Easter Island entry requirements: Rapa Nui form and 30-day limit

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, is part of Chile, but it has entry rules of its own. Under Chilean law every visitor completes an entry form before the trip, shows a return ticket and a booking at authorized lodging, and leaves within 30 days. The documents are checked at the airport or port you depart from, so a missing one stops you before you board. The Easter Island guide and the wider Chile guide cover the trip itself.

The rule is not aimed at foreigners. It applies to anyone who is not entitled to live on the island, which includes Chileans from the mainland, and it works the same way whatever passport you carry. The form is free. Everything below comes from Chile's Ministry of the Interior and Public Security, the investigative police and the government's ChileAtiende service portal, checked against the travel advice of the UK, Canadian and Australian governments.

The legal basis is Law 21.070, which regulates who may stay on the island and for how long. The ministry's form site opens with the core statement: under that law, every person entering the special territory of Easter Island must meet requirements that depend on the category they enter in. A Chilean consular page explains the purpose, which is to manage a population that has put pressure on basic services, waste handling and the environment.

The form itself is on the ministry's site at ingresorapanui.interior.gob.cl, and the plain-language description of the procedure is on ChileAtiende, which shows a last update of January 8, 2026. You will see two names for the same document. ChileAtiende calls it the Single Entry Form, or FUI, and the ministry's site calls it the Rapa Nui entry form.

Enforcement belongs to the police. The notice attached to the form says the Policía de Investigaciones, known as PDI, verifies the requirements of Law 21.070 and of a 2019 decree, and checks that travelers comply. PDI is also the force that foreign visitors deal with over their Chilean tourist card, so the check works like an extra immigration desk before the flight.

ChileAtiende names two groups: tourists and invited guests. The form's information notice is broader and says every person who wants to enter the special territory must complete it, so plan on one for each traveler in your party. Canada's travel advice makes the same point from the outside, describing the stay limit as one that applies to all travelers.

One group is exempt from the form. Rapa Nui people registered with CONADI, the national Indigenous development agency, and other people enabled under the law to stay or live on the island only show their identity document at the control point.

Most visitors are tourists in this scheme, and the two documents that define a tourist are the ones to get right. The return ticket has to be yours: ChileAtiende describes it as non-transferable. The lodging has to be authorized by Sernatur, the national tourism service, and you enter its address on the form.

The guest route is for people staying with someone who lives on the island. The invitation letter carries a folio number issued by the provincial government, identifies each guest by full name, nationality and document, gives the start and end dates of the invitation, and identifies the host and the address where the guests will stay. The UK government's Chile entry requirements describe the same choice: a reservation registered with Sernatur, or an invitation letter from the provincial delegation.

The limit is written into the ticket requirement. ChileAtiende says a tourist's return ticket from the island must have a return date no later than 30 days after the outbound date. Canada's advice says stays are limited to 30 consecutive days for all travelers, and Australia's says you cannot stay on the island for more than 30 consecutive days.

In practice this rules out two kinds of plans. A one-way ticket does not work, because the return is part of what you declare. An open-ended stay does not work either, because the return date sets your time on the island before you arrive. Decide how long you want, book the round trip to match, and treat the return date as fixed.

Thirty days is far more than most itineraries use, so the limit matters mainly to slow travelers, remote workers and people visiting family. If you want longer, the tourist category is the wrong one. The law has other categories for people who work or carry out research on the island, and the official pages read for this guide describe no way to extend a tourist stay. Ask the provincial government office before you plan around more than 30 days.

Start at the ministry's site. The first screen asks how you will arrive, by plane or by ship, and the date of entry, and asks you to accept the terms of entry to the territory. From there you enter the details that ChileAtiende lists: the number of your identity card, passport or other official travel document, then either your return ticket and lodging or your invitation letter.

That list tells you when to do it. The form needs a confirmed flight and a confirmed place to stay, so complete it after both are booked and before you leave for the airport. The pages do not publish a deadline, and ChileAtiende says the form is available all year. Do not leave it for the departure hall, where a slow connection or a missing booking reference becomes a problem at the worst moment. Keep whatever confirmation the site gives you on your phone and on paper.

Accuracy matters more than speed. The form's notice says each traveler is responsible for entering true information, and that any difference between the form and what the police find at the check could prevent entry. It also cites the law's penalty for false or altered documents: a serious infraction, with fines of 20 to 30 monthly tax units, a Chilean reference unit whose peso value is updated regularly.

