Dress laws for tourists: what the law says you can wear

Clothing becomes a matter of law for a visitor in four situations: public decency rules in Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Gulf states, swimwear worn away from the beach, a covered face in parts of Europe, and camouflage prints in the Caribbean and parts of Africa. The published penalties start at €120 for a bare torso in Barcelona and reach arrest in Iran. More on what to wear and the rules behind it is in travel clothing, part of the gear section.

Three kinds of rule appear below, and they do not weigh the same: a law with a penalty, a rule that applies inside certain buildings, and advice. The sources are the destination's own government or tourism board where it publishes the rule, and the travel advice of the UK and Canadian governments, all read on 13 October 2026. Rules for entering mosques, temples and churches are in dress codes at temples, mosques and churches.

Read the status column first. A law applies in the street, a place rule applies at a door, and advice has no penalty behind it.

Where the last column says none stated, the source names the rule and gives no amount. The rule is still law: the UK calls camouflage clothing illegal in each of the eight states.

The three countries sit at three different points. Saudi Arabia has a written charter with a fine. Qatar enforces its dress code at the doors of certain buildings. For the UAE the sources give advice, with one outright prohibition.

Saudi Arabia

The charter is published on the official tourist visa site. The same site's table of violations lists four that concern clothing: improper clothing in public places, underwear or sleepwear, clothing with profane language or obscene images, and clothing with language, images or symbols that encourage discrimination or racism or promote pornography or drug use. Policemen record the violations and impose the fines.

The charter's wording stops at "dress modestly." The lengths come from three other sources, and they differ. Visit Saudi, the official tourism site, makes it a strong recommendation: loose clothing that covers the shoulders, chest and legs, and for men no shorts above the knee and no pajamas in public. The UK's travel advice words it as a requirement: men and women must wear loose-fitting clothing that covers the elbow and reaches below the knee. Canada says shoulders and knees should be covered. Pack to the UK's line, elbows and knees covered and nothing tight, and you satisfy all three.

Visit Saudi and the UK agree that women visiting Saudi Arabia do not have to wear an abaya or cover their hair. Mosques are the exception in Visit Saudi's text: shoes off, long pants or skirts for everyone, and hair covered for women.

Qatar

That is the UK's travel advice for Qatar. Visit Qatar describes attitudes to dress as relaxed, expects visitors, men as well as women, to avoid excessively revealing clothing in public, and recommends covered shoulders and knees. Neither source states a fine. In Qatar the rule with a consequence is at the door: an errand at a bank, a clinic or a government counter in shorts or a sleeveless top can end at the entrance.

United Arab Emirates

The UK's travel advice for the UAE adds that some venues, events and buildings have dress codes of their own. Visit Abu Dhabi confirms the beach side: regular swimwear, bikinis included, can be worn on the emirate's private and public beaches. For government offices it advises covering shoulders and legs, and it recommends dressing more conservatively during Ramadan. On a trip to Dubai the decision is the cover-up: something to pull on between the pool and the mall.

The UK's travel advice for Iran describes Islamic codes of dress as strictly enforced and warns that enforcement crackdowns can lead to large-scale arrests across the country at any time. The same advice is against all travel to Iran.

At religious sites the UK lists extra requirements: women may be asked to put on a chador, a garment that covers the whole body except the face, before entering. Canada's wording and the conduct rules that go with the dress code are in dress code and conduct rules in Esfahan.

The rules in this section are local: a city regulation in Venice and in Barcelona, town-center fines in Croatia. They share one idea, that beachwear stays at the beach, and the two cities publish the price.

Venice

The city's list of forbidden behavior, last updated in April 2022, is enforced by the municipal police, with fines across the list running from €25 to €500. The city's good practices for visitors point swimmers to the beaches of the Lido and Pellestrina. Day visitors to Venice also have the access fee to plan for.

