Pakistan tourist visa: e-visa step by step

Most visitors from the UK, Europe, North America, Australia and East Asia get a Pakistan tourist visa online, through the government's own portal at visa.nadra.gov.pk, with a passport scan, a photo and a hotel booking, and an answer in roughly one to two weeks. Since 1 January 2026 the free "visa prior to arrival" scheme is gone, so everyone now pays a fee and needs to apply before flying, which is the one change that catches people out.

I write for Third Pole Adventures from Skardu and I help our guests with this form every week, so what follows is the process as it actually works today, not as it worked in a 2023 blog post. Where I cannot confirm a figure from an official page I say so.

Who can apply for a Pakistan e-visa in 2027

The online visa system is open to citizens of 126 countries, covering all of Western Europe, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and most of Asia and Latin America. If you hold one of those passports you apply online and never visit an embassy. Citizens of Gulf Cooperation Council states have been visa-exempt since 14 August 2024. Indian passport holders and a few other nationalities are outside the scheme and must apply through a Pakistani mission; that is a separate process this post does not cover.

Overseas Pakistanis with a NICOP or POC card do not need a visa at all; the card is your entry document. If your children hold only a foreign passport and no card, they need a visa like any other visitor, so apply for the whole family together.

What changed on 1 January 2026

Until the end of 2025 Pakistan ran a "Visa Prior to Arrival" scheme that issued free visas to those 126 nationalities, often within 48 hours. That scheme, and the older visa-on-arrival facility, were suspended on 1 January 2026. Everyone now goes through the standard paid e-visa. Two consequences: you will pay a fee, and you must allow one to two weeks rather than two days. If a friend who visited in 2025 tells you it was free and instant, they are right, and it no longer is.

Step by step: applying on the NADRA portal

Step 1: create an account. Go to visa.nadra.gov.pk, register with your email address and verify it. Use an address you will still check in three weeks, because queries come by email.

Step 2: choose Tourist Visa. Pick the tourist category for stays under three months as an individual traveller. Every traveller needs their own application, whatever their age. The Pakistan embassy in Madrid's e-visa FAQ puts it plainly: "for each applicant, irrespective of age, a separate application must be submitted." For children under 18 you will also upload a birth certificate, copies of both parents' passports, and a no-objection letter signed by both parents, so gather those before you start.

Step 3: enter your details exactly as they appear in your passport. Spelling, middle names and the passport number must match character for character. A mismatch is the most common reason an application is returned.

Step 4: upload the documents. For a standard tourist application the portal asks for a passport-style photograph on a white background, a colour scan of your passport's photo page, and proof of accommodation. Your passport should have at least six months' validity from arrival. A hotel booking covering your whole stay is enough; an invitation letter is only needed if you are staying with friends or family rather than in hotels. Some applicants are also asked for a travel itinerary and recent bank statements, so have PDFs ready.

Step 5: pay. Fees are charged in US dollars by Visa or Mastercard inside the application. The portal has a fee calculator by nationality. I would not trust any figure you read on a third-party site, including this one: in 2026 Wego quoted about USD 60 for UK, US and Canadian passports and USD 35 for the EU, while another visa-information site listed the same passports at USD 10 to 20. The fee calculator on the portal is the only number that binds, and it shows the price before you commit, so check it there and budget for the higher end.

Step 6: submit and wait. Standard processing is quoted at seven to ten working days; some sources say up to twenty. Apply at least four weeks before you fly. If the portal returns your application for corrections, resubmit within seven days or it is cancelled and you start again.

Step 7: print the approval. The e-visa arrives as a PDF. Print two copies and keep one on your phone. Airlines check it at check-in, immigration checks it at Islamabad, Lahore or Karachi, and the police posts on the road north will want to photograph it, so a paper copy saves fumbling.

Validity, entries and extensions

A standard tourist e-visa is single entry, valid for three months, with a stay of up to 90 days. If you plan to hop out to China over the Khunjerab Pass and come back, you need a second visa or a multiple-entry visa; ask us before you book that side trip. Extensions of up to six months are possible from inside Pakistan through the same portal, though the process is slow and I would not build a trip around it.

Do you need a letter of invitation from a tour operator?

Not for the standard tourist visa if you have hotel bookings for every night. We still send every guest a booking confirmation on our letterhead listing each hotel, because immigration officers like to see one document that explains the whole trip, and because it answers the "itinerary" upload without you having to write one. If you book our 13-day Ultimate Pakistan Tour or the Gilgit-Baltistan Autumn Tour, that letter is part of the booking. For trekkers on the Snow Lake / Biafo-Hispar trek the visa is the same; the trekking permit is a separate document we obtain after the visa is issued.

Mistakes that get applications returned

Blurry phone photos of documents. A hotel booking that ends before the return flight. A passport photo with a coloured background or a hat. Names entered with a different order from the passport. Applying two weeks before departure and then chasing. Booking a non-refundable flight before the visa arrives. None of these is fatal, but each costs a week.

Arriving, and what happens after the visa

Immigration at Islamabad is quick; expect a passport stamp and a glance at the printed e-visa. From there the visa is the least of your paperwork. Foreign visitors to Gilgit-Baltistan are registered at police posts along the road, and certain treks need permits and No Objection Certificates that only a licensed operator can file. That is a post of its own; for now, the short version is that the visa gets you into the country and a local operator gets you into the mountains.

One thing that confuses guests: the portal's own home page still advertises a visa-on-arrival facility for 50 countries. Every 2026 source we have checked says that facility was suspended on 1 January 2026, and we have not had a guest arrive on it since. Treat the e-visa as the only door. And if the China side trip tempts you, the Pakistani immigration post is at Sost, about 85 kilometres before the Khunjerab Pass itself, which at 4,693 metres is the highest paved border crossing in the world and opens only from roughly April to November.

Let us handle the paperwork

Our free Pakistan Trip Planner 2027 guide includes a visa checklist you can tick off, plus seasons, costs and packing lists. If you would rather we build the whole trip and send the hotel letter your application needs, request a custom itinerary and we will reply within a day.

Photo credits: Faisal Mosque, Islamabad: Qasim Nagori / Unsplash (Unsplash Licence). Khunjerab Pass: Hasan Shaukat / Unsplash (Unsplash Licence). Passu Cones: Jessica Anderson / Unsplash (Unsplash Licence). Hunza valley aerial: Mehtab Farooq / Unsplash (Unsplash Licence).