How To Get A Madagascar 🇲🇬Tourist Visa On Arrival At Antananarivo Airport

“Don’t say a prayer for me now. Save it for the Madagascar🇲🇬” – Duran Duran.

Island countries seem to be my weak point in life and when I look at the long list of countries I still haven’t been to – no surprise most of them are islands. Despite 4 trips to the Caribbean, I’ve still only been to 17 out of 30+ Caribbean countries. The same goes for islands off the coast of Africa. So far, I’ve only managed to visit The Azores, Canary Islands, Cape Verde Islands, Robben Island (which I count as South Africa), Seychelles and Madagascar. My Pacific, Atlantic, Nordic and Mediterranean island jigsaws are also glaringly lacklustre but things can slowly be put right.

My self-titled MMM Hat-trick tour in April 2023 meant pumping Madagascar’s air into my caser. To start with, on a Northern Irish passport, I do need a visa, but not in advance – it can be attained on arrival! Madagascar, like MANY countries from my travels loves to pretend that you don’t need a visa! My opinion remains as always – if you need to pay money to enter a country or fill in a visa form to enter a country, the that’s a visa! I’m looking at you Turkey, Haiti, The Seychelles and Curacao!! Here is the information I had in advance and how I got my Madagascar visa on arrival on the world’s fifth largest island (after Australian, Greenland, Borneo, New Guinea).

Information on the Madagascar Visa

I headed to this website which has the latest information – https://madagascar-tourisme.com/en/practical-information/before-you-go/

I was travelling on a Northern Irish passport (which means I use both the “UK” and “Ireland” passport to represent myself and my identity).

There is no VISA fee for stays of less than 15 days. However, travellers will have to pay a 10-euro administrative fee for border control formalities. (so wait – the website is wrong as usual – there is a VISA FEE – it’s 10 Euros/US Dollars!)

VISA 15 Days: 10 USD.

VISA 30 Days: 35 Euros / 37 USD / 115.000 MGA.

VISA 60 Days : 40 Euros / 45 USD / 135.000 MGA

Maximum stay covered by the visa issued at the airport: 60 days.
Tourists may apply to the immigration service to have their tourist visa extended up to 90 days. The visa for a single entry and stay in Madagascar is delivered by diplomatic and consular instances or by the landing airport. The application for a single entry and stay in Madagascar is done upon arrival at the airport. The Visa is payable upon arrival at the airport of Antananarivo.

Filling In The Immigration Form for Madagascar

I was on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to Ivato Antananarivo in Madagascar and the airline staff gave me the immigration form during the flight. If they don’t give it to you, ask them for it. I filled it all in during the flight so I was ready to go on arrival.

Arrival In Madagascar at Ivato Antananarivo International Airport

I arrived into Madagascar at Ivato Antananarivo International Airport which is located only 10 miles north west of the capital city, so it’s pretty handy.

The first check is for –

1.COVID vaccination certificate.
2.Yellow Fever certificate.

You must have BOTH and BOTH were checked. I have three COVID vaccinations and a lifetime Yellow Fever vaccination. If you don’t have the COVID vaccinations, you will need to check for other requirements. They are probably PCR test loyal but I didn’t check. After that check, you go to a booth to pay $10 USD for the visa and they give you a print out that looks like this. I paid the USD in cash (as I always carry USD).

After the payment and that visa authorisation form, you join another queue for the visa itself, so basically it’s three queues –

1.Vaccination check.
2.Visa payment and issuing of visa authorisation.
3.Visa placement into passport.

The Visa for me was $10 US as I was staying for less than 15 days. The visa looks like this –

After that, it’s baggage reclaim and custom checks. Though I’m hand luggage loyal and only and am always nothing to declare, so I walked straight through.

Here I was met by my driver Nolavy who was taking me to the Hotel Sakamanga, a quirky wee place in the capital city – Antananarivo.

I also didn’t change money at the airport, nor take out any from the airport ATMs. I came equipped with lots of foreign currencies and then Nolavy told me that there’s a place opposite the airport with a better exchange rate than either the airport or Hotel Sakamanga so we headed there to change the money from US Dollars/Euros/ Northern Irish pounds into Madagascar Ariary.

I was to become a millionaire instantly as £182 Northern Irish pounds is 1,000,000 Ariary. When I compared it to Polish zlotych, it was even stranger that 1 zlotych was 1000 Ariary, almost exactly so it was easy for me to work out the price of things here!