Morocco visa: who needs one, and how long you get

Morocco divides the world into three groups, and which one you are in decides how much of your week is spent on paperwork. The largest group walks in without a visa and stays for ninety days. A second group, ten nationalities so far, applies for an e-Visa on a website. Everyone else goes to a consulate, unless they already hold a visa or residence permit from somewhere else that Morocco recognises.

It is worth knowing which group you are in before you book anything, because the answer changes the order of your planning. A visa is not something you can arrange in the week you fly if it needs a consulate appointment, and it is not something you need to think about at all if it does not.

Which group your passport puts you in

The visa-exempt list is long and mostly European and Western, with a few others. It covers all the members of the European Union, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, plus all six Gulf states, plus the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Russia, China, Tunisia and Turkey are on it too, along with a run of smaller countries that the consulate publishes in full.

Then there are the ten nationalities that can apply for an e-Visa directly, without further documents: Benin, Brunei, Cambodia, Guatemala, India, Israel, Jordan, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. And then there is everyone else, who needs a visa issued by a consulate in advance.

One door is open to that last group. If you hold a valid visa or a residence permit from the Schengen area, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand or the United Arab Emirates, you can apply for a conditional e-Visa rather than going to a consulate. There is a catch that matters: only a visa physically stamped in the passport or a physical residence card is accepted, so a residence permit stored as a digital authorisation will not carry the application on its own. Citizens of Iran, Kosovo, Palestine, Syria, Taiwan and Tuvalu cannot use the e-Visa route at all.

The e-Visa, and what it takes

The e-Visa system opened on 10 July 2022, and it did what these systems usually do: moved a queue from a consulate window to a browser form. You apply on the official portal, give passport details, travel dates and the address you will be staying at, pay, and travel with the approval. Do not buy a version of it from an agent who is not the Moroccan government; the portal is the one that exists.

Ninety days, and what happens after them

Ninety days is the standard grant, and it is a generous one: a fortnight in Marrakesh and a week in the desert does not come close. A small number of countries on the exempt list get sixty or thirty days instead, so if you are planning a long stay on a passport that is not Western European, American or Japanese, check the exact figure before you build an itinerary around it.

To stay longer, the procedure is local. The British Foreign Office advice is that a longer visit requires an extension requested at a Moroccan police station, and the practical part of that is timing: go before the ninety days run out, take the passport with its entry stamp, and take something showing where you are staying. This is also where the entry stamp stops being a formality. Travellers who arrived without one have had difficulty leaving the country, so check that the officer stamped the page before you walk away from the desk.

What the border asks for

The passport rule is the one people get wrong. Your passport must have an expiry date at least three months after the date you arrive, which is less than the six months that many countries ask for and more than a passport about to expire can offer. Damaged passports are a real risk rather than a theoretical one: the Moroccan authorities have refused entry to travellers carrying them, so a passport with a cracked spine or a watermark through the photograph is worth renewing before the trip, not after.

Two more things come up at the border. Foreign currency worth 100,000 dirham or more, which is around £8,000, has to be declared when you enter or leave. And if you are arriving from a country where polio is present, you need a certificate to prove you have been vaccinated. Both are unusual enough that most visitors never meet them; both are unpleasant to discover at the desk.

Transit, and the long layover

Changing planes at Casablanca is simpler than the visa question makes it sound. Transit without a visa is allowed for every nationality at Mohammed V airport, as long as you stay inside the international transit area and your onward flight leaves within twenty-four hours. The moment you need to collect a bag, change airports or leave the transit area, you are entering Morocco, and your passport’s normal rules apply.

Long connections have their own arrangement. Passengers on Royal Air Maroc with a layover of between eight and twenty-four hours may be given a temporary entry permit for accommodation provided by the airline, with Nigerian citizens the exception, since they need a visa to leave the transit zone. Beyond twenty-four hours, a transit visa is the usual answer, and it runs to seventy-two hours. Anyone who wants to spend a long connection seeing the city needs a tourist visa or an e-Visa instead.

Before you fly, and after you land

The visa is the paperwork for the border. There is a second piece of paperwork, and it happens on the same day: a Moroccan SIM card is registered against an identity document, and for a visitor that means the passport, presented in person at the counter. What a Moroccan SIM card involves sets out how long that takes and what it costs, and a travel eSIM avoids the counter entirely, because our Morocco plans arrive installed and need no registration at all.

The rules here are the ones in force in September 2026, and they change: countries are added to the exempt list, and the new travel authorisation is being widened. Your own government’s travel advice and the Moroccan consulate are the two places that stay current, and neither of them is a blog written three years ago.