Short answer
Kenya replaced its visa with an Electronic Travel Authorisation. Pakistan is not on any exemption list, so a Pakistani passport holder applies for an eTA on the government portal before travelling. The published fee is USD 30 for a standard eTA allowing one entry, processing is typically three working days, and an approved eTA is valid for travel within 90 days of issuance. It does not guarantee entry: admissibility is determined at the point of entry.
Do Pakistanis need a visa or an eTA for Kenya?
An eTA. Kenya moved away from the old visa stamp to an electronic travel authorisation applied for online before departure, and the requirement reaches further than most travellers expect.
What the official portal says
The Republic of Kenya’s eTA portal states that all visitors including infants and children who intend to travel to the Republic of Kenya must have an approved Electronic Travel Authorisation before the start of their journey. There are published exemption categories, and Pakistan is not in any of them.
The portal also says all travellers to Kenya are required to submit information prior to departure, and that failure to comply may lead to being denied boarding or a penalty fee on arrival. In other words, this is not a formality you can sort out when you land.
Where the application lives
The official site is etakenya.go.ke, run by the Republic of Kenya. Every figure on this page comes from that portal, from the Directorate of Immigration Services, or from an official Kenyan notice, and the review date at the top of this guide is the day those pages were checked.
If you are comparing destinations on the continent, the Egypt visit visa guide and the Morocco visit visa guide set out two very different routes for a Pakistani traveller, one through an embassy and one through a conditional online system.
Which eTA do you need, and what does it cost?
The portal publishes its categories and prices openly, which makes this one of the easier applications to sanity-check against an agent’s quote.
| Category | What it allows | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Transit eTA | Travellers on a transit flight through Kenya | USD 20 |
| Standard eTA | Entry into Kenya once | USD 30 |
| One year multi-entry eTA | Multiple entries over one year | USD 300 |
| Five year multi-entry eTA | Listed for American nationals visiting multiple times over five years | USD 185 |
| East African Tourist eTA | Listed on the portal as coming soon | Not yet published |
The standard eTA is one entry
The portal describes the standard eTA as allowing entry into Kenya once. If your itinerary leaves Kenya and comes back, for example a few days in Tanzania in the middle of a safari, that is a second entry and the standard eTA does not cover it. Draw the route before you pay.
The fee is not the whole total
An official FAQ notes that the single entry fee is charged per traveller plus payment and other charges. So read the total on the payment screen rather than assuming USD 30 is the final figure, and keep the receipt with your travel documents.
Per traveller, including infants
Because every visitor including a baby needs an approved eTA, a family of five is five applications and five fees. That surprises people planning a family safari, and it is worth putting into the budget early rather than discovering it at the payment screen.
The 90-day window is about travel, not stay
This is the most misread line in the whole process. The portal says the eTA is valid for travel within 90 days from the date of issuance. That is the window in which you must begin your journey. It is not permission to spend 90 days in Kenya.
What that means in practice
- Apply after your dates are fixed, not months in advance.
- If the trip is postponed beyond the window, expect a new application and a new fee.
- The window runs from issuance, not from the day you applied.
- Check the dates on the approval the day it arrives, while there is still time to act.
I have seen the equivalent mistake in half a dozen countries’ systems. Someone applies early to be safe, the trip moves by a month, and the approval they were being careful with has expired.
How long can you actually stay in Kenya?
The portal does not publish a fixed stay for the standard eTA. It says the duration of your stay is determined at the point of entry. The officer decides, and what is written on entry is what you have.
Where the published stay periods come from
You will see 90 days, 60 days and 180 days quoted for Kenya, and all three are real, but they belong to the exemption categories rather than to an eTA. The portal lists nationals of certain countries as exempt for a period not exceeding 90 days, nationals of certain African countries for up to 60 days, and citizens of the East African Partner States for up to 180 days. A Pakistani traveller is in none of those groups.
