Peru Visa and Entry Requirements

The short version

Your passport must have an expiry date at least six months after the day you arrive. Arriving by air, your entry is recorded digitally. Arriving by land, you must make sure you are given a stamp, because you cannot leave without one. Permission to stay is normally up to ninety days in a hundred and eighty day period, and the way that window is measured is the part people get wrong.

The one thing this guide does not tell you

What a United States passport holder must hold in order to enter Peru for tourism is deliberately absent from this page. The requirement is set by Peru, it has changed, and the source this cluster is built on is written for a different nationality. Publishing a guess here would be the single error on these sixteen pages capable of sending somebody to an airport without a document.

Confirm it with the Peruvian consulate responsible for your state, close to travel, and confirm it again if your trip is for any purpose other than tourism. Everything else on this page applies regardless of where your passport was issued.

Passport validity

Six months beyond your arrival date. Not six months beyond your departure date, which is the more common rule elsewhere and the reason people misjudge it.

You will be refused entry if your travel document is not valid, or if you try to use a passport that has been reported lost or stolen. If you reported one missing and then found it, do not travel on it.

How long you are allowed to stay

On arrival you are normally granted up to ninety days within a hundred and eighty day period. Two details matter and neither is obvious:

• The hundred and eighty day period is counted from the date of your first entry into Peru, not from each arrival. A second trip inside that window draws on the same allowance.
• An immigration officer may grant a maximum of a hundred and eighty three days in a three hundred and sixty five day period as a visitor. That is the annual ceiling, and it is not the same number as the ninety.

You are given a number of days, not automatically the maximum. Check what you were actually granted rather than assuming. The national immigration authority, the Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones, publishes a way to look it up.

Overstaying carries a fine and you can be detained. This is worth taking seriously on a trip where a protest can close a railway for two days and a flight home can move.

Arriving by air

At an international airport your entry is registered digitally through a Tarjeta Andina de Migracion, a virtual immigration control document. There is no paper card to keep safe, which is a genuine improvement, and no paper card to produce on the way out.

The Lima airport fee

Passengers transiting or connecting through Lima, Jorge Chavez International, pay an airport use fee known as the TUUA. It is not currently included in airline tickets, which is exactly why people are caught by it at a connection with a short layover.

Pay it in advance through the Lima airport online platform if you can. On the day there are payment modules, mobile card agents and QR codes at the airport, but a queue at a connection is the worst place to discover a charge. This applies to a connecting itinerary through Lima even if Lima is not your destination, which is the case for most Amazon and Cusco routings.

Arriving by land

Get your passport stamped at the immigration checkpoint. Crossing from a neighboring country, the stamp is your entry record, and you cannot leave Peru without one. This catches people on bus crossings where the vehicle stops briefly and passengers assume the driver has handled it.

If you discover you were not stamped, there is a route back: apply online for an entry stamp, supplying your passport details, evidence of your entry such as a bus ticket in your name, and the exit stamp from the last country you were in. Keep the bus ticket. It is the evidence.

Land borders are also where a strike bites hardest. Immigration services at land crossings have been suspended without notice during protests, with no estimate of reopening.

Traveling with a minor

Rules for a child traveling without both parents are set by Peru and are strictly applied across the region. If a child on your booking is not traveling with both legal guardians, confirm the exact documentation with the consulate before you book, not afterwards.

A short checklist

• Passport valid six months beyond arrival, and undamaged.
• Visa position confirmed with the consulate for your own nationality and purpose.
• Onward or return ticket available to show.
• Lima airport fee paid in advance if you are connecting.
• Entry stamp checked before leaving the border post, if arriving by land.
• The number of days you were granted, noted rather than assumed.

Verify before you travel

Entry rules, fees and the online systems that administer them change. Confirm the current position with the Peruvian consulate and the national immigration authority close to departure.

Sources

• UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office: Peru entry requirements: the six month passport validity test, the ninety days in a hundred and eighty day period normally granted on arrival and the hundred and eighty three day ceiling in a year, the fine and possible detention for overstaying, the digital Tarjeta Andina de Migracion record, the airport use fee at Lima, and the entry stamp that must be obtained when crossing by land. Accessed 16 September 2026.
• UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office: Peru travel advice: the two areas under a standing advisory against all but essential travel, the strip within twenty kilometers south of the Putumayo River and the Colombian border in Loreto, and the Valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, and the statement that no travel can be guaranteed safe. Accessed 16 September 2026.