Mexico visa requirements
The rule for your own passport, from Mexico's official immigration page, with the date it was last checked. The same answer for every guide in Mexico: Mexico City, Oaxaca, Cancun, Tulum, Los Cabos, Playa del Carmen and 24 more.
No visa neededup to 180 days
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Israel
The officer writes the days granted on your entry record, and it is often far fewer than 180. Check what you were given before leaving the airport.
Visa required in advance
Every other passport
Holders of a valid US, Canadian, UK, Japanese or Schengen visa can usually enter Mexico without a Mexican one.
Entry rules change often and depend on your passport, your route and the purpose of the trip. Confirm on the official page before booking.
The guides in Mexico
Mexico CityMexicoAztec ruins, world-class museums, and the best street food anywhere
OaxacaMexicoThe best food in Mexico, seven kinds of mole, mezcal from the village that made it, and the Day of the Dead
CancunMexicoCaribbean turquoise meets Mayan history
TulumMexicoMaya ruins on a cliff above the Caribbean, cenotes in the jungle behind, and a beach road that got expensive
Los CabosMexicoDesert running into the Pacific at the tip of Baja, with grey whales in the bay every winter
Playa del CarmenMexicoA beach town that became a city: a pedestrian avenue of bars and dive shops, white sand either side of it, and the ferry to Cozumel from the middle
Isla MujeresMexicoAn island eight kilometres long with the best beach in the Mexican Caribbean at one end, golf carts instead of cars, and Cancún twenty minutes across the water
CozumelMexicoThe best wall diving in the western hemisphere, an island that empties the moment the cruise ships leave, and a wild eastern shore with nothing on it
MéridaMexicoThe Yucatán’s white city: a colonial grid of courtyards, the best food on the peninsula, free concerts most nights and cenotes an hour in every direction
San Miguel de AllendeMexicoA colonial town of pink stone and bougainvillea, kept perfectly by the people who moved here for it, with a neo-Gothic church that looks like a fairy tale
Puerto VallartaMexicoA cobbled old town on a bay with jungle mountains behind it, the most welcoming gay scene in Latin America, and beaches reachable only by boat
Isla HolboxMexicoA sandbar island with no cars, no pavements and no bank: golf carts through the sand, flamingos on the lagoon, and whale sharks offshore in summer
BacalarMexicoA freshwater lagoon of seven blues over a white limestone floor, with cenotes dropping out of the middle of it and a pirate fort on the shore
ValladolidMexicoA colonial town of painted houses with a cenote in the middle of it, an hour from Chichén Itzá and nothing like the coast
PalenqueMexicoA Maya city half-swallowed by jungle, with howler monkeys in the canopy above the temples and waterfalls an hour down the road
San Cristóbal de las CasasMexicoA highland colonial town at 2,200 metres, cold at night and full of Tzotzil markets, with the strangest church in Mexico half an hour away
Puerto EscondidoMexicoA surf town on the Oaxacan coast with one of the heaviest beach breaks in the world at one end and a calm swimming bay at the other
PueblaMexicoA city of tiled facades under two volcanoes, where mole poblano was invented and the biggest pyramid on earth sits under a church
GuanajuatoMexicoA silver city crammed into a ravine, with its traffic running through tunnels under it, painted houses stacked up both sides and a student population that sings in the streets
GuadalajaraMexicoThe city that invented mariachi, tequila and the charreada, with murals by Orozco under a dome and the best food in western Mexico
SayulitaMexicoA surf village of bunting and bare feet north of Vallarta, small enough to cross in ten minutes and busy enough to feel like a festival
MazatlánMexicoA working Pacific port with the longest seafront promenade in Latin America, a restored old town of opera and ironwork, and a carnival that fills February
La Paz, Baja CaliforniaMexicoA quiet Baja capital on the Sea of Cortez, with whale sharks in the bay in winter and the emptiest turquoise beaches in Mexico up the road
CampecheMexicoA walled city painted in sherbet colours on the Gulf, with pirate forts at either end and almost nobody in it
HuatulcoMexicoNine bays and thirty-six beaches on a coast that was planned rather than grown, with a national park behind it and boats the only way to half of it
TaxcoMexicoA silver town poured down a mountainside: white houses, red roofs, streets too steep for anything but a Volkswagen Beetle, and silversmiths in every doorway
QuerétaroMexicoA colonial centre of aqueducts and shaded plazas that most visitors drive past, with the country’s newest wine region an hour up the road
MoreliaMexicoA city built entirely of pink stone, with an aqueduct running into the middle of it and the monarch butterflies wintering in the mountains two hours away
TequilaMexicoThe town the drink is named for, in a valley of blue agave that is a World Heritage site, with distilleries you can walk into and a train that brings you
Todos SantosMexicoA desert oasis town of galleries and palm groves an hour from Cabo, with a wild Pacific beach that is not for swimming and whales going past it