Nepal Visas in 2026: the USD 50 Tourist Visa, the 150-Day Cap and a Nomad Visa That Is Not Open Yet

Nepal is the cheapest entry in Asia and one of the least flexible. A tourist visa costs USD 30, 50 or 125 for 15, 30 or 90 days, is issued on arrival at Tribhuvan and at every land border that issues visas, and carries multiple entry. What it does not carry is room to stay: a tourist can spend at most 150 days in Nepal in a visa year, and the visa year runs from 1 January, so the counter resets whether or not you are in the country. Everything else people write about Nepal, including the widely shared USD 1,500 a month digital nomad visa, is either a proposal that has not been implemented or a number copied from another country. This hub is built from the Department of Immigration's own fee schedule, its citizen charter and its application portal, all read on 10 November 2026.

The tourist visa: USD 30, 50 or 125, multiple entry

• 15 days for USD 30, 30 days for USD 50, 90 days for USD 125. All three are multiple entry, and the clock starts on the day you enter, not the day the visa is issued.
• A visa issued at a Nepali mission abroad must be used within six months of issue, and the fee is not refundable or transferable once issued.
• Apply online before you fly at the Department's portal, or fill the same form at the self-service kiosks in the arrival hall at Tribhuvan. The submission produces a barcode receipt that stays valid for 15 days.
• Then pay at the bank counter inside the arrivals hall and take the receipt to the immigration desk. Dollars in cash are the safest option; cards are accepted but the queue moves faster with cash.
• Free for children under 10 except US citizens, for SAARC nationals for 30 days once per visa year, for Chinese nationals up to 150 days, and for NRN card holders. Officials from China, Brazil, Russia and Thailand travel on reciprocal waivers.
• Indian citizens do not need a visa at all, but they do need a passport or an Indian election card. A driving licence or Aadhaar card is not accepted.
• A transit visa costs USD 5 and covers 24 hours. It is issued at the immigration office, not on arrival at a kiosk.

The fee table, the gratis list and the six-month validity rule are all published by the Department on its visa pages, and the full category schedule behind them was last updated on 6 November 2026. Read those two pages rather than any guide, including this one, because the schedule changes without announcement.

Who cannot get a visa on arrival

Twelve nationalities are excluded from visa on arrival and have to obtain a visa from a Nepali mission before travelling: Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Eswatini, Cameroon, Somalia, Liberia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Palestine. The exclusion list is printed on the citizen charter of the Department's own border office at Kakarbhitta, which is the version to check if you hold one of those passports and are planning a land entry.

Extending: USD 45 for the first 15 days, then USD 3 a day

Extension is charged by the day with a 15-day minimum, and the Department's citizen charter states it the clearest way: USD 45 covers the first 15 days, then USD 3 for each additional day. A 30-day extension is therefore USD 90, a 60-day extension USD 180. Pay after your visa has expired and the rate becomes USD 5 a day, which is a fine rather than a fee and is charged on top.

• Multiple re-entry costs an extra USD 25 on an extension. You only need it if you plan to leave and come back inside the extended period, because visas issued on arrival already carry multiple entry.
• Extensions are processed at the Department of Immigration in Kalikasthan, Kathmandu, at the Immigration Office in Pokhara, and at some land border offices including Kakarbhitta.
• Bring your passport, the receipt from the online application and a passport-size photograph. The citizen charter lists exactly those and nothing else.
• Processing takes about two hours according to the citizen charter, so a morning submission is usually collected the same afternoon. The online form asks for the ward number of your address in Nepal, which your hotel or guesthouse can give you in a minute.

The extension form goes through the same portal as the visa itself, and the submission slip is valid for 15 days, so do not fill it a month before you intend to go to the office. The fee ladder and the two-hour processing time are both on the Department's citizen charter.

The 150-day ceiling, and why January resets it

A tourist visa can be extended only up to a combined total of 150 days of stay in a single visa year, and the visa year is the calendar year. The entry visa and every extension after it count against the same 150. There is no carry-over: days you did not use in one year are gone on 1 January, and the ceiling is not a target you can save up toward.

The arithmetic matters more than the rule, because the 90-day visa is the cheapest way to reach the ceiling. Ninety days plus a 60-day extension is USD 125 plus USD 180, or USD 305 for five months. A 30-day visa plus a 120-day extension is USD 50 plus USD 360, or USD 410 for the same five months. And for a stay of 60 days or less, a 30-day visa with a 15-day or 30-day extension beats the 90-day visa on price: USD 95 or USD 140 against USD 125.

The practical consequence is that Nepal is a five-month country, not a year-long base, unless you leave and come back in a new visa year. Anyone planning to sit out the monsoon in Kathmandu should count the days from 1 January rather than from arrival, and should not assume a December extension buys them into March.

Working remotely: what the rules actually say

The Department's fee schedule lists ten visa categories plus a reciprocity schedule for US citizens, and remote work is not one of them. Employment in Nepal sits under the Working visa, which requires a recommendation from a line ministry, a labour permit and a work agreement, and is priced per month at USD 30 for government-affiliated employers, USD 50 for donor-funded organisations and USD 75 for everyone else. That route needs a Nepali employer, so it is not open to a freelancer or to someone paid from abroad.

