Every tourist entering Georgia is required to hold insurance covering at least 30,000 lari — and most guests have not heard of it

Since 1 January 2026, tourists entering Georgia are required to hold a valid health and accident insurance policy with cover of no less than 30,000 lari. The requirement sits under Georgia's law on tourism and was published through the foreign ministry. The policy may come from a Georgian insurer or a foreign one — there is no obligation to buy locally — and it must be presentable either on paper or on a screen, drawn up in Georgian or in English. A policy in a third language, with no translation, is the version most likely to cause an argument at a counter.

The cover must run for the full period in Georgia including the day of arrival and the day of departure. That detail catches out the common habit of buying a policy that starts the morning after landing, or one that lapses on the final night. It also matters to anyone who extends a trip: a guest who changes a flight and stays an extra week is, from that point, outside the requirement unless the policy is extended too. Hosts taking long bookings are in the best position to raise this, because they are usually the ones who hear about the change of plan first.

The policy is expected to state the parties to the contract, the territory covered, the subject matter, the start and end dates, the insured risks, the sums insured and the premium. A booking confirmation from a comparison site, a bank card benefits summary with no dates on it, or a screenshot of an app showing only a logo and a name are the kinds of documents that do not meet that description. Operators who bundle insurance into a tour price should make sure the certificate issued to each guest carries those fields, rather than relying on a group policy number the guest cannot show.

Holders of diplomatic and special visas are exempt, as are accredited embassy and consular staff and their families, people covered by Georgia's international agreements, and professional drivers working in international transport. Everyone else arriving as a tourist is in scope. For a guesthouse, a tour company or a transfer operator, the useful move is a line in the booking confirmation rather than a conversation at check-in: by the time a guest is standing in the doorway, the only remedy left is buying a local policy, and the ones sold in a hurry are rarely the cheapest available.