Good news everyone, which from the title you should have already worked out, TURKMENISTAN IS OPEN FOR TOURISTS! From the 1 st of March 2023, foreign passport holders will be allowed to enter Turkmenistan on a tourist visa.
The Turkmenistan State Migration Services have not announced how the visa process will work exactly, although it would be quite strange if it was dramatically different from the old system. In the next few days they will clarify how the visa process will work. This doesn’t really affect tourist visa applicants though, as once you send us your documents, we do the rest of the work for you anyway.
Turkmenistan was one of the earliest countries to close during the COVID pandemic, closing their borders in February 2020. When most people still hadn’t heard of COVID! Quite early on (still in 2020), they announced that it was unlikely they would open their borders before the first half of 2023, and they’ve kept their word!
The government also hasn’t announced yet what the status with land borders will be. As has been suggested during the last 12 months, it is unlikely the land borders will open straight away, with Turkmenistan taking cautious steps by only opening up to air transport at first.
We also need to clarify what COVID expectations will be. Quarantine was dropped a few months ago for those travelling to Turkmenistan, which at the time was restricted to Turkmenistan passport holders, business and official visas. From what has been suggested by authorities, negative testing will be required and vaccination, but no quarantine.
The chance of approval or rejection is also something we will be learning in the next few days, but the most important thing is that after more than 3 long years, our favourite destination, somewhere we have always been extremely proud of, the first country we ever started working in will be open for business!
If you are itching to get to Turkmenistan contact us at [email protected] !
Check out all our Turkmenistan tours here.
