Travel guides

Paraguay entry requirements by nationality

Paraguay is one of the easier South American countries to enter, but “easy” is not the same as “no rules”. Two questions decide your trip: whether your nationality needs a visa, and which document the officer at the control post will accept.

The short answer

If you hold a passport from Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel or anywhere in South America, you almost certainly do not need a visa for a tourist stay of up to 90 days. If your passport is African or from most of Asia, you almost certainly do. The official table is what settles it, and the numbers below come straight from it.

Two questions, not one

Every conversation we have about entering Paraguay collapses into two separate questions that people tend to merge into one. The first is whether your nationality needs a visa. The second is which physical document the officer will accept at the control post. They have different answers and different sources, and getting the first one right does not help if you turn up with the wrong piece of plastic.

The visa question is answered by one table. The Dirección Nacional de Migraciones publishes it at migraciones.gov.py, split into five regional blocks: the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and a short “others” list. Each row is a country, and each has a column headed “visa for entry as a tourist”. It reads either REQUIERE VISA or NO REQUIERE VISA. We counted the rows on 25 September 2026: 188 in total, 116 requiring a visa and 72 not.

The document question is answered by a different page, the migration requirements for entry and exit. For a foreigner on a transitory stay, which is what a tourist is, in the wording of the law, it asks for a valid passport, or a valid national identity document from your country of origin, and that second option is only open to citizens of the Mercosur bloc.

Everything below is that pair of official documents, read carefully and turned into the answer you actually need. We add our own numbers only where the subject is ours: what it costs to be driven from the airport or across a border once you are in.

How the official table breaks down by region

Rows in the visa table published by migraciones.gov.py, counted on 25 September 2026. The column counted is the one headed “visa for entry as a tourist”.

The single African row that is visa-free is South Africa, under a 1994 agreement. The three in “others” are Australia, New Zealand and the laissez-passer issued by the United Nations. These are row counts in the official table, not a count of the worlds countries.

The shape of that table is the real story. If you are reading this from Europe or the Americas, the odds are heavily in your favour: 56 of the 79 rows across those two blocks are visa-free. If you are reading it from Africa, 53 of the 54 rows require a visa, and the honest advice is to start at the consulate months before you start looking at flights.

Asia sits in between and is the block where assumptions fail most often. Japan, Israel, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Georgia are visa-free for 90 days. India, Indonesia and Thailand require a visa. South Korea and Singapore are visa-free but for 30 days, not 90, a difference that catches people who planned a two-month trip.

The nationalities we are asked about most

Taken row by row from the official table on 25 September 2026. The right-hand column is the legal instrument the table itself cites.

The table has a second column we are not summarising here, headed “visa for extension of stay, residence or gainful activity”. For almost every country on this list it reads REQUIERE VISA, the Mercosur members being the exception. Visa-free as a tourist does not mean visa-free to work or to stay on.

One row on that list deserves to be read twice. For the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand the official table does not just say “no visa”: it says the instrument is Law 7314 of 13 August 2024 and that it is “válido hasta: 13/08/2027”. This is a temporary suppression with an expiry date printed on it. Whether it gets renewed is a political decision and not one we can forecast, so if you are reading this near or after August 2027, check the table again rather than trusting this paragraph.

The other thing worth noticing is what the Mercosur rows do not have: a day limit. Where the European and North American rows say “up to 90 days”, the Argentine, Brazilian and Uruguayan rows simply say NO REQUIERE VISA, in both the tourism column and the residence column. That is the deepest difference in the whole table, and it is why our Brazilian passengers cross for a day of shopping with nothing but an ID card in their pocket.

What actually happens at the control post

The sequence is the same at Silvio Pettirossi airport and at a land bridge. Only the queue is different.

1. 1
   

   Have the right document in your hand

   A valid passport works for every nationality. A national identity card works only if you are a citizen of a Mercosur member or associate: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. A receipt for a document still being issued is explicitly not accepted.

2. 2
   

   Present the visa if your nationality needs one

   The table calls it a “Visa Consular o En Arribo”, issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If your row says REQUIERE VISA, this is not something the driver, the airline or the officer can improvise for you at the counter.

3. 3
   

   Register the entry, and pay nothing

   Migraciones states plainly that the migration registration is a free procedure, done in person, only at authorised control posts and only in front of accredited officials. Nobody should be charging you to be stamped in.

4. 4
   

   Check what they wrote before you walk away

   You get a Comprobante de Entrada al País: a stamp in the passport or a card handed over by the officer. Migraciones urges travellers to verify the data and the length of stay granted at that moment, and states that later complaints will not be admitted.

