The tourist eVisa is a form. Pay it on the official page.

Search “Saudi Arabia tourist visa” and the first useful result is rarely the first result. It is an advert. A man with a logo that looks a little like a palm tree will offer to “process” you for less than the real fee, then add insurance, a service charge, and a second person you did not ask to meet. The visa itself is duller than that, which is the good news.

If your passport is on the list, you apply yourself on the official portal, visa.visitsaudi.com. The page describes a one-year, multiple-entry eVisa that lets a tourist spend up to 90 days in the country. It is for events, family visits, leisure and Umrah. It is not for Hajj, and it is not a way to study or to take a job. That sentence is the whole product. Everything else is people trying to stand between you and the payment button.

KSA GUIDE does not issue this visa. If the live page and this note disagree on the afternoon you apply, the live page wins. Lists of countries move. So does the riyal on the checkout.

Whether you are even on the list

The portal publishes the eligible countries. It is a finite list, not a mood. If your passport is not on it the day you open the site, the form will not grow an exception because your cousin got one in 2024. That cousin may have held a different passport, a GCC residency, or a visa from an embassy that still exists for everyone else.

Read the list, then stop arguing with it

Open the eligible-countries section before you photograph your passport for a stranger. If the name of your country is there, continue. If it is not, the next door is a Saudi embassy or the visa platform’s own instruction to contact one. A typing centre in another city cannot add a country. I have watched people pay that centre anyway, because the centre spoke their language and the website did not. Language is not eligibility.

Eighteen, and the child beside you

An adult applies for himself. A child is applied for by an adult who is allowed to do that, inside the same official flow, not by pasting the child’s face into a WhatsApp chat and hoping. Names have to match the passport, including the order of family names that your home country prints in a way the form dislikes. A swapped middle name is a refused boarding, not a funny story at the café.

• Check the country list on visa.visitsaudi.com the same day you pay.
• Passport in date, with at least six months left from the day you will enter, not from the day you apply.
• Your own email. The approval should not arrive in an agent’s inbox.
• A card you control. Nobody needs your card “just to hold the rate.”

What one year and ninety days mean

People hear “one year” and pack for a year. That is the mistake the visa is built to catch.

The visa can last a year. You may not.

The official description is a visa valid for a year, multiple entry, with a stay of up to 90 days in the country. Some older regulations talk about the stay across the whole validity, not only one visit. The cautious reading, and the one that does not ruin a second trip, is this: do not plan to live out the year in pieces of 90 days and dare the officer to do the addition. Read the line printed on your own approval. If you need to stay longer than a tourist stays, you need a different visa. This one will not become an iqama because you found a flat.

The passport date is the quiet rejection

Six months of passport life, counted from the day you enter the Kingdom, is the rule people miss. They count from the day they apply, in March, for a trip in October, and arrive with a passport that dies in December. Renew the passport first if the arithmetic is close. An eVisa stuck to a dying passport is not a clever saving. Airlines notice before the Kingdom does, which means you notice at the check-in desk, which is the expensive place to notice.

The fee, and the fee that is not the fee

The only number

The price sits on the official payment screen. VAT is part of how that charge is built. Write the number down if you are comparing it with a quote. Do not write down a thumbnail that says “only 50 dollars” and then, three messages later, needs insurance, a typing fee, and an urgent fee because your flight is on Thursday. Thursday was your choice. It is not a tax.

Insurance and the second invoice

Medical cover is one of the things the official checkout may already be handling. Look at that screen before you buy a policy from a man who sent you a PDF. A second policy can be a real product. It can also be the entire business model of the advert. If you want extra cover, buy it from an insurer you can name, after you can see what the visa payment already includes. Do not buy it because the agent said the visa will be refused without his particular logo.

There is no legitimate discount that requires your passport scan to live on a phone you will never see again. If a site is not visa.visitsaudi.com, it is not the application, even when it embeds the official form inside a frame and keeps a margin. Pay the official domain. Save the PDF it sends you.

What this visa will not do

Hajj

Hajj has its own season and its own permit. The tourist eVisa page says Umrah is within the tourist activities and Hajj is not. If your dates sit on top of Hajj, read the official guidance before you book a hotel in Makkah that will not let you through the street. A booking confirmation is not a religious visa. People treat it as one every year, and every year the street is fuller than their PDF.