What is left is a grey area rather than a permission. No published clause in the schedule names unpaid remote work for a foreign employer, and no clause authorises it either: a tourist visa is issued for tourism, and the Department has said in the past that anyone in Nepal for a purpose other than tourism has to change visa status. The closest thing to a current official statement is a Department press release dated 24 September 2026 whose title translates as working only in accordance with the purpose of the visa. It is published as a scanned PDF in Nepali, so read it with a translator rather than trusting a summary of it.

In practice enforcement targets local employment, Nepali clients and overstayers, and there is no evidence of visitors being stopped for a laptop in a Thamel cafe. The line to hold is the one the schedule draws: keep the work foreign, take no Nepali salary and no Nepali client, and stay inside the 150 days. If you want a Nepali client or a local contract, you need the Working visa and a Nepali employer to sponsor it.

The nomad visa that has been announced but is not open

Nepal has been reported since May 2025 as preparing a five-year digital nomad visa with a USD 1,500 monthly income floor or USD 20,000 in savings, USD 100,000 of health cover, and a 5% tax on foreign income remitted into a Nepali account after 186 days. Those numbers are consistent across coverage, which is why they keep being repeated, and none of them appears on the Department of Immigration's fee schedule as of 6 November 2026.

That schedule is the test. It lists every category the Department issues, with the fee, the issuing office and the required documents for each, and it has no remote-work row, no nomad fee and no document list. The online portal offers the electronic travel authorisation, the tourist visa and the non-tourist categories, and nothing else. There is no application form to fill in, so a policy announcement with no category, no fee and no form is not a visa you can hold.

Treat the nomad visa as not available and do not plan a move around it. When it ships it will appear as a new row in that fee table and as an option in the portal, and that is the moment to read about it. Until then, the 150-day tourist route is what everyone is actually using, including the people writing about the nomad visa.

US passports: the reciprocity visa is the outlier

US citizens get their own schedule, and it is the only long-stay option on the page that a remote worker can realistically use. Category 10A is a five-year multiple-entry tourist visa for USD 160 with 180 days of stay per year. It needs a bank statement showing at least USD 10,000, a health insurance certificate and a police report, and it is issued by the Department of Immigration rather than at the airport.

• 180 days a year is more than the 150-day tourist ceiling, and USD 160 spread over five years works out at USD 32 a year. For anyone planning repeat trips it is the cheapest per-day route in the country.
• The working and study variants sit in the same schedule: 10C is a three-year visa for US citizens working in Nepal at USD 190 and still needs a labour permit and ministry clearance, and 10B covers study at USD 160.
• What the schedule does not publish is a processing time or a document checklist beyond those three items, so call the Department before you courier anything.

The long-stay categories, for completeness

The Residential visa costs USD 1,200 a year and looks like the obvious long-stay answer until you read the conditions: it requires proof of age 60 or over, or retirement, plus a USD 20,000 bank statement, an embassy-verified income certificate of USD 20,000 a year, a character certificate and no-objection letter from your embassy, and a health certificate from the Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu. It is a retirement visa with an investor variant, not a nomad route. The Business visa is for people investing in Nepal, priced by investment size, and the Non-Tourist categories cover marriage to a Nepali citizen, relatives of Nepali citizens, journalists and students. None of them fits a remote worker paid from abroad.

The order to do this in

• Under 30 days and not working locally: fill the form online, pay USD 50 at the airport, done.
• 30 to 60 days: the 30-day visa plus a 15-day or 30-day extension is cheaper than the 90-day visa, at USD 95 or USD 140 against USD 125.
• 60 days to the 150-day ceiling: buy the 90-day visa on arrival and extend once. USD 305 buys the full five months.
• Crossing 1 January: plan the split around the calendar year rather than your arrival date, because the 150 days reset on 1 January and not before.
• Repeat trips on a US passport: the 10A reciprocity visa at USD 160 for five years and 180 days a year beats every other route on this page.
• Want to work for a Nepali employer or client: the Working visa, with a line ministry recommendation and a labour permit, and a Nepali sponsor to file it.

Where nomads base themselves

Kathmandu is where the immigration office, the banks and the coworking spaces are, and it is the only place with enough of a work culture to base yourself for a month without improvising. Pokhara is the second city and the reason the Department keeps an extension counter there: cheaper, calmer, on the lake, and the start of the Annapurna treks. Trekking season and good weather are the same window, roughly October to November and again in March and April, which is also when the city is at its busiest and its most expensive. The trade-off is infrastructure: the power grid and the English level both grade badly in the city data, so a work base means a backup connection and a plan for the load-shedding that everyone else has already priced in.

The numbers for that base are on the Kathmandu city guide and in the Kathmandu cost breakdown, which prices a nomad month at USD 903 and a lean build at USD 334. The Pokhara guide and its cost breakdown price the same month at USD 1,009, with a central one bedroom at USD 129.

Compare with the neighbours

Thailand's DTV gives five years of multiple entry for a USD 14,800 bank balance, which is a different product entirely: more money up front, far more time. Malaysia's DE Rantau is the cheapest purpose-built nomad pass in the region at a USD 24,000 income floor for tech roles. Sri Lanka now has both a real nomad visa at USD 2,000 a month and a free 30-day ETA for 40 passports. Vietnam's 90-day e-visa asks for no income proof at all, and can be renewed only by leaving the country. Nepal's pitch is narrower than any of them: the lowest fees in Asia, multiple entry on a cheap visa, a hard five months a year, and no legal remote-work status until the announced nomad visa actually opens.