Colombia 90/180 Tourist Rule Explained: Permits & Extensions

Who needs to read this

Colombia's tourist regime is a 90-day permit inside a hard 180-days-per-calendar-year cap, and the calendar-year design makes it behave differently from every rolling-window rule around it. Read this if:

• You're a digital nomad using Medellín or Bogotá as a base for months at a time
• You visit Colombia several times a year and have never added your days up
• You're planning a year-straddling stay to exploit the January 1 reset
• You're near day 90 and need the PTP extension mechanics
• You're a tax planner watching a client drift past 183 days of presence in 365

How the rule works

Resolución 3167 de 2019 of Migración Colombia governs entry and stay for visa-exempt visitors. Article 13 creates the Permiso de Ingreso y Permanencia (PIP), granted at the border; its tourism flavor, the Permiso de Turismo (PT), covers rest, medical treatment, cultural and sporting events, and business meetings. Article 14 sets the numbers:

• The Permiso de Turismo is granted for up to 90 calendar days at entry.
• Migración Colombia "llevará el registro" of each foreigner's days, so that PIP plus PTP days do not exceed 180 calendar days, continuous or discontinuous, within the same calendar year.
• The Permiso Temporal de Permanencia (PTP) is the in-country extension for those who entered on a PIP and want more time, always inside the 180-day annual ceiling.
• The regime applies to visa-exempt nationalities, including the US, UK, EU states, and Canada; nationals who need visas follow their visa's terms instead.

No local paid work is allowed on these permits; they are expressly for activities without profit motive in Colombia.

Counting the days

Count every calendar day you are physically in Colombia during the calendar year, because all of them, across all trips, accrue toward the same 180-day cap. The mechanics:

• Days are cumulative and discontinuous. Three separate 60-day trips in one year exhaust the cap exactly as one 180-day stay would.
• The window is the calendar year, January 1 to December 31. On January 1 your count returns to zero regardless of what December looked like.
• Arrival and departure days are days in Colombia; count them.
• A worked example: you spend 15 February to 15 May in Colombia (90 days), fly out, and return 1 September with a fresh entry permit. By 29 November you hit 180 days for the year and must leave, but on 1 January you may lawfully return with a clean count. That is why November-to-April "split stays" are so popular with long-stayers: up to 180 days of one calendar year can butt up against 180 days of the next.

Resets, extensions, and edge cases

Only January 1 resets the count; exits, re-entries, and new permits never do. What that leaves you:

• The PTP extension: apply to Migración Colombia before your current permit expires, online or at a Migración office. It stretches your stay toward the annual 180 but never past it.
• Re-entry permits are real but capped. A border run to Panama or Ecuador can yield a new 90-day PIP, but only up to whatever remains of your 180 for the year, and officers see your registered history.
• The year-straddle is the legitimate long play: back-to-back 180s across the calendar boundary can give almost a year in country. It is also precisely the pattern that crosses Colombia's tax residency line (more than 183 days of presence in any 365-day period), so the immigration win can be a tax event.
• Visas replace permits for anything beyond visiting: work, study, marriage, retirement, and Colombia's digital nomad visa all run on the Cancillería's visa system, with their own clocks.

Overstays: consequences and enforcement

Overstaying a Colombian permit is an administrative infraction handled with fines, and it surfaces at exit because your days live in Migración Colombia's systems. What to expect:

• A running electronic register: Article 14 makes day-tracking Migración Colombia's job as well as yours; entries, exits, and permit dates are recorded and cross-checked at every airport and land crossing.
• Fines are imposed under the agency's sanctioning regime and scale with the seriousness and duration of the violation; you will generally need to resolve the sanction before departing or on your next contact with the authority. Amounts are updated over time, so verify current figures with Migración Colombia.
• Deportation and entry bans back up the fines for prolonged irregular stays or repeat offenders.
• Cancelled permits: the resolution lets Migración cancel permits for infractions, and prior overstays make officers stingier with future grants.

Staying compliant

Colombia compliance is bookkeeping: one annual budget, every trip drawing on it, one fixed reset date:

• Track your calendar-year total, not your current trip. iReside's Colombia Tourist preset sums every day in country against the 180-day annual cap and shows what is left before December 31.
• File the PTP before day 90, with a buffer; an expired permit cannot be extended, only sanctioned.
• Plan year-straddles deliberately, and if you will exceed 183 days of presence in any 365-day stretch, get Colombian tax advice before, not after.
• Keep entry and exit evidence in case the register and your passport disagree.
• Switch to a visa when Colombia stops being a visit; the permits are not a residency substitute.

Common mistakes

• Thinking border runs reset the count. New permit, same annual ledger; days accumulate toward 180 regardless of how many times you re-enter.
• Treating the cap as rolling. The 180 days bind within the calendar year, and January 1 wipes the slate; planning with a rolling-window mental model wastes lawful days or overspends them.
• Extending too late. The PTP must be requested while your current permit is valid; day 91 is an infraction, not an application window.
• Confusing the 180-day immigration cap with the 183-day tax test. They are different rules with different windows; the year-straddle satisfies one and can trip the other.
• Working locally on a tourist permit. The permits exclude profit-making activity in Colombia; local employment needs a visa.
• Trusting your own count over the register. Migración's records decide at the counter; reconcile your tally with your stamps every trip.