Mexico visa and entry requirements

How your entry route is decided

Mexico is generous on paper and discretionary in practice.

1. Visa-free for up to 180 days: EU and Schengen passports, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and many others, for tourism, business, transit or medical treatment.
2. Exempt through someone else's paperwork. Any nationality holding a valid multiple-entry visa or a physical permanent residence card from the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom or a Schengen country enters visa-free for up to 180 days. So do permanent residents of Chile, Colombia and Peru. This is the route many otherwise visa-required travellers use.
3. The document must be physical. Only a stamped visa in the passport or a physical residence card counts. Digital notices, EAD cards, Form I-797A, Advance Parole, I-20 and DS-2019 are explicitly refused.
4. SAE electronic authorisation is free, single entry and valid 30 days, for air travellers from Russia, Turkey and Ukraine; it does not work at land or sea borders.
5. Everyone else needs a consular visitor visa, fee USD 56.

Airport transit counts. Since 22 October 2023, anyone who needs a Mexican visa also needs one to change planes airside in Mexico.

The 180 days is a maximum, not an entitlement

The INM officer decides your stay and writes the number down. People assume 180 and get 30 or 15. If the number matters to you, be able to show a return ticket, a booking and funds, and say the length of your trip clearly.

• Passport validity: legally it need only cover your stay, but airlines enforce a 6-month rule at boarding, and the automated e-gates require 180 days of remaining validity.
• The officer may ask for: a return or onward ticket with fixed dates, hotel booking or a host invitation letter with the host's name, ID and address, and proof of funds of about USD 50 per day.

Forms and formalities

• Paper FMM forms have been abolished at airports. Arrival is recorded digitally as the Forma Migratoria Multiple Digital (FMMD), either by the officer or at an e-gate, and you can download your record afterwards from the INM portal.
• E-gates (Filtros Autonomos Migratorios) run at 66 airports for adult holders of chip e-passports from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Mexico. The gate prints a receipt with a QR code - keep it. You must show it when you leave.
• Arriving by land still means completing the FMMe form online before you cross.
• The FMM fee is 983 MXN, already inside your airfare on a commercial flight. Land crossers staying over 7 days pay at the border.
• Since 15 October 2025 the INM takes card only. No cash payments at any INM office, for anything.
• Cash over the equivalent of USD 10,000 must be declared to SAT customs.

Overstaying means a visit to the INM desk at the airport before your flight to pay a fine, from a few hundred MXN upwards, and get exit clearance. Do not leave it to the boarding call.