Barcelona and the Spanish coast

Barcelona publishes it in the council's list of fines under its coexistence bylaw, which marks this one as new. The same band applies to clothing, accessories or objects that explicitly represent human genitalia. The exception is physical activity, so a shirtless runner is covered by it.

For the rest of Spain, the UK's travel advice says it is illegal in some parts to be in the street wearing only a bikini or swimming shorts, that being bare-chested is illegal in some areas, and that you could be fined for wearing swimwear on the seafront promenade or the streets next to it.

Split, Dubrovnik and Monaco

The UK's travel advice for Croatia gives no amount for Split or Dubrovnik. Its advice for Monaco says you could get a fine for walking around in swimsuits, stripped to the waist or barefoot, apart from on beaches and in bathing areas. A T-shirt and a pair of sandals in the beach bag answer every rule in this section.

On these coasts the rule follows you onto the sand, and what you can swim in depends on which beach you are on.

Maldives

The resort and bikini beach lines come from Visit Maldives, the national tourism board, and the ban on topless sunbathing from the UK's travel advice. The UK adds what to wear outside resorts, including on beaches used by locals: shoulders covered, no short or tight-fitting shorts, and arms and upper legs covered when bathing, for men and women alike. A guesthouse stay on a local island in the Maldives therefore needs a T-shirt and long shorts to swim in, plus the answer to one question before booking: where the bikini beach is.

Zanzibar

The figures are in the UK's travel advice for Tanzania. It names shorts and sleeveless tops on women, away from the tourist resorts of Zanzibar and Pemba and in Stone Town above all, as the clothing that may cause offense.

Topless and nude sunbathing

The UK's travel advice lists it as illegal in Fiji, Tonga, Anguilla and Bermuda, and as not allowed in Sri Lanka. Tonga's is the one entry with a figure: a fine of up to 100 pa'anga, or a prison sentence of up to four months if you refuse to pay. Bermuda's entry says there are no nude or topless beaches and that it is illegal for anyone to be topless in public.

The UK's travel advice for France sets it out, and its entries for four more countries describe bans too. In Belgium it is illegal to wear clothing that hides the face partially or completely in public places, with a fine of up to €137 and detention for up to seven days, and no exemption for tourists. Austria makes it generally illegal to wear any clothing or object that covers the face in public, with a fine of up to €150 and a list of exemptions. Denmark fines 1,000 Danish kroner, more for a repeat, and exempts face masks worn for health reasons. Bulgaria bans the niqab, burka or similar head covering in public buildings, streets, parks, restaurants, shops and on public transport, and the police can fine.

France's wording names balaclavas as well as veils, so a balaclava worn in the street in France falls under it too. Spain has a place rule in the UK's advice: some public authorities do not allow the burka or niqab in their buildings, and in a town council building you may be asked to remove it while inside.

Each country's entry in the UK's travel advice carries the line, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago among them. Canada's advice for Jamaica adds a ninth: it is illegal there to wear, buy or sell army or police camouflage clothing. For a trip around the Caribbean that calls at several islands, leave camouflage-print shorts, caps and children's T-shirts at home, whether the stop is Barbados or Jamaica.

In Africa the UK's advice makes the same point for four countries. Wearing military clothing, camouflage included, is illegal in Ghana. Zimbabwe bans civilians from any clothing made of camouflage material. Cameroon allows it only to the armed forces, and penalties may include a fine and detention. Uganda bans military-style clothing for anyone, including children, counts camouflage and red berets as such, and sets a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

What is printed on a T-shirt is regulated in two more places. Kuwait treats wearing or displaying items that promote or encourage narcotics, logos on clothing included, as an offense that may bring significant fines, according to the UK's travel advice for Kuwait. In Singapore, the UK says, wearing "cause-related" clothing in public is prohibited.

The cannabis-leaf T-shirt is the common case. It is on the wrong side of the rule in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait and in the Croatian town centers that fine clothing promoting drug use. Leave it out of the bag for any of the three.