Extensions
The Directorate of Immigration Services operates an extension of visitor’s pass application and states that a foreign national may extend a visitor’s pass to a maximum of six months upon application in the prescribed manner. An application is not an entitlement. Build the trip around the stay you are granted, and treat an extension as a contingency.
What does the eTA application ask for?
Less than a Schengen file, more than the three-field forms some countries use. The portal lists what you need before you start.
The published requirements
- Passport. A minimum of six months validity with at least one blank page.
- Photograph. A selfie or passport-style photograph.
- Contact details. Your own, as the portal asks for them.
- Travel itinerary. How you are arriving and leaving.
- Accommodation booking. Where you will stay.
- Payment method. A card that will work for an international charge.
The portal adds that additional documents depend on your travel purpose. A business visitor and a safari tourist are not asked the same questions, so read the prompts on your own application rather than working from a list someone else used last year.
The blank page rule catches people
A passport with months of validity left can still be full. Count the blank pages before you apply, because a renewal after the eTA is approved means the approval is tied to a passport you no longer carry, and that is a new application.
What to carry even though you did not upload it
Funds. The portal does not publish a figure a visitor must hold, and there is no magic number to hit, but the officer at the border can ask. Carry a recent bank statement in your own name with ordinary activity, your employer’s leave letter or your business registration papers, and your confirmed return ticket.
Who is exempt from the Kenya eTA?
The exemption list is specific, and reading it is the fastest way to confirm that a Pakistani passport is not on it.
The published categories
- holders of Kenyan permanent residence, valid work permits and passes;
- holders of Kenyan re-entry passes;
- citizens of the East African Partner States, named as Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, for up to 180 days;
- nationals of listed countries for up to 90 days, and nationals of listed African countries for up to 60 days;
- transit passengers who remain within the airport precincts, or on the same ship;
- crew members listed on crew manifests;
- owners of private aircraft refuelling in Kenya who stay within the airport precincts;
- holders of specified international laissez-passers travelling on official business;
- holders of specified diplomatic, official or service passports from certain countries;
- serving members of the British Military.
An ordinary Pakistani passport holder going on holiday or to see family falls into none of those. Apply for the eTA, and be wary of anyone who tells you a Pakistani traveller can land without one.
The eTA does not settle entry
The portal is unusually blunt about this, and it is worth quoting because it changes how you should pack. The possession of an eTA is not the final authority to enter the Republic of Kenya. Admissibility will be determined at the point of entry.
What that means for a traveller
An approved eTA gets you a boarding pass and gets you to the counter. The officer at the counter forms a view about whether you are a genuine visitor, and decides how long to admit you for. Everything you can control sits in the file you carry and the consistency of your answers.
What to have in your hand luggage
- the printed eTA approval;
- return or onward ticket;
- accommodation booking, or the host’s address and contact number;
- bank statement, and a sponsor’s statement and letter if someone else is paying;
- employer’s leave letter, or business papers;
- any tour or safari booking confirmations.
Questions worth being ready for
- Why are you visiting Kenya, and for how long?
- Where are you staying?
- When do you fly home?
- Who is paying for the trip?
- What work do you do in Pakistan?
- Do you know anyone in Kenya?
Short and true, matching the application you submitted and the documents in your bag. The traveller who gives a different reason for the trip at the border than on the form creates the only real problem in an otherwise ordinary arrival.
Work, overstay and why they matter later
An eTA authorises a visit. Work in Kenya needs the correct permit, applied for through the Directorate of Immigration Services, normally by an employer, before travel.
The job that starts on an eTA
The offer sounds plausible: fly in on the eTA, start work, and the permit will be sorted from inside. It is the same arrangement sold for half a dozen other countries and it fails the same way, because the permit was never available on that basis. The person who loses money and status is the traveller, not the person who sold the plan.