5. 5
   

   Keep that slip until you leave

   It is on the exit checklist as a required item. Losing it is not a paperwork annoyance: the same fine that applies to overstaying applies to turning up at the exit without your entry proof.

Step four is the one people skip, and it is the only one that is genuinely irreversible. The officer decides the length of stay granted, up to the 90-day maximum, and if your travel document is close to expiring Migraciones says the stay will be shortened to match it. If your passport expires in six weeks you may be given six weeks, not ninety days, and you will only find that out by reading the stamp.

Step five costs nothing and saves the most. A stamp inside the passport is safe. A loose paper card is not, and a loose paper card is what you get at several land crossings.

What it costs, and what it costs to get wrong

All of this is set by Paraguayan law, not by us. The figures are those published by Migraciones on 25 September 2026.

• Registering your entry and exit: free. Migraciones describes it as “un trámite gratuito”, done in person at the control post. There is no arrival tax and no reciprocity fee for any nationality in the current table.
• Length of stay: up to 90 consecutive days. The exact wording is a maximum of ninety consecutive days, extendable once at the request of the traveller, for no longer than the period first granted, at the discretion of Migraciones.
• Extending it: at the Central Office, before your days run out. The application for an extension or a change of category has to be filed before the granted period expires. After that, Migraciones applies the fines and penalties set out in the law. We do not publish the fee, because it sits in their schedule of charges and is not ours to quote.
• Overstaying: Gs. 669,012. That is the amount set by Law 6984/2022, described as the equivalent of six days of the minimum daily wage. It applies to adults and minors alike.
• Losing your entry slip: the same Gs. 669,012. The law treats failing to present your entry proof on the way out exactly as it treats overstaying.
• Paying the fine: cash, in guaranies. Migraciones states the payment is made only in cash and that foreign currency is not accepted, and tells travellers to demand the receipt. Bring guaranies or be prepared to find them at the border.
• Paraguayan nationals are never fined for migration procedures inside the country. Expired Paraguayan documents are accepted for entry but not for exit, which is a rule worth knowing if you hold dual nationality.
• A resident with an expired residence card is not fined either. They are formally notified to regularise their situation and may re-enter under any of the transitory categories.

Travelling with children

This is where the rules genuinely differ depending on who you are, and where most of the bad information on the internet lives. Migraciones publishes a separate set of requirements for minors, and the key distinction is between a minor who is Paraguayan or resident in Paraguay and a minor who is a foreign visitor.

For a foreign, non-resident child entering the country, the official table asks for a valid passport or a valid national identity document from the country of origin, the visa if the nationality requires one, and a birth certificate or family record book, that last item stated as required for children from Mercosur countries. There is no judicial travel authorisation on that row.

For Paraguayan children and for foreign children resident in Paraguay, there is one, and it is not a formality. In its notice of 18 July 2025 Migraciones set out that the authorisation to travel abroad is processed at the local Juzgado de Paz, must be signed by both parents or legal guardians, must be properly legalised, and must state the destination, the purpose of the trip and its duration. It is needed when the child travels without one of the parents, alone, or with a third party. Where one parent has died, the original birth certificate plus the death certificate is what replaces the signature.

The practical reading for a visiting family is short: your children need the same documents you do, plus their birth certificate if you are coming from a Mercosur country. The practical reading for a Paraguayan or resident family is longer, and the Juzgado de Paz does not work at the speed of a departure gate. Start weeks ahead.

Yellow fever: the one health rule that is still in force

From the official page of migration and health requirements, checked on 25 September 2026.

• Who it applies to. Nationals and foreigners alike, aged 1 to 59, who are arriving from or heading to one of the Brazilian states currently classified as a risk zone by PAHO/WHO.
• What is required. The International Certificate of Vaccination against Yellow Fever, and the page is explicit that it is demanded both on entry and on exit.
• Where you get it in Paraguay. Issued by the Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare, free of charge, and it does not need to be endorsed.
• Which Brazilian states count. We are not publishing that list. It is classified by PAHO/WHO, it changes, and a stale list here would be worse than none. Check it with the health authority before you travel.
• Why this matters more than it looks. The most popular route we drive is Asuncion to Foz do Iguacu, which is precisely a trip that arrives from or heads to Brazil. If you are doing that leg, this is the rule to check, not the visa one.
• COVID-19. The block of covid requirements on that same official page is dated 29 November 2021 and the page itself warns the requirements “may undergo constant variations”. We are not republishing 2021 rules as if they were current. Confirm with the official source if it concerns you.

