Many people are wondering how they can obtain a visa to Libya? What is the current visa situation? Is it possible to get a tourist visa?
The other day, I was in the Ministry of Tourism in Tripoli and I asked them about the tourist visa. They explained that there are no tourist visas at the moment, but hopefully in the next few months they would begin to offer them again. He continued to explain that they had not yet appointed a Minister of Tourism, so things would take time.
The only way that it seems possible to obtain a visa to travel to Libya is to have someone (business or individual) invite you and then apply for your visa from inside of Libya. They must have a copy of your passport and must go to immigration and fill out the appropriate forms. Once they have all of the required documents, they will submit them to the office and wait for acceptance. This process seems to take 4 – 7 days once everything is ready. Your contact in the country will then receive a “receipt” of acceptance and a fax is sent to your nearest Libyan embassy. We had to give them our passports, 2 photos, application and payment. Within an hour, we had our passports returned with the official visa stamped inside.
I have heard that it is possible to have business visas stamped at the passport, but from our experience, it seems like you will have the most success getting the visa from the embassy. That way you are sure you have it stamped in your passport. If you do decide to pick up your visa at the airport, make sure that you have a copy of our visa acceptance letter from the Libyan authorities.