Overstaying
Your permitted stay is what the officer writes on entry, not what an agent told you. Staying beyond it puts you in breach of Kenyan immigration law and creates a record that follows you, because visa forms in other countries ask whether you have ever breached immigration rules anywhere. If circumstances change while you are in Kenya, apply for an extension before the pass expires rather than after.
What happens at the Pakistani airport before you fly?
FIA immigration officers check that your passport and travel authorisation are genuine and valid, and may ask about the purpose of the trip. Visit travellers should carry a return ticket, accommodation details and proof of funds.
What FIA says it checks
FIA’s published FAQ lists these for visit visa travellers: a valid passport, a return ticket, a confirmed hotel booking with advance payment, and sufficient funds. Its Travellers’ Guide says officers ask questions to confirm your identity and the authenticity of your passport and visa, and that a second officer re-checks the documents before you enter the departure lounge.
If you are offloaded
FIA’s guide says the shift in-charge will personally tell an offloaded passenger the reasons, and that if your passport and visa are genuine and valid, with no apparent misdeclaration of facts, immigration staff are not authorised to offload you. FIA’s helplines are 1991 and 051-111-345-786.
The protector requirement for work
Under the Emigration Ordinance 1979, every Pakistani going abroad on a work visa must be protected by the Protector of Emigrants, which involves a Foreign Service Agreement with the employer or a licensed Overseas Employment Promoter. FIA lists a protector stamp among the documents for work visa travellers, not for tourists or family visitors. An eTA cannot stand in for that.
Resale sites, fixers and job offers
A USD 30 government application with a mandatory online step is exactly the shape of thing a resale industry grows around. Use the government site and treat everything else with suspicion.
Look-alike eTA websites
The business model is simple: a page that looks official, a price several times USD 30, and the same form filled in on your behalf. Some file it. Some do not. Either way you have paid for something you could have done yourself in twenty minutes.
- Addresses that wrap extra words around the official name instead of the government domain.
- A price far above the published USD 20, USD 30 or USD 300, with no fee breakdown.
- Promises of guaranteed approval, which nobody can give.
- A paid express service the portal does not publish.
- An approval arriving by WhatsApp for an application you never made.
When the approval arrives, check your name, passport number, the category and the dates against your passport. If an agent applied on your behalf, ask for the application reference and verify it on the government portal rather than trusting the PDF you were sent.
The Kenya job package
If an agent sells an eTA, a ticket and a job together, read that as one product and reject it as one product. The eTA does not permit work. A job needs a permit arranged by an employer before travel. The usual warning signs apply.
- The job starts on travel authorisation and the permit follows later.
- No BEOE licence can be shown, and there is no job order.
- You are coached on what to tell FIA.
- Payment is cash with no receipt, or into a personal account.
- Someone holds your original passport.
What Pakistani law says about the recruiter
Only a licensed Overseas Employment Promoter may recruit people in Pakistan for work abroad. Section 22 of the Emigration Ordinance 1979 makes it an offence for anyone else to take money for providing, or pretending to provide, a job abroad. Check the licence with the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment before paying anyone.
The guide to checking a visa consultant in Pakistan sets out the registration and licence checks and where to report fraud. If you have already paid and have doubts, you can book a consultation and bring the receipts and the messages.
How do you apply, step by step?
The order below works for most Pakistani tourists and family visitors. Fix the dates first, because the 90-day travel window runs from approval.
Pick the right eTA category
A holiday or family visit needs the standard eTA, which allows one entry into Kenya. A stopover where you stay inside the airport is a transit eTA. The one-year multiple entry eTA exists for travellers who will return several times within the year.
Check the passport rule before anything else
The portal asks for a passport with a minimum of six months validity and at least one blank page. Renew first if either is short, because the eTA is tied to the passport you apply with and a new passport means applying again.
Gather what the form asks for
You need a photograph or selfie, your contact details, your travel itinerary, an accommodation booking and a payment method. Extra documents depend on the purpose of travel, so read the questions on your own application rather than a generic list.
