival card online" is selling something that does not exist.
How long can you stay, and what happens if you overstay?
Thirty days on arrival, with double entry — but the double entry is narrower than it sounds. The Department states that on a second visit, "the balance period of the 30 days of the initial entry will be granted." The clock does not restart. And if you extend your visa during that first 30 days, the double-entry facility "will automatically be cancelled."
Extensions run to a maximum of 270 days in total, through the official portal at eservices.immigration.gov.lk. For a Bangladeshi passport the published fees are US$60 for days 31–90, US$150 for days 91–180, and US$200 for days 181–270.
Overstaying is expensive and the penalties are set by gazette. Leaving within 7 days of expiry costs only the applicable visa fee, with no penalty. Beyond 7 and up to 14 days it is a US$250 penalty plus the visa fee; beyond 14 days, US$500 plus the fee.
Why are applications refused, or travellers turned back?
- A typo in the passport number, nationality or date of birth. The most common and the most avoidable — you pay again at the airport.
- Travelling on a different passport from the one used to apply, including a renewed one.
- A false or misleading statement, which the terms say "may result in the permanent refusal of an ETA or denial of entry."
- Doing something a tourist ETA does not cover — business meetings, conferences, short-term training, paid or unpaid work.
- Living in Sri Lanka through frequent successive visits. The Department names this explicitly as not allowed on a tourist ETA.
- Assuming a refusal is final. It is not framed that way: an unapproved application is "referred to the nearest Sri Lanka Overseas Mission", which for Bangladesh means the High Commission in Dhaka.
Sri Lanka's Ministry of Foreign Affairs lists the High Commission of Sri Lanka at House No. 10, Road No. 62, Gulshan 02, Dhaka 1212, open Sunday to Thursday, 09:00–17:00, telephone +88 2222 963 53, email [email protected]. The website printed on that listing, slhcdhaka.org, was returning a suspended-account page when we checked on 28 September 2026, which is why people Google it, find nothing, and conclude there is no mission. There is. Use the email. The mission charges the same US$20 as the website, so it is the right answer only if the online system refers you there — not for an ordinary holiday.
Sri Lanka is often the first foreign trip in a family — a short holiday, or a parent travelling before a child leaves for a longer stay somewhere else. Those are exactly the passports with the least travel history, and the ones where a typed digit or a six-month passport rule turns a cheap trip into an expensive one. It takes us ten minutes to read a passport and a booking properly. It takes considerably longer to fix an entry refused at Bandaranaike.
What we could not verify, stated plainly. Two official Sri Lankan pages contradict each other on how long an issued ETA stays valid: the application page says an ETA holder may enter "within three months from the date of issue", while the FAQ on the same domain says "ETA is valid for six months." We quote neither as settled — apply close to your travel date and treat three months as the safe ceiling, and confirm with the ETA call centre on 0094 71 99 67 888. No "sufficient funds" figure is published by any Sri Lankan government source we could read. The Department states that "ETA is not a pre-condition to board a flight/vessel to Sri Lanka" — that is the government's position, not the airline's, and carriers routinely refuse boarding without one, so do not rely on it. Sri Lanka Customs requires foreign currency to be declared but publishes no threshold amount; confirm on +94 11 2221333. Sri Lanka is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, so a Bangladeshi apostille is of no use for documents destined for Sri Lanka — the older consular legalisation chain applies. A tourist trip needs no documents at all, so this matters only if your visit turns into study, work or marriage. All figures were read on 28 September 2026 at the sources below.
Official sources: Sri Lanka ETA — official fee schedule · Department of Immigration & Emigration — visa fees, extensions and overstay penalties · Free visa notice — the 40 eligible countries
Related guides: Thailand tourist visa from Bangladesh · Malaysia tourist visa from Bangladesh
Planning a trip to Sri Lanka? Ten minutes now beats a refusal at the airport.
The government fee is US$20 and the form takes minutes — we will tell you that honestly. What is worth a conversation is your passport, your dates and whether your file will survive a question at the counter. Come in and we will look at it with you.
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