Sri Lanka Pet Import Permit Checker (2026 Rules)

Four DAPH documents set the rules, and this tool does nothing more than read them together and subtract days. The two signed dog and cat health requirements, both signed by the Director General and both carrying the line “These requirements shall be effective from 1st January 2026”, supply the conditions. The department's Essential Guidelines supply the process and the money. The import and quarantine service pages supply the statutory basis — sections 21 and 28 of the Animal Diseases Act No. 59 of 1992.

Two gates are pass-or-fail. The animal must be over one and a half months old on the day it lands, which this tool implements as 46 days: one mean month is 30.44 days, and a minimum an animal has to clear is rounded up, never down. If it is under three months old on arrival (92 days on the same convention), the dam must be fully vaccinated against the same list and her record filed too. An ISO-compliant microchip is the third gate, and its number must appear on every record — so the chip goes in before the vaccinations, not after.

Everything else is a date window counted back from arrival:

• Blood samples, dogs only — negative results for Leishmaniasis, Heartworm antigen, Heartworm microfilaria, drawn within 30 days of travel (dogs §4.1, guideline §5). Cats have no §4 at all; the document jumps from §3 to §5.
• Application — online only, at least 14 days before arrival (guideline §2). The permit is then valid 90 days from issue.
• Health certificate— issued by the exporting country's government veterinary authority within 10 days of travel (§6.1). If it is not ready in time, a draft goes in with the application and the original is presented on arrival.
• Parasite treatment — internal and external, certified in writing. Here the two documents disagree: the guideline says 7 days before travel, the signed requirement says 14. The tool uses the stricter 7-day window, because treating on that date satisfies both and treating on the other may not.
• Quarantine — 30 days at your own address from the arrival date.

One wrinkle is worth naming. The signed requirements measure their windows from departure; the guideline measures the same windows from arrival. This tool anchors on arrival, because that is the date an owner actually knows, and because arrival is never earlier than departure — so an arrival-anchored earliest date is never the looser of the two. That is not asserted, it is computed: on a flight departing Sat, 14 Nov 2026 and landing Sun, 15 Nov 2026, all 3 windows come out at or inside the departure-anchored ones. The three worked examples below are also run through the same engine at build time: 5/5 of the hand-computed cases reconcile to the code, including both sides of the 46-day age boundary.

Almost every page ranking for these searches still describes the previous conditions. These are the three differences that actually stop a pet at Katunayake.

• Email the airport quarantine office at [email protected] before departure, and declare the animal to Customs and Quarantine on arrival.
• All import questions go to [email protected], on one email thread — DAPH asks for replies on the same thread.
• Section 4.2 of the dog requirements waives a test where the exporting country is officially recognised as free of that disease. DAPH publishes no list of which countries qualify, so ask before you assume a waiver applies.
• Airline, crate and IATA Live Animals Regulations rules are carrier policy, not government rule. Check them separately — some aircraft have no live cargo hold.

• DAPH — Veterinary Health Requirements for the Importation of Dogs into Sri Lanka (effective 1 January 2026)
• DAPH — Veterinary Health Requirements for the Importation of Cats into Sri Lanka (effective 1 January 2026)
• DAPH — Importing Dogs and Cats into Sri Lanka: Essential Guidelines
• DAPH — Import service page (application form and inquiry addresses)
• DAPH — Quarantine service page
• DAPH — online import application form for dogs and cats
• Import and Export Control Department — permit portal
• Embassy of Sri Lanka, Washington DC — Bringing pet animals to Sri Lanka

Every rule, date window and fee on this page was read from those documents on 2026-09-26. The stamp and customs fees come from the embassy page only, and are shown separately in the calculator for that reason — its description of the application process predates the 2026 rules. This page is a planning aid: the Animal Quarantine Officer at Katunayake makes the clearance decision.