A law exists saying that travelers need to be registered within 3 days of their arrival in Azerbaijan. In the past, this was not enforced. Now, however, it is. The timeframe was first loosened to 10 days. Now, the timeframe has been further extended. You only need to register if you intend to stay in Azerbaijan more than 15 days.

You only need to register once during your stay.

Where to register?

You can get registered by your hotel, at the migration police, via a mail from your host to the migration police or online. You can no longer register at the post offices.

Hotel

You can get registered by your hotel or hostel. These days, most know about the rule and will automatically register you. The system is online and it takes less than 24 hours to get you registered.

Migration Police – registration at their office

You can register at the migration police in any major city in Azerbaijan. For experience reports on the process in different cities, see the Reports section below. You will have to show a copy of your host’s ID (this could mean the person living in the house or the person who owns the house and rents it out to your host) or evidence you are staying at a hotel.

Make sure you have a registration slip to show for it (however ridiculous it may look)! Otherwise, a fine of 300 manat is waiting for you when exiting the country.

Migration police contacts

• Baku – (012) 5980974
• Lankaran – (025) 2526783
• Shirvan – (021) 2157123
• Khachmaz – (023) 3256018
• Yevlakh – (022) 3368205
• Aghsu (020) 2265427
• Ganja – (022) 2252736
• Shaki – (024) 2450849

Sending a mail to the Migration Police

Another option when you’re staying with a host is that her or she fills in a document with your and his/her details, scans it again and sends it to the migration office via mail. Reports indicate a trouble-free experience and the registration is done within a day. E-mail: [email protected].

Online registration

It is also possible to register yourself online. So far, we have had 1 succesful registration and 5 failures. Below, the process of the successful registration.

Update: the below dates from 2017. In 2018, it was reported you could only register if you have an Azeri mobile number, since you need to receive an SMS code.

1. Go to the online registration website and click on ‘Registration upon place of stay, then on ‘Registration as physical person’. Fill in your details and apply.
2. Here you think you’ve done your registration, but in fact you’ve just created an account. You will receive an e-mail to confirm your e-mail address.
3. After that you’ll be asked to create a password on the website.
4. You can now access your account. Under ‘applications’ you’ll see ‘no application’.
5. Fill in an address under ‘addresses’. We don’t think it matters which one you give.
6. After you filled in the address you’ll see it’s ‘pending’. Just wait.
7. The following day the status had changed from ‘pending’ to ‘active’. We didn’t get an e-mail to tell us that, we had to log in to see it.
8. Okay, NOW you can apply for the registration.
9. Go to your account, click on ‘Operation’ and then ‘Register at this address’. You’ll need to fill in your details again as you did in the very first step. After that, just wait.
10. You receive an e-mail from the State Migration Service with a ‘Notification form’ to tell that you were registered until the date you filled in. This can take some time however. One of us receiced this mail a few hours later, one of us only the following day.
11. In all, it took 3 days to be fully completed for 2 persons. Online registration is free.

That’s it. We didn’t print the email and we weren’t asked anything about our registration when we left the country at the Red Bridge border crossing to Georgia.

Reports

Registration reports are being collected here.

Baku

In Baku, the Asan service center is the latest place to be (Gmaps).

Balakan

Opening times of the office in Balakan: Monday – Saturday 9 am – 6 pm, lunch between 1-2 pm. It has a blue sign.

March 2017 – January 2018: We both got registered in Balakan, 5 manat each.

March 2016: Blue sign is back. They told us it is open from Monday to Friday, but we got the registration on Sunday afternoon (with luck). Price 5 Manat each.

December 2015: The blue sign is gone, in fact it was in a corner in the back of the office, and from the outside nothing marked it as the immigration office. You need the small office just left of the bakcell shop.

July 2015: We got the registration right away in Balaken, which is the first village after the board coming from Georgia. The immigration office is on the main road on the left side just before the second traffic light. It has a blue sign.

Price: they asked 15 manat to register 2 passports, but they gave us 2 receipts of 5manat. We told them that and at the end we payed 10manat. After few days we met someone informing us that if you write by yourself the info on the registration application and don’t let them do it for you (that of course the man that worked there didn’t tell us) it would have been only 0,40manat each.