A job, a course, a new life

The same official description excludes studying, and it is not a work permit. Arriving as a tourist and then “seeing about a job” is a conversation you can have. Starting the job, or enrolling as if the visa were a student visa, is a different fact. Employers who know the rules will not put you on a contract against a tourist stamp. Employers who do not know the rules are not a loophole. They are a risk with your name on it.

A family visit from a resident

If a citizen or a resident is inviting a relative, that file is often a family visit, not this eVisa. The two get mixed in group chats because both end with a person on a plane. The papers are not the same, and the fees are not the same. The family-visit note is the other door. Do not force a tourist form onto a passport that was supposed to be invited, and do not force an invitation onto a passport that was eligible for the tourist form and would have been simpler.

The hour you actually apply

Do it when you are not in a queue. A blurred passport photo, a number typed from memory, and a card that belongs to a friend are how a simple form becomes a week.

• Use the passport you will carry, not an old scan from a visa you cancelled.
• Type the name as printed, even where it looks ugly.
• Use a photo that meets the on-screen rules. A wedding picture will be rejected, and the rejection will feel personal. It is not personal.
• Pay, then wait for the official mail. An agent who says he can see approval before you can is standing in your inbox.

When the file arrives, read the stay and the validity before you tell the family the dates. Save it in two places. A hotel in Riyadh or Jeddah may ask to see it, and so will the airline. A screenshot of a WhatsApp image of a PDF is how those screens get muddy. The PDF itself is small. Keep it.

Flights after the file, not before

If the fare is about to vanish and you are sure you are eligible, some people book and apply in the same afternoon. That is a bet, not a rule. A refused eVisa does not refund a non-refundable ticket. If the country list is even slightly unclear, or the passport date is close, get the visa decision first. The desert will still be there next week. The cheap fare is not a reason to explain yourself to a check-in agent who is already late for his break.

If you live in the Gulf, but not on this passport

GCC residents sometimes have a different door on the same official site, tied to the residency card rather than to the passport’s nationality. Open that door if it is the one that asks for your residency. Do not smash a tourist application through a passport the list does not want, just because you have an Emirates ID or a Kuwaiti civil card in the other pocket. Those cards have their own expiry rules. A residency that dies three weeks after you enter Saudi Arabia is a weak card to travel on. Read the date. The officer will.

Family members do not inherit your eligibility by sitting in the same car. Each passport is its own question. A spouse on a different nationality is a second application, or no application, depending on that passport. Sort it before you buy four seats.

After you land

The visa got you in. It does not book AlUla, and it does not make July in Riyadh pleasant. The season for walking the interior is October to April. Jeddah can take an evening outside that, with humidity as the price. If this is your first trip, give yourself fewer cities than the map suggests. Riyadh and AlUla are not a day trip from each other. Makkah is not a casual add-on in the wrong week.

Keep the passport stamp and the eVisa together until you leave. Overstaying a tourist permission is not a fine you negotiate in the taxi to the airport. If your plans change and you need longer than the stay you were given, you ask through the official channel before the last day, not after it. This site cannot extend you. Neither can the hotel.

Conclusion

Apply on visa.visitsaudi.com if your passport is on the list. Treat one year as the life of the visa and 90 days as the stay you must not casually exceed. Count six months of passport from the day you enter. Pay the official screen, keep the PDF, and buy the flight when the file exists. Umrah can fit. Hajj does not. A job does not. Anyone who needs your card and a WhatsApp photo of the passport is not the Kingdom. They are a shop.

Questions people actually ask

How long can I stay on a Saudi tourist eVisa?

The official portal describes a one-year, multiple-entry visa that allows up to 90 days in the country. That is not a year of residence, and it is not an invitation to stack long stays until someone objects. Read the stay on your own approval before you book the return far away.

Where do I apply for a Saudi tourist visa?

On visa.visitsaudi.com, and only if your country is eligible that day. An embassy is the path when you are not on the list. A hotel booking, a typing shop and a WhatsApp agent are not the application, even when they are polite.

Can I do Umrah on a Saudi tourist visa?

The official eVisa wording allows Umrah and excludes Hajj. Rules around the holy cities have been tightened in busy seasons before. Read the current line on the visa page, and do not treat a hotel voucher as a permit.

Related notes

• Best time to visit
• Family visit visa
• One evening in Jeddah

Updated 18 October 2026. KSA GUIDE is independent and based in Riyadh. We are not Visit Saudi and not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The official screen is the rule.

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