The Short Answer
Indian passport holders need a visa for Oman, and which one you can get turns on a single document rather than on the length of the trip. If you hold a valid visa or residence for the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan or a Schengen country, you have two options: enter without a visa for up to 14 days, or buy a tourist eVisa from the Royal Oman Police for 10 days at OMR 5 or 30 days at OMR 20. If you hold none of those, the ordinary online tourist visa is not available to you. India sits on Oman's conditional list, and the Royal Oman Police eligibility wizard offers an Indian passport holder no unconditional tourist eVisa at all. What is left is a sponsored tourist visa arranged by someone in Oman, a family visit visa applied for by a relative who lives there, or a dependant visa if you are travelling with a spouse whose own passport qualifies.
There Is No Plain Tourist eVisa for an Indian Passport
Oman's eVisa system sorts nationalities into groups. Group 1 nationals can buy the standard tourist visit visa outright: subtype 26A for 10 days at OMR 5, subtype 26B for 30 days at OMR 20, with no condition beyond a passport valid six months and, on the 30-day version, a hotel booking and a return ticket. India is not in Group 1. Run the Royal Oman Police's own public eligibility wizard at evisa.rop.gov.om/visa-eligibility with nationality set to India and GCC residence set to no, and the results contain no 26A and no 26B. What it does return are subtypes 26M and 26N, whose published grant condition is that the applicant holds a valid Schengen visa, or a valid residency visa or multi-entry visa for Great Britain, Australia, the USA, Canada or Japan. Run the same wizard for Germany and 26A and 26B appear immediately; run it for Pakistan and no tourist visa appears at all; run it for Morocco, which sits on the same conditional list as India, and the result is identical to India's. The grouping is real, it is published by the issuing authority, and almost no third-party site reflects it.
The 14-Day Free Entry and Exactly What It Requires
Oman waives the visa requirement for more than 100 countries and regions for stays of up to 14 days, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs splits them into two groups. The first group covers most of Europe, the Americas and much of East Asia, and its citizens enter with no conditions attached to the exemption itself. It runs to 78 entries on the ministry's page and 80 on the Royal Oman Police version, which counts Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan separately. India is in the second group, 24 countries whose citizens qualify only if they are residents of, or hold a valid entry visa for, the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, a Schengen country or Japan. The ministry adds a second way in: residence in a Gulf Cooperation Council country in one of the professions that qualify for the resident visa. Whichever branch applies, the entry conditions are the same. A passport valid for at least six months, a return or onward ticket, a confirmed hotel reservation, health insurance and enough money to cover the stay. The 14 days cannot be extended and cannot be converted into any residence status, so a change of plan on the ground means flying out. A spouse and children travelling with a qualifying visitor get the same facility even if they hold a different nationality.
Three Official Pages, Three Different Wordings
This is the detail worth reading twice before you book. The Royal Oman Police exemption page heads the conditional list with "for nationals holding a valid visa from (USA, Canada, Australia, UK, Japan, or Schengen countries)". The Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes the same rule as being "either residents or have a valid entry visa for" those six, and it alone mentions the GCC-profession route. The eVisa portal, governing the paid 26M and 26N visas rather than the exemption, is narrower still: it asks for a valid Schengen visa, or a valid residency visa or multi-entry visa for Great Britain, Australia, the USA, Canada or Japan. Read literally, a single-entry US visitor visa satisfies the exemption pages and does not satisfy the eVisa condition. We are not going to resolve that for you by picking one page, because the officer at the desk and the check-in agent may be working from different ones. If your qualifying document is a single-entry non-Schengen visa, confirm with the Omani embassy in New Delhi or the eVisa call centre before you commit to a booking.
What Each Route Costs
- 26N, tourist eVisa, 10 days, single entry: OMR 5 (about USD 13 / INR 1,230). Needs the third-country visa.
- 26M, tourist eVisa, 30 days, single entry: OMR 20 (about USD 52 / INR 4,920). Needs the third-country visa. Extendable by the same length.
- 36M, multi-entry visit visa, valid 1 year, 30 days per visit: OMR 50 (about USD 130 / INR 12,300). Needs the third-country visa. The stay cannot be extended.
- 26E and 26F, the dependant versions of those visas, 10 days for OMR 5 and 30 days for OMR 20: for the spouse or child of someone entering on 26A, 26B, 26M or 26N, travelling in with them.
