Kenya eTA 2026: $30, Plus the New $44 Insurance Requirement

The eTA in one paragraph

Kenya no longer issues traditional tourist visas; instead, travelers apply online for an electronic Travel Authorisation (eTA) before departure. You apply on the official government portal (etakenya.go.ke), upload a passport photo page and selfie, share your travel details and accommodation, pay the US$30 fee, add the travel health insurance that has been compulsory since October 2026, and typically receive approval by email within 24 to 72 hours. Print it or keep the PDF on your phone for check-in and arrival.

It is a single-entry authorisation. You must enter Kenya within 90 days of it being issued, and the length of stay you are given is set by the officer on arrival — up to 90 days for most visitors. Those are two different clocks and people conflate them constantly, so there is a section on it below.

You can apply up to 90 days ahead, and you must apply at least three days before departure — though a week or two of margin is still the comfortable choice, because processing slows at seasonal peaks. Citizens of most African countries are now exempt and enter visa-free; everyone else, including children and infants on their own passports, needs one. Exemption lists have changed more than once since launch, so check yours on the portal before you book flights.

What it costs, all in

The headline number is US$30, and it has not changed. What has changed is that it is no longer the whole bill: since October 2026 the compulsory travel health insurance adds US$44, so budget about US$74 per traveller.

There is no family rate and no child discount. Nairobi airport’s own guidance is explicit that there is no reduced fee for minors, and infants are not an exception — if they hold a passport, they need their own application and their own payment. A family of four is four applications and roughly US$296 before anyone has left home.

New since October 2026: mandatory travel insurance

This is the change that catches people out, and it is only weeks old. Since 6 October 2026 you cannot complete an eTA application without travel health insurance that meets Kenya’s minimum cover, and the portal sells you a policy during the application for US$44 per traveller.

The policy runs for twelve months from purchase and covers repeat trips inside that window, which is genuinely useful if you are coming back. It is bought through the eTA portal if you are eTA-eligible, or through eCitizen if your nationality applies there instead.

The requirement had a bumpy birth: a Kenyan court suspended the rollout in late August 2026, the High Court then dismissed that petition, and the portal switched it on in October. It is in force now.

Does your own travel insurance count?

Honest answer: nobody can tell you reliably yet, and you should be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise a few weeks into a rollout this contested.

Kenya’s Ministry of Health said in August 2026 that insurance bought in your home country may be used provided it meets the benefit floor above, with proof uploaded as part of the application. But immigration specialists describe the cover as obtainable only through the government-sanctioned provider, and Kenyan travel-trade bodies have been told plainly that foreign policies will not satisfy the requirement. Those two positions cannot both be right, and the operational guidance that would settle it has not been published.

What we tell our own guests: buy the US$44 policy in the portal. It is the one route nobody disputes, it is cheap next to the cost of a safari, and it removes any argument at the immigration desk. Keep your existing travel insurance as well — the Kenyan minimum is a floor, not real cover, and US$20,000 of medical benefit is not much if something serious happens a long way from Nairobi.

How long it lasts, and how long you can stay

These are two separate things and almost every confused question we get about the eTA comes from mixing them up.

The first clock is validity: once approved, you must enter Kenya within 90 days. If your trip slips beyond that window the authorisation lapses and you apply again, so do not apply the moment you start daydreaming — apply once your flights are booked.

The second clock is your permitted stay, and it is not decided by the portal. The officer at the desk sets it on arrival and stamps it in your passport, up to 90 days for most visitors. African nationals are typically given around two months and EAC citizens up to six. Look at what you were actually given rather than assuming ninety days: the stamp is the rule, not the website.

If you need longer once you are here, visitor stays can usually be extended at an Immigration office to a total of 180 days. That is a straightforward office visit rather than a new application, but it is not automatic and it is not something to leave until the afternoon your stamp expires.

Who does not need one

The exemption list has grown and it is the single most out-of-date thing on most travel sites. Since 2025, nationals of most African countries enter Kenya without an eTA — the notable exclusions being Libya and Somalia. Citizens of the East African Community partner states (Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda) need nothing beyond a national ID or passport, and are admitted for up to six months.

