Madagascar e-Visa for Indian Citizens: The Cheap Entry Ended in February

For a few years Madagascar was the cheapest interesting stamp in the Indian Ocean. A short stay cost nothing for a while, then ten euros, and the internet filled up with articles saying so. On 16 February 2026 the short-stay fee went to €30, about US$35 — and most of those articles have not been touched since.

The increase hit one band and one band only. If you are going for a fortnight, which is what most first trips to Madagascar are, you are now paying roughly what a month-long visa costs. If you are going for longer, nothing changed. That is an unusual shape for a fee rise, and it is worth understanding before you budget.

Use the address the government names

Madagascar has a domain problem, and it is the opposite of the one travellers are trained to look for. The portal’s own guidance states plainly that evisamada.gov.mg is the only official website of the Republic of Madagascar for handling online visa applications, and warns about fraudulent sites in the same breath. Meanwhile a near-identical service answers at evisamada-mg.com, and parts of the travel trade press cite that .com address as the official portal.

We are not going to guess which host is which. The instruction that carries no risk is the government’s own: apply at evisamada.gov.mg. If you land somewhere else — through a search advert, a booking confirmation, a helpful link in a forum — stop and retype the .gov.mg address by hand.

Single entry is the part that ruins itineraries

The Madagascar tourist e-visa is single entry. This matters more here than it would elsewhere, because of where Madagascar sits. Réunion, Mauritius, the Comoros and Mayotte are all short hops away, and a two-island Indian Ocean trip is a natural thing to plan from India — especially if you are already flying that far.

Do that, and the Madagascar visa dies at the first departure. Coming back means buying a second one at the full rate, and the fifteen-day band is no longer cheap enough to shrug at. If your route has Madagascar in the middle rather than at the end, price two visas or reorder the trip.

Two things the official sources do not agree on

How long you can actually stay. The portal’s explanatory text describes the tourist e-visa as single entry with a maximum duration of 60 days. Its fee table, on the same service, sells a band for stays up to 90 days. It has also been reported that the 90-day visa is no longer issued on arrival, which may be where the inconsistency comes from. If your plan is longer than 60 days, do not assume the 90-day band will be honoured at the border — confirm it before you book, and expect to deal with an extension instead. Extensions are reported to cost around 210,000 ariary, roughly €41.

Whether the airport is cheaper. The portal states a single rate: the price online is the same as the price paid on arrival. Trade coverage of the February increase says the opposite — that the rise applied only to the electronic system, leaving visa-on-arrival and embassy fees untouched, which would make the airport counter cheaper for a fifteen-day stay. We could not confirm the on-arrival rate independently. Budget €30 either way, and treat a lower price at the counter as a pleasant surprise rather than a plan.

The short version

• A fifteen-day visit now costs €30 / US$35, not the €10 you will read almost everywhere.
• Longer stays did not change: €35 to thirty days, €40 to sixty, €50 to ninety.
• Apply at evisamada.gov.mg. The government names that address, and only that address.
• Single entry. An island-hop out of Madagascar and back costs a second full visa.
• Apply no earlier than six months and no later than a week before you fly.
• The portal says sixty days is the ceiling while selling a ninety-day band — confirm long stays.
• Visa on arrival still works at the international airports if you would rather not file ahead.

None of this makes Madagascar hard to enter. It is open to every nationality, there is no embassy appointment and no interview, and approval takes days rather than weeks. It is simply no longer the bargain the internet remembers, and the gap between the remembered price and the real one is exactly the space fake visa sites like to work in.