Apply on the government portal only
Apply on the Republic of Kenya government site at etakenya.go.ke. Type the address yourself rather than following a sponsored search result, because a large resale market has grown around this one application.
Pay the published fee and keep the receipt
The portal lists USD 30 for a standard eTA, USD 20 for a transit eTA and USD 300 for a one-year multiple entry eTA. Payment and other charges can be added at the gateway, so read the total on screen before you confirm, and keep the receipt.
Travel inside the 90-day window with your file
The portal says an approved eTA is valid for travel within 90 days of issuance. Carry the approval, your return ticket, your accommodation booking and proof of funds, because the eTA is not the final authority to enter and admissibility is decided at the point of entry.
What goes wrong most often?
Applying far too early
The eTA is valid for travel within 90 days of issuance. An approval obtained four months before a trip is of no use on the day, and the fee is gone. Fix the dates, then apply.
Reading the 90 days as a stay
It is a travel window. The portal says the duration of stay is determined at the point of entry, and the published 90-day and 60-day stays belong to exemption categories that do not include Pakistan.
Forgetting the infants
Every visitor needs an approved eTA, including children and babies. A family that applied for the adults only is a family with a boarding problem at the airport.
A full passport, or one with five months left
The portal asks for six months validity and at least one blank page. Both are easy to check and expensive to discover late, because a renewal after approval means applying again.
Buying a standard eTA for a multi-country safari
The standard eTA allows entry into Kenya once. A route that crosses into Tanzania and returns needs more than that. Draw the border crossings before choosing the category.
Paying a resale site
The published fees are USD 20, USD 30, USD 300 and USD 185 for the American five-year category. A quote several times higher, with no breakdown, tells you what you are really buying.
A realistic example
This is a hypothetical illustration, not a real client. Imran and Farah live in Karachi with their eight-year-old daughter. They want ten days in Kenya in July: Nairobi, then the Maasai Mara, then home. No border crossings.
- Ten weeks before. They check all three passports. Their daughter’s has four months left, so they renew it first and do nothing else until the new one is in hand.
- Six weeks before. They book the safari and the Nairobi hotel, hold return flights, and count the blank pages in each passport.
- Four weeks before. With dates fixed, they apply on etakenya.go.ke for three standard eTAs, one for each of them including their daughter, and read the total on the payment screen before confirming.
- Three days later. All three approvals arrive. They check each name, passport number and date against the passport, note the 90-day travel window covers their departure, and print two copies of each.
- Before flying. They pack the approvals, the return tickets, the safari and hotel confirmations, Imran’s leave letter and a six-month bank statement.
- At the Kenyan border. Their answers match the application. The officer admits them and writes the stay, and they check what is written before leaving the counter.
Nothing in that is clever. It is a true account with the paperwork to support it, prepared in the right order.
The version that goes wrong
Now imagine Imran’s cousin Shoaib, 26. A man in his neighbourhood offers a Kenya package for PKR 400,000: travel authorisation, a ticket and a job at a logistics firm, permit to be arranged after he lands. There is no BEOE licence, no job order and no receipt, and his passport is kept until departure. He is told to say he is visiting a friend. If FIA’s questions expose the plan, he may not fly. If he flies and the Kenyan officer is not satisfied, he may not be admitted, because the eTA is not the final authority to enter. If he is admitted and starts work, he is working without a permit, and when the pass written on entry runs out, an overstay is added to the money he has already lost.
Key takeaways
- Kenya issues an Electronic Travel Authorisation rather than a tourist visa, and Pakistan is not on any exemption list.
- Every visitor needs an approved eTA before the journey begins, including infants and children, so a family pays per person.
- Published fees are USD 20 transit, USD 30 standard for one entry, USD 300 for one year multi-entry, and USD 185 for the five-year category listed for American nationals.
- Processing is typically three working days, and the portal may take longer in some cases.
- An approved eTA is valid for travel within 90 days of issuance, which is a travel window and not a length of stay.
