We have already told you in great detail all about how to get a visa for the Philippines; however, you may already be in the country and need to make a Philippines visa extension for two months or more. It is completely possible to extend your stay in the archipelago and we are going to tell you everything you need to know about how to do the visa extension in the Philippines.
Keep reading and find out how to do the Philippines visa extension and how much it costs.
Do I need to extend my Philippines visa?
The most common case in which you’ll need to make a visa extension in the Philippines is if you arrived in the country without previously going to an embassy to obtain a visa. As we already pointed out, Spaniards and citizens of Latin America (except for Cuba) do not need a visa for the Philippines if we are going to stay for less than 30 days in the country. Thus, if you want to stay longer, you have two options: 1) obtain a visa at an embassy before entering the Philippines; or 2) make a visa extension.
In short, you need to extend your Philippines visa if you want to extend your stay in the country for more than 30 days or you have a multiple‑entry visa and do not want to leave the Philippines every 59 days (a requirement we already told you about).
In the first case, if you arrived in the Philippines with a 30‑day visa exemption, you can only extend your stay by 29 days, making a total of 59 days. If you want to continue extending the visa, you will have to go again to an immigration office, although it is not necessary to leave the country. You can remain in the Philippines for 3 years by extending the visa again and again.
In the second case, if you already have a multiple‑entry visa issued by an embassy or consulate, you can go to an immigration office and make an extension of 29 days, 59 days or 6 more months, as you choose.
NOTE, more documentation is required to enter the country. We detail everything in Requirements for traveling to the Philippines, but consider that if you plan to come without a visa, you’ll need to show an onward ticket out of the Philippines dated less than 30 days after arrival. You can buy a cheap one or rent a ticket on pages like the one in this guide: Onward ticket or exit ticket: get it easily.
How to extend your Philippines visa
In any case, if you need to make a visa extension in the Philippines, we already warn you that it is a very simple procedure. You have three options: 1) extend the visa at an immigration office; 2) arrange a “visa on arrival” at the airport or, in practice, extend the 30 free days you receive upon arrival in the country; or 3) do it online from the immigration website.
1. How to extend your Philippines visa at an immigration office
You only have to go with your passport to any immigration office in the country, submit all the documentation and wait. There are many spread across the main cities on the islands and, normally, the less touristy the area, the shorter the queue will be and the faster you will be able to obtain your Philippines visa extension. The busiest offices are usually the one in Makati (Manila), the one in Intramuros (Manila) and the one in Cebu (in the Robinsons Galleria mall). Here you can find a list of immigration offices in the Philippines.
The last few times we have extended our Philippines visa, the process has ranged between 20 minutes in small offices like the one in Bohol and a couple of hours in Cebu.
The requirements to make a visa extension in the Philippines are:
- Bring your passport.
- Fill out the extension form that you will find on the immigration website, although you can also get it at the office itself.
- Pay the corresponding fees in Philippine pesos and in cash. We will talk about them later.
Once the procedure is finished, you will receive a small slip that you must keep as if it were gold. They used to put the stamp shown in the photo above, but now they have stopped stamping and, when leaving the country, they usually ask you to show that slip to check that you have made the extension of your Philippines visa.
Note, in some offices they still ask you to dress “appropriately”. Less and less now, but it used to be common that it was forbidden to enter wearing shorts and flip‑flops. Women can wear a dress as long as it is below the knee.
2. How to extend your Philippines visa on arrival at the airport
This is, without a doubt, a more convenient and faster option to extend your Philippines visa. Upon arrival in the country, after your international flight lands, you only have to tell the immigration officer that you want to extend your visa so you can stay in the country for at least 59 days. Technically, they will be granting you a visa on arrival, as happens in other countries.
You will only need to provide your passport, fill out the form they give you and pay the fee, which in this case is 4,130 pesos. They will usually ask for it in pesos, but there have been cases in which they accept euros and dollars. If you do not yet have pesos, on one of our visits to the Philippines we saw how they accompanied a person to withdraw money from the ATM in the baggage claim area. It is a possibility you can ask about.
It won’t take long, but learn to manage your patience. You will see that in the Philippines, bureaucratic matters sometimes go slowly. On the other hand, on occasion we have been denied this visa extension at the airport. It was entirely discretionary and we could do nothing but resign ourselves. Therefore, we advise you to ask for it very politely and kindly.