Airside transit is also exempt. If you change planes at JKIA without clearing immigration you need no authorisation at all. The moment you leave the airport — a layover tour, a hotel, a transfer across town — you need an approved eTA, so if you have any intention of seeing Nairobi between flights, apply.

Everyone else needs one, and the list moves. Check your own nationality on the portal before you book flights, not after.

Applying: what to have ready, and the order to do it in

Have these to hand before you start and the whole thing takes under fifteen minutes: a passport valid at least six months beyond arrival with a blank page; a clear photo of its bio page; a recent selfie or passport-style photograph; your flight numbers; your first night’s accommodation; and a payment card. If you are travelling with us, your safari confirmation covers the accommodation and itinerary fields — just ask and we will send it.

Do it in this order. Book your flights first, because the application wants real flight numbers and the 90-day validity clock starts at approval. Apply as a single session for the whole party rather than one person at a time, and have every passport open in front of you. Pay, then wait for the email — do not start a second application because the first has not arrived within the hour.

For children, carry birth certificates as well as passports. Minors are a common source of secondary questions at the desk, and the documentation settles them instantly.

Use only the official portal. Search results are full of third-party lookalikes charging two or three times the fee for pasting your details into the same government form, and some of them are indistinguishable from the real thing at a glance. The address is etakenya.go.ke and nothing else is it. If you book with us, we send a step-by-step guide with your confirmation and sanity-check your documents before you fly.

One trap worth naming: pages saying under-16s are visa-exempt. That was true under the old visa regime and some embassy pages still carry it, but Nairobi airport’s own eTA guidance is explicit that every traveller including infants needs their own approved eTA at the full fee. Budget for the children.

Kenya and Tanzania together, and the East Africa Tourist Visa

This is the part that saves our guests money, and almost nothing written about the eTA mentions it. The eTA is single entry — but if you leave Kenya temporarily for an East African Community partner state, it stays valid for your return. Tanzania is an EAC member. So a Kenya, Tanzania, Kenya safari does not need a second Kenya eTA, and you should not let anyone sell you one.

What you do need for the Tanzanian leg is a Tanzanian visa, which is a separate system at around US$50 and available on arrival. Tanzania also has its own insurance requirement now, so treat the two countries as two sets of paperwork and do not assume anything bought for one covers the other.

If your trip takes in Uganda or Rwanda rather than Tanzania, look at the East Africa Tourist Visa instead: US$100, multiple entry, 90 days, covering Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda on one document with no nationality restrictions. It is better value than three separate authorisations and simpler at every border. Two caveats — it is non-extendable, and it does not cover Tanzania, which is the mistake people make when they hear "East Africa".

If it is delayed or refused

Most approvals land inside 24 to 72 hours. If yours has not arrived after three working days, check your spam folder and the status page on the portal before contacting anyone, because the overwhelming majority of missing approvals are sitting in a junk filter.

Refusals are uncommon for ordinary tourism and almost always traceable to the application rather than the applicant: a passport with under six months left, a blurred or cropped bio-page photo, a name spelled differently from the passport, mismatched flight dates, or an accommodation field left vague. Fix the error and reapply; a refusal is not a ban.

What you should not do is fly on an unapproved application and hope. There is no visa counter at JKIA and no cash-on-arrival fallback for eTA nationals — the airline will usually stop you at check-in, which is the better of the two places to find out.

This is the practical argument for applying two weeks out rather than three days. Three days is the legal minimum; it leaves you no room to be refused for a bad photograph.

Arrival and onward travel

At Nairobi’s JKIA, immigration matches your passport to the eTA — no visa counters, no cash-on-arrival. Have the PDF accessible rather than buried in an inbox, and know your first night’s address; both get asked for.

Check the stamp before you walk away from the desk. It carries the stay you have actually been granted, and it is the number that matters if anything about your dates changes later.

Rules evolve — fees, validity windows, exemptions and now insurance have all shifted since the eTA launched — so treat the official portal as the source of truth close to your travel date, and treat any page that has not been updated this year, including the stale embassy pages, with suspicion.