- The portal asks for six months passport validity with at least one blank page, a photograph, contact details, an itinerary, accommodation and a payment method.
- The eTA is not the final authority to enter: admissibility and the duration of stay are both determined at the point of entry.
Frequently asked questions
Does Kenya still issue visas to Pakistanis?
Kenya moved from visas to an Electronic Travel Authorisation. The official eTA portal says all visitors including infants and children who intend to travel to the Republic of Kenya must have an approved eTA before the start of their journey. Pakistan is not on any of the published exemption lists, so a Pakistani passport holder applies for an eTA.
How much does the Kenya eTA cost?
The official portal lists a transit eTA at USD 20, a standard eTA at USD 30 which allows entry into Kenya once, and a one-year multiple entry eTA at USD 300. A five-year multiple entry eTA at USD 185 is listed for American nationals. An official FAQ notes that payment and other charges can be added on top of the fee.
How long is a Kenya eTA valid?
The portal states that the eTA is valid for travel within 90 days from the date of issuance. That is a travel window, not a length of stay. If your trip slips beyond 90 days from approval, you are looking at a fresh application and a fresh fee, so do not apply months ahead of a trip that is not yet fixed.
How long can I stay in Kenya on an eTA?
The portal does not attach a fixed stay to the standard eTA. It says the duration of your stay is determined at the point of entry, which means the officer decides and writes it in. Published stay periods of 90 days, 60 days and 180 days appear only against the exemption categories, which do not include Pakistan.
How long does the Kenya eTA take?
The portal says processing time is typically three working days, and notes it may take longer in some cases. It also says all travellers are required to submit information prior to departure, and that failing to do so may lead to being denied boarding or a penalty fee on arrival. Apply at least a fortnight before you fly.
What documents does the eTA application need?
The portal lists a valid passport with a minimum of six months validity and at least one blank page, a selfie or passport-style photograph, contact details, a travel itinerary, an accommodation booking and a payment method. It adds that additional documents depend on your travel purpose, so read the prompts on your own application.
Do children and babies need their own eTA?
Yes. The portal is explicit that all visitors including infants and children must have an approved eTA before the start of the journey. There is no family application that covers everyone, so budget a separate fee for each traveller in the group, including a baby in arms.
Does an approved eTA guarantee I will be let into Kenya?
No. The portal states that the possession of an eTA is not the final authority to enter the Republic of Kenya, and that admissibility will be determined at the point of entry. Carry a return ticket, your accommodation booking and evidence of funds, and keep your answers consistent with what you put on the application.
Who is exempt from the Kenya eTA?
The published exemptions cover holders of Kenyan permanent residence, work permits and passes, re-entry pass holders, citizens of the East African Partner States named as Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, certain transit passengers who remain within the airport precincts, crew on a manifest, specified laissez-passer holders and some diplomatic, official and service passport holders. Pakistan is not among them.
Can I extend my stay once I am in Kenya?
The Directorate of Immigration Services operates an extension of visitor’s pass application, and states that a foreign national may extend a visitor’s pass to a maximum of six months upon application in the prescribed manner. That is an application, not an entitlement, so plan a trip that fits the stay you are granted at the border.
Can I work in Kenya on an eTA?
No. An eTA is travel authorisation for a visit. Work in Kenya requires the correct permit, applied for through the Directorate of Immigration Services, normally by an employer, before you travel. Anyone offering a Kenyan job that starts on an eTA, with the permit to follow after arrival, is describing an arrangement whose risk falls entirely on you.
Can Ch. Bilal Rasheed help with a Kenya visit visa?
He offers a paid consultation in Lahore, on WhatsApp or by phone, with general guidance and an immigration advisor’s reading of any agent agreement or job offer you have been shown. No one can guarantee an eTA or entry to Kenya. He is an immigration advisor in Pakistan, not a Kenyan lawyer, and he does not offer job placement.