3. How to extend your Philippines visa online
Since the beginning of 2023 we have good news, as you can extend the Philippines visa online, saving yourself the trip to the nearest office and the waiting time. The website is not the most intuitive in the world, but it is not difficult to do either.
Here’s how to do it step by step:
1) The first thing you have to do is access the official page from here: Official website for Philippines visa extension. On the right side (or scrolling down a bit if you access from your mobile) you will see the “Register” section. From there, you will have to create an account to start the process. You must look for and complete the menu we show you in the image:
2) Once registered and after receiving the confirmation email, log in again with your account to the same page and click on “Visa Waiver”. Here, you must complete the simple menu in which they ask you for:
- Date of arrival in the country.
- Type of visa you have now: EO408 – 30 DAYS.
- Duration of the extension you are requesting: 29 days VISA WAIVER.
- Passport number.
- Passport expiration date.
- Surname(s).
- First name.
- Middle name (optional).
- Date of birth.
- Gender.
- Nationality.
When finished, click “Submit”.
3) All that’s left is to make the payment which, at the time of writing this guide, is 4,030 pesos. Complete all the fields they ask for and make the payment with your Visa or Mastercard:
4) You have done everything you had to do. Now all that remains is to wait. From our experience, it takes approximately one day to approve the Philippines visa extension if everything is correct. There are cases in which it may be a little faster or take a little longer but, as a rule, it is around one working day. From your profile on the website you can go in and see the status of the process, but it is not necessary to keep checking because, once approved, you will receive an email informing you that you can already enjoy the Philippines for 29 more days.
Note, sometimes that approval email never arrives, but if you log into your profile it is common to see that it has been approved.
As easy as that!
Note that this way of extending the visa (at least for now) only works for the first extension, not for the following ones. On the other hand, if you obtained the 59‑day visa in Europe (at an embassy or consulate), you will have to go to an immigration office to extend it for the first time.
How much does the visa extension cost
The price of the extension of the Philippines visa depends on how long you are going to extend it and how many times you have extended it before.
29‑day visa extension
Thus, most travelers only extend their visa from the initial 30 days to 59 days and the prices are as follows:
| Visa Waiver | PHP 500 |
| Visa Application Fee | PHP 1.000 |
| Certification Fee | PHP 500 |
| Express Processing Fee | PHP 2.000 |
| Legal Research Fee | PHP 30 |
| Total | PHP 4.030 |
If you do not need to obtain your visa extension on the same day and can afford to leave your passport at immigration for a few days (something that usually depends on the office and ranges from 3 days to 2 weeks), you can save the “express fee processing” and the price is reduced to 3,030 pesos. Ask immigration officers about this possibility.
Visa extension after the first 29‑day extension
If you are going to stay for more than 59 days in the country, the price of the visa extension increases considerably. This is because you necessarily need to obtain (and pay for) a card called the Alien Certificate of Registration Card or ACR I‑Card, which is like your Filipino ID. The fees for this card are $50 (about 3,000 pesos) and the good news is that it allows you to open a bank account in the Philippines, register a car or motorcycle, obtain the country’s driver’s license or use it as an identity card to take domestic flights. This card can take months to arrive at the corresponding immigration office, although the good thing is that with the receipt of having paid for it it is as if you already had it.
In this case, you can extend your visa for 1, 2 or 6 more months. The standard extension is 2 months and costs about 9,000 pesos. As in the case of the first visa extension, you can also ask not to be charged the “express fee” and save 2,000 pesos.
Important: if you have made several Philippines visa extensions and you leave the country, the process starts counting from zero. Therefore, you will have to start with the 29‑day extension and so on. In the case of the ACR I‑Card, it is valid for one year from its issuance, so you will not have to pay for it again.
What happens if I stay in the Philippines longer than my visa allows?
If you are in a situation of overstay, we regret to inform you that, unlike in other countries such as Thailand, you will have to pay both a 1,000‑peso fine and the price of the visa extension.
Thus, if, for example, you stay in the Philippines for 31 days (1 more than legally allowed), you will have to pay 5,130 pesos. If you stay 60 days, they will make you pay more than 10,000 pesos.
It is advisable to go and pay the fine and the corresponding visa extension at any immigration office rather than leave it to do at the airport. The process can take time and missing the flight would be fatal.
Do you have any questions about the Philippine visa extension? Tell us in comments and we will respond as soon as possible!
