Do Nigerian passport holders need a visa for Georgia?

Yes, and the online route for a Nigerian passport is not the cheap one most guides describe. Nigeria is not on Georgia’s visa-free list, and the ordinary 20-dollar e-visa that most guides point at is not open to a Nigerian passport. What the portal does offer is the C5 visa, a tourism e-visa valid up to one year, at 300 dollars. Before paying that, check the substitute-visa route: anyone holding a valid visa or residence permit from the EU, EFTA, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Israel, New Zealand or a Gulf state enters Georgia with no Georgian visa at all for up to 90 days in any 180.

Visa required

Yes, unless you qualify by holding another country’s visa

Georgian e-visa

Only the C5 tourism visa, 300 USD, up to one year

Substitute-visa route

90 days in any 180, no Georgian visa needed

Otherwise

A consular visa from a Georgian diplomatic mission

Nigeria-specific condition

A Gulf visa or permit must be valid at least 1 year

Insurance

Mandatory since 1 Jan 2026, at least 30,000 GEL

Schengen rules

Do not apply. Georgia is outside the Schengen Area

Entry requirements

• A Nigerian passport valid for at least six months beyond your date of entry.
• Either a qualifying foreign visa or residence permit that you can produce at the border, or a consular visa issued in advance by a Georgian diplomatic mission.
• Health and accident insurance of at least 30,000 GEL covering the whole stay. Mandatory for tourists since 1 January 2026; a Georgian or foreign insurer is fine, in Georgian or English, on paper or on a screen.
• Proof of the purpose of travel, accommodation for the stay, and funds to support yourself.
• A return or onward booking. Border officers can ask for it and this is a route where they do.

How to enter Georgia from Nigeria

Check what is already in your passport before anything else. A currently valid visa or residence permit from an EU or EFTA state, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Israel, New Zealand or a Gulf Cooperation Council country lets you enter Georgia without applying to Georgia at all, for up to 90 days in any 180-day period.

If you do apply online, know which visa you are buying. The portal offers a Nigerian passport the C5 tourism visa at 300 dollars, not the 20-dollar e-visa that most published advice describes, and the difference is fifteenfold. A page quoting 20 dollars for a Nigerian applicant was written for a different nationality.

Without a qualifying foreign document, the choice is the C5 visa online or a consular visa through a Georgian diplomatic mission. Georgia has no embassy in Abuja, so the consular route means dealing with whichever mission covers Nigeria and allowing considerably more time.

At the border, present the passport with either the qualifying foreign visa or the consular visa. If you are relying on the first, carry the document itself rather than a photograph of it.

Good to know

• The substitute-visa route is the thing worth knowing and almost nobody mentions it. A Nigerian passport holder with a live US, UK, Schengen or Canadian visa in the passport can fly to Tbilisi without applying to Georgia for anything, for 90 days in any 180. It costs nothing, against 300 dollars for the online C5 visa, which makes checking what is already in your passport the first thing to do rather than the last.
• Nigeria is one of seventeen nationalities where that route was tightened, and the detail matters. Since April 2025 a qualifying Gulf visa or residence permit must be valid for at least one year on the day you enter Georgia, not merely valid. The countries affected alongside Nigeria are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen. A UAE residence permit with eight months left on it used to be enough and is not any more.
• That one-year condition applies to Gulf documents specifically. A Schengen, UK, US or Canadian visa still qualifies on ordinary terms, so a Nigerian traveller with a European visa is unaffected by the 2025 change while one relying on a Dubai residence permit may not be. The two situations look identical on a passport page and are not.
• Nigeria sits in a small group that the portal treats differently, and the price is the tell. Georgia’s ordinary e-visa at 20 dollars is open to thirty-two nationalities, Djibouti, India and Vietnam among them. A handful of passports are instead offered only the C5 tourism visa at 300 dollars: Algeria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tunisia. What you get for the higher fee is a longer instrument, valid up to a year rather than the short stay the cheaper visa allows, which is worth something to a frequent visitor and nothing at all to someone making one trip.

Frequently asked questions

Related pages

• Tbilisi travel guide
• Do Djiboutian citizens need a visa for Georgia?
• Do Vatican passport holders need a visa for Georgia?
• Check visa requirements for any passport

Other passports for Georgia

• Gambia passport holders visiting Georgia
• Guyana passport holders visiting Georgia
• Tunisia passport holders visiting Georgia
• Morocco passport holders visiting Georgia

Other destinations for Nigeria passport holders

• Nigeria passport holders visiting Mauritius
• Nigeria passport holders visiting Switzerland
• Nigeria passport holders visiting India

Sources

Every fact on this page was checked against the official sources below on 25 August 2026.

• Government of Georgia, e-Visa Portal application page: the portal's country check returns, for a Nigerian passport, that a visa is required, that the ordinary e-Visa is not available, and that the C5 visa is. The page states: "Please be advised that the fee for a C5 visa (tourism, up to one year) is 300 USD. Decision on issuing Georgian e-Visa takes up to 5 working days; however, this period may be extended up to 10 working days if additional examination of circumstances is required." Read 2026-09-01. https://www.evisa.gov.ge/GeoVisa/en/VisaApp
• Same source, queried for each of the 192 nationalities in the portal's citizenship list: 100 need no visa, 32 may apply for the ordinary e-Visa, 8 are offered only the C5 visa (Algeria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tunisia), and 52 have no online route at all. Read 2026-09-01.
• Same page, on the notice describing a two-step process with a DuVerify application at 15 USD within 24 hours: the portal displays that notice only where its country check returns HasExternalProcess, which across all 192 nationalities is true for India alone. It does not apply to a Nigerian application. Read 2026-09-01.
• Wikipedia, Visa policy of Georgia (raw source checked against the e-Visa country list, 2026-08-25) — Nigeria appears in neither the visa-exempt list nor either e-Visa category; it appears only in the footnote to the substitute-visa table (en.wikipedia.org)
• Georgia Today and civil.ge — from April 2025, citizens of 17 countries including Nigeria must hold a Gulf visa or residence permit valid at least one year on the day of entry (georgiatoday.ge, civil.ge)
• Consular Department of the MFA of Georgia and Georgian embassies (Switzerland, Norway, Australia) — from 1 January 2026 all tourists entering Georgia must hold health and accident insurance of at least 30,000 GEL for the full stay, physical or electronic, in Georgian or English, from a Georgian or foreign insurer; diplomatic and official passport holders and accredited diplomatic staff are exempt (geoconsul.gov.ge, mfa.gov.ge)

Entry rules change without notice and the official source is always the authority. Confirm with the embassy or immigration portal before you book.