Visa on arrival in Iran: Reports and Q&A

[Cheddy]

Just entered last night with VoA through Tehran.

Am a dual Italian-American citizen. On Thursday evening I applied for the electronic visa through my Italian passport, on the website. By Monday afternoon I received approval. This is not necessary, many of the travelers didn’t have the form I had, but when I arrived there were about thirty people waiting, and because I had the form printed out, my passport jumped to the top of the pile.

I arrived at 1am from Moscow. It’s all done in one big room, there is a woman who speaks English who directs you to go buy insurance for 14 euro. Then she looks at it and sends you to the cashier to pay 75euro. After then she takes your passport and payment receipt and has you take a seat. They’re not so fast, maybe they approve one every 5-7 minutes. Because I had the pre approval, mine was done before many people who were already waiting. Took about 20minutes.

After that you go through passport control and you’re all done!

No problems, easy painless process. Was worried that my passport shows I was born in the US, but no one cared.

Did not need proof of hotel, proof of onward travel or anything other than my passport and payment receipt.

I don’t know why people are saying avoid the evisa system, I would highly recommend it! If you can, I recommend submitting first online, it saves you probably an hour of waiting.

The ONE thing is I planned only a short trip in Iran, 3 days, and I put that on my visa application. I was granted only a 3 day visa within a 90day period. So if you want some wiggle room, put more days than you need.

[steven]

I don’t know why people are saying avoid the evisa system, I would highly recommend it! If you can, I recommend submitting first online, it saves you probably an hour of waiting.

You did not use the e-visa system, you used the visa on arrival.

[Hil&Auk]

What if you replied through the e-Visa site but had a rejection first and then the second time a rejection again according to the embassy BUT online it's still "waiting for verification". Can you still get a VOA? I'm a Dutch citizen and normally West-Europeans pay and get their Visa.
No one answered calling the embassy in Georgia and Armenia or phone numbers mentioned on the e- Visa site....

[steven]

What if you replied through the e-Visa site but had a rejection first and then the second time a rejection again according to the embassy BUT online it's still "waiting for verification". Can you still get a VOA? I'm a Dutch citizen and normally West-Europeans pay and get their Visa.
No one answered calling the embassy in Georgia and Armenia or phone numbers mentioned on the e- Visa site....

I don't know personally, please let us know if you find out. Could you think of any reason for rejection (are you a journalist, NGO worker, ...)?

[traveLove]

NEW INSURANCE RULES!

I entered Iran this morning on a flight from Turkey to Isfahan. I had to fly out for work just for 5 days and had my motorbike stored in Isfahan, after having entered Iran from Armenia 4 weeks ago.
I applied for E-Visa which is not necessary but speeds up the process at the Airport very much. What slowed it down was the fact that my international Health insurance stated "worldwide" and not "including Iran". They want to see the word "Iran" printed on the paper. If they don't see that, you have to buy iranian Health insurance which is 15€/month. I showed them my 5 weeks old entry stamp from the armenian border and explained that this was the reason I thought "worldwide" was o.k. and they let me pass. But I was told that this law is only for Airports and only since Mr. Trump's last sanctions. So to avoid paying twice (your own insurance and the iranian one) ask your insurance to issua a paper with the 4 magoc letters "Iran" on it.


BTW: I politely asked for 60 days and got 60 days, even though the E-Visa said 30 days.

Happy travels!
Silke

[Kiwi]

Hello dear travellers,
One question keeps bouncing every time I think about Iran (landing on February 1th thought Tehran)
I read in your article that to submit visa via embassy one may need a headscarf on the photo (.i also read that with voa the photo may not be useful anymore)
Then I read on Iranian evisa website (https://evisatraveller.mfa.ir/en/reques ... name=photo) that the photo should....
*Taken in clothing that you normally wear on a daily basis
*Uniforms should not be worn in your photo, except religious clothing that is worn daily.

Am I going insane? Should I make a set of headscarf photo (to be used only there ?)

Thank you so much for your help and experience in this matter!

[traveLove]

I applied 3x for an iranian visa (and go it 3x) and never had a photo with a headscarf.
Silke

[Kiwi]

thank you!!

[QuentinT]

I would like to point out that the price is wrong on the info page.
Swiss citizen paid 75€.

Also, we were asked how much cash we had to travel. 1000€/p is ok for them but they don't like if you say 600€ for a month.
We had insurance from AVI (Marco Polo) with the related insurance paper stating that IRAN is covered -> we didn't have to pay the 15€ for insurance.
The guy quickly asked for our plan. We said that we'll visit Isfahan, Arak, Hamadan and go out of the country overland. He was satisfied.
We also had a question if we had some friends/we know someone (can't remember exactly in Iran. We vaguely said that we had a friend's friend's in Iran but didn't mention that we were going to see them/sleep by their home.

[Milad]

We also had a question if we had some friends/we know someone (can't remember exactly in Iran. We vaguely said that we had a friend's friend's in Iran but didn't mention that we were going to see them/sleep by their home.

This is a good idea. There is no official policy on this, but it seems that the government is OK with westerners meeting their friends in Iran, they don't like it if you stay with them however.