Syria

Syria requires a visa of a United States passport, and the honest description of how one is obtained is that it has changed more than once since the change of government in December 2024 and should be established close to the date rather than from any account of it, this one included. The route that has worked throughout is a visa arranged in advance - either through a Syrian mission or, more commonly for this passport, by a licensed Syrian operator who obtains the security clearance, files for the visa and meets the traveller at the border. That is not a tour in the ordinary sense; it is the mechanism by which a clearance exists at all. An electronic application route has been reported since the change of government and could not be confirmed against a government source at the time of writing, which is why no portal address is stored here: an invented or stale link on a page about entering Syria would be worse than none. The Syrian embassy in Washington has not operated since 2014, so applications are lodged at a Syrian embassy in a third country - Beirut and Amman are the usual ones - or handled entirely by the operator. The figure shown here is an approximation of the order rather than a published schedule, and the security clearance and the operator’s charge sit outside it. Visas have typically been issued for around fifteen days with extensions arranged in country. Entry is overland from Lebanon or Jordan for most visitors; commercial flights to Damascus have resumed in stages and remain thin and subject to change. There is no American diplomatic presence in Syria and there has not been since 2012: the Czech Republic acts as protecting power and what it can do is limited. No foreign card works, so the entire budget is carried in United States dollars in cash and changed there; sanctions relief since 2025 has begun to alter the banking picture, but not in a way any visitor should plan around yet. Mine and unexploded-ordnance contamination is extensive and is not confined to former front lines. An Israeli passport is not admitted to Syria, and evidence of a visit to Israel in any other passport - an Israeli stamp, an entry or exit card, or a stamp from the Jordanian or Egyptian side of a land crossing that serves only Israel - has been treated as grounds for refusal. Israel stopped stamping passports at Ben Gurion years ago, which removes the commonest form of that evidence and none of the others. And one thing that is not a visa rule and matters more than one of them. An advisory is not the border’s answer and the border’s answer is not permission: whatever Syria asks for at the counter, it is your own ministry’s current advice that decides what your insurer will cover and what a consulate could do for you, and that advice is revised far more often than any account of visa procedure. Read it in the days before you travel rather than the months before, and read the regional detail rather than the headline.

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Entry details: Editorial synthesis - Syrian mission guidance, licensed operator practice, foreign-ministry advisories (2025–2026) · compiled 18 Sept 2026

Holding a passport that is not listed? The picker above answers for any of them. See where your passport takes you. Source: Passport Index, updated 14 Aug 2026.

There is no seasonal market to describe. A collapsed currency with multiple rates, a cash-only dollarised visitor economy and a handful of operators mean prices are set by circumstance rather than demand. What changes month to month is access, not cost.

Updated Aug 2026 · Editorial synthesis - operator quotations, traveller reports (2025–2026) · confidence low

Excludes international flights - they depend on where you fly from.