Do I need a visa to travel to China?

Three schemes, not one

Almost every wrong answer to this question comes from treating "visa-free for China" as a single list. It is three, and they have different rules, different countries and different expiry dates.

If any one of the three covers you, you do not need a visa for that trip. If none does, you need one before you fly.

The unilateral list

This is the big one, and it is the one China has been expanding since 2023. As published by the National Immigration Administration on 17 February 2026, it holds 50 countries:

• Europe (35). France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, Hungary, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland, Slovenia, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
• Asia (7). Brunei, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.
• Americas (6). Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay and Canada.
• Oceania (2). Australia and New Zealand.

Holders of an ordinary passport from one of these can enter for business, tourism, visiting family, exchanges or transit, for up to 30 days per entry, with nothing arranged in advance.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs notice of 3 November 2025 extended the scheme to 24:00 on 31 December 2026. Russia's arrangement runs on its own shorter clock, and Brunei's has no expiry.

Note who is not there: the United States, India, most of Africa and most of Southeast Asia. If you have read that Americans get 30 days visa-free, that is the single most repeated error about Chinese entry rules, and we take it apart in Can Americans travel to China?.

Mutual exemption agreements

Separately from the unilateral list, China holds bilateral treaties that waive visas in both directions — Chinese citizens go to that country visa-free too. Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia are the best-known recent ones; a longer tail of countries has held such agreements for a decade or more.

We are not reproducing that list. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes it as one table covering diplomatic, service and ordinary passports in separate columns, and a partial copy of it is worse than no copy: getting your own row wrong ends your trip at a check-in desk. The official table is linked in the sources above. Find your country, and check the ordinary passport column, not the diplomatic one.

If none of them covers you

Apply to the Chinese embassy or consulate for your district, for the visa category that matches the trip:

• L — tourism.
• M — business, with an invitation.
• F — exchanges and visits that are not commercial.
• X — study.
• Z — work, which requires a Chinese employer to sponsor a permit first.

None of L, M or F allows you to be employed in China. What none of them says anything about is working online for an employer outside China, which is its own question and one we treat separately in Is it legal to work remotely in China on visa-free entry?.

Ignore the fee figures that come up in search results. They mostly come from visa agencies with their own service charge folded in. Your consulate publishes its own schedule.

Before you book anything

Check three things in this order: whether your passport is on the unilateral list; if not, whether your country holds a mutual agreement; if not, whether your itinerary can route onward to a third country and use the transit exemption. Only then start a visa application.

And whichever route gets you in, the practical trip planning starts after that — how long you can stay is in How long can I stay in China without a visa?, and what stops working when you land is in the China travel guide.

The 31 December 2026 expiry is the next date this page can change on. We re-check it against the National Immigration Administration list and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs notices.