What we charge once you are through the control post

Our own prices, per vehicle and not per passenger, with fuel, tolls and the driver included. Current from August 2026.

A 30 per cent deposit holds the date and the vehicle, by card, bank transfer, digital wallet or crypto, with the balance due on the day. Luggage is three suitcases in the sedan and one per passenger in the H1. For the airport, one suitcase per passenger is included and each extra one is USD 5, with 30 minutes of free waiting and USD 10 per hour after that.

Note which legs have a border on them and which do not, because it changes the document you need in the car. Asuncion to Ciudad del Este is 327 km entirely inside Paraguay, 4 h 30 min to 5 h, with no immigration control at all. Asuncion to Foz do Iguacu is 340 km and 5 to 6 h precisely because there is a border on it, and the full detail of that crossing is in our guide to the Brazil–Paraguay border.

Asuncion to Puerto Iguazu is the one with two controls, Paraguay to Brazil and then Brazil to Argentina, which is why 350 km takes 5 h 30 min to 6 h 30 min. If Argentina is on your itinerary, the four ways of crossing into Argentina from Paraguay is the piece to read next. And the 340 km to Foz is priced and timed on our Asuncion to Foz do Iguacu distance page.

Four things we deliberately do not tell you

Where we are not certain, we say how to check rather than risk a number. This is a subject where a wrong figure gets someone turned back at a border.

• Whether Philippines, Malaysia, Mongolia and Venezuela need a visa. The official table contradicts itself on these four: different copies of the same page show different answers, some citing decrees from December 2025. We are not picking a side. Confirm with a Paraguayan consulate.
• Whether the CHINA/TAIWAN row covers mainland China, Taiwan or both. The table uses a single row with that label and a 2017 decree, and does not disambiguate. If you hold either passport, ask the consulate rather than reading the row optimistically.
• Which Brazilian states are yellow fever risk zones today. PAHO and the WHO classify them, the classification changes, and it is not ours to freeze in a blog post.
• How long the queue is at any given crossing. It changes daily with the calendar, the exchange rate and the hour. What we can control is the departure time, which is why our long runs leave early.
• Third-party prices. Buses, airlines, border taxis and the extension-of-stay fee are not ours to set and change without notice.
• Your case. We drive people; we are not a consulate and we do not file immigration paperwork. The row in the table that matters is the one with your passport on it, and the consulate is the body that confirms it.

When a private transfer earns its price, and when it does not

Both columns are true. Which one is yours depends on the trip, not on the sales pitch.

When you should not hire us

If your nationality needs a visa for Paraguay, nothing on this page helps you until that is solved, and we cannot solve it. We are a transfer operator. The driver carries the vehicle and driver paperwork in order, knows the crossing and knows which lane moves, but he does not file your visa, does not vouch for your documents and cannot shorten the queue. Book the consulate first and us second.

If you are one person on a tight budget with time to spare, the bus is the right answer and we will say so. Asuncion to Ciudad del Este is about 5 hours by bus against our 4 h 30 min to 5 h, and the per-person difference is large. Asuncion to Foz is 6 to 8 hours with a change against our 5 to 6 h. Where the gap is that narrow and the price gap that wide, the bus wins on merit.

If you live here, an airport run is not something you need to outsource to us at USD 49. And if your plan is to walk across the Friendship Bridge for the afternoon, there is nothing for a vehicle to do.

We earn our price in the specific cases where the arithmetic or the clock turns: three or more passengers splitting one vehicle, 327 to 370 kilometres of road ahead of you, a border in the middle of the itinerary, real luggage, children, or a fixed hour you have to hit. Outside those, you would be paying for a certainty you do not need, and the passenger who overpays once does not come back, which is a worse outcome for us than the fare we lost.

Frequently asked questions

The questions we are actually asked on WhatsApp before people book.

Check your row, then tell us where you are going

The visa question has one correct source and it is not a blog. Find your country in the official table, then send us the date, the passenger count and the route, and we will come back with a fixed price per vehicle and the real driving time.

All entry requirements on this page come from the Dirección Nacional de Migraciones of Paraguay at migraciones.gov.py, the visa table, the entry and exit requirements for adults and minors, and the health requirements page, all checked on 25 September 2026. They are not ours to set, they change without notice, and the consulate is what confirms your case. Our prices are per vehicle in US dollars, current from August 2026, with fuel, tolls and the driver included.