Choosing lodging that counts

The reservation only works if the place is authorized by Sernatur. ChileAtiende links to the tourism service's search tool for registered businesses, and that is the list to check before you pay a deposit. A room offered informally may not be registered, and a booking there does not meet the requirement.

Ask the host directly whether the property is registered, and keep the confirmation with the address in the form you entered. If you are splitting your stay between two places, book both before you fill in the form so that what you declare matches what you can show.

The control is at the start of the journey. ChileAtiende says you present the form to PDI at the airport or port of departure, and the ministry's site tells you to pay attention to the documents you will have to show the police when you are checked at the airport. Have the form, your passport or identity card, the return ticket and the lodging confirmation or invitation letter together.

Canada's travel advice for Chile says the documents are needed both to fly and on arrival: a round-trip ticket, a passport valid for the whole stay and proof of a reservation at authorized accommodation, along with the completed entry form. Keep them in your hand luggage until you have left the airport on the island.

Leave extra time at the departure airport, because this check is in addition to check-in and security. If your flight leaves from Santiago, the Santiago guide covers the mainland end of the trip. A traveler arriving by ship goes through the same control at the port of departure, and the form has a ship option for that reason.

The island form does not replace Chile's own entry rules, and foreign visitors pass those first. The UK government says British travelers can visit Chile for up to 90 days without a visa, with a passport that expires after the day they plan to leave. Canada's advice says Canadians need no tourist visa and receive a tourist card valid for a maximum of 90 days. Australia's Smartraveller page says Chile has announced that Australians no longer need a visa for stays of up to 90 days. If you hold another passport, confirm the position with a Chilean consulate before you book.

Two small things from those pages save trouble later. Keep the tourist card that immigration gives you, because you hand it in when you leave the country, and replacing a lost one means dealing with the police and can delay your departure. And expect a customs and agricultural declaration when you enter Chile, which Australia's advice says is completed online within 48 hours of arrival or on paper forms near baggage collection.

Families should read the rules for minors closely. Canada's advice says Chile has strict entry and exit requirements for travelers under 18, including special documentation when a child travels with one parent, with a guardian or alone. The children's travel documents guide explains consent letters in general.

The entry form gets you onto the island. It does not get you into the sites most people come for. Rapa Nui National Park has been managed since November 23, 2017 by the Ma'u Henua Indigenous Community, and the park's site says it is mandatory to buy a ticket and to hire a guide accredited by Ma'u Henua. Every person needs a ticket.

The ticket page did not show a price without choosing a date, so no figure is given here. Check it on the park's site when you buy. The park rules on the same site also matter for planning: no drones without authorization, no touching the moai or the platforms, marked paths only, and fines under Chile's national monuments law for breaking the rules.

The 10-day window and the single entry to the two best-known sites shape the itinerary. On a stay longer than 10 days, group your park visits so they fall inside the window that opens with your first site. Save Rano Raraku and Orongo for days with good weather and enough time, because you cannot go back on the same ticket.

The first mistake is booking the flight and leaving the lodging for later. The form needs both, and the lodging has to be authorized, so the room is as much an entry document as the ticket. The second is a return date more than 30 days out, or no return at all. The third is a mismatch between the form and your documents, such as a different passport number or a changed booking, which the notice warns can prevent entry.

Do not rely on older checklists. Some official pages written when the island reopened in 2022 still list health requirements from that period, such as vaccination certificates and tests. The current ChileAtiende page, updated in January 2026, lists none of them, so use it and the form site as your reference.

Do not assume a tour or cruise has done the form for you. Ask the operator in writing who completes it and what you need to carry. And do not treat the park ticket, the guide or the form as one purchase: the form is a government procedure, the ticket and the guide are arranged through the park, and none includes the others.

Work in this order. Book a round trip with a return within 30 days. Reserve lodging that is authorized by Sernatur and keep the address. Complete the form on the ministry's site with both. Then buy the park ticket and arrange an accredited guide for the days you want to visit the sites.

If the trip includes other protected places with their own paperwork, plan them the same way. The Galápagos entry fee and rules work on a similar idea, with a control before the flight and a fee on arrival, and in Chilean Patagonia the Torres del Paine bookings guide covers the reservations that park requires.

The travel insurance guides explain what to look for, the connectivity guide compares ways to stay online, and the visas and entry section lists the rules for other countries on the same trip.