- 6B, sponsored tourist visa, 30 days: OMR 20. Requires an approved sponsor in Oman and a typed, stamped letter from them explaining the purpose of the visit.
- 4B, family visit visa, one week to three months: OMR 20. Applied for by a foreign resident in Oman for a relative, with copies of the resident's passport and residence card, proof of the relationship and a letter of undertaking.
- Free 14-day entry: no fee, no application. Needs the third-country visa or residence, and cannot be extended.
- Overstaying any of them: OMR 10 per day, about USD 26.
If Your Travelling Companion's Passport Qualifies, Yours Does Too
There is one more way in, and the eligibility wizard returns it for an Indian passport whether or not you hold a qualifying third-country visa. If you are the spouse or child of someone entering Oman on a tourist visit visa, you can apply for the matching dependant subtype and travel in alongside them. Subtype 26E gives 10 days for OMR 5 next to a 26A or 26N holder, and 26F gives 30 days for OMR 20 next to a 26B or 26M holder. Two more cover named nationalities: 26G for the spouse or child of a New Zealand national, and 26H for the spouse or child of a South Korean or Bruneian national, both 30 days for OMR 20. The conditions are tight. You have to enter Oman with the main visa holder rather than meeting them there, submit a copy of their visa with your application, and the published conditions put a minimum dependant age of 18 on the whole group. In practice this means an Indian passport holder married to a German or a New Zealander has a route that an Indian passport holder travelling alone does not.
If You Live in the Gulf, You Are Reading the Wrong Half of This Page
Indian nationals resident in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait or Bahrain go through a different branch of the same system, and it is cheaper. The eligibility wizard, asked about an Indian passport holder resident in the UAE, returns the GCC Resident Visa at OMR 5 for 28 days, provided your occupation is on the Royal Oman Police's list of approved professions and you have at least six months of Gulf residency left on entry. It also returns the GCC Citizen Companion Visa, which is free for 30 days if you hold residence in Bahrain, Qatar or the UAE and travel in with a GCC citizen you are related to or employed by, and OMR 5 on the same terms for residents of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. That companion visa is the one route here whose published conditions say applications can be submitted on arrival at the border. The short transit visa, five days for OMR 5, also appears only in this branch: its document list requires valid residency in a GCC country, which is why it is not offered to an Indian passport holder flying in from India.
Two Things the Royal Oman Police Does Not Publish
The approved-professions list that the GCC Resident Visa turns on is referenced by both the ministry and the police and printed by neither. If your occupation is anywhere near the boundary, ask the eVisa call centre on +968 2429 0942 or +968 2429 0826 before you buy a ticket, because the visa is refused rather than downgraded. The second gap is processing time. The portal states none: not on the visa-type sheets, not in the eligibility results, not on the application tracker, not in the FAQ. The figures you will find elsewhere, usually one to five working days, are not traceable to the issuing authority, so treat them as an expectation rather than a commitment and apply with real slack. One condition does appear on every single subtype: you must be outside Oman when you apply, and a valid visa still does not guarantee entry, which is at the discretion of the officer at the port.
The Free 14-Day Visa Announced in August Is Still Not Usable
Royal Oman Police Decision No. 109/2026 created a fee-free 14-day tourist visa that, unlike the existing visa-free entry, can be converted into a longer tourist visa from inside Oman. It was published in the Official Gazette on Sunday 2 August 2026 and took effect the next day. The visa now exists in the eVisa portal as subtype 26O, "Free Entry for 14 Days (Person from G1 Special Countries)", with a 14-day stay and a one-month use-by period. Its condition sheet is otherwise blank: no fee line, no document list, and no list of the "G1 Special" nationalities it is meant for. Five weeks after the decision took effect, nobody can apply for it, and there is no published basis for an Indian passport holder to assume they will be eligible when the list appears. Our news coverage of the decision sets out what it changes, and the Oman country guide covers the entry routes, residence options and costs for a longer move.
Key Takeaway
For an Indian passport holder, Oman turns on one document. With a valid visa or residence for the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Japan or a Schengen country, you get 14 days free at the border or a paid eVisa of 10 or 30 days for OMR 5 or OMR 20. Without one, the Royal Oman Police eligibility wizard offers no ordinary tourist eVisa, and what remains is a sponsored visa arranged from inside Oman, a family visit visa filed by a relative who lives there, or a dependant visa if your spouse's passport qualifies. Check which branch you are in before you book the flight, not after.
