VISITAX in Quintana Roo: what it costs and how to pay

What is VISITAX?

Your plane drops through the cloud over the reef and Quintana Roo has already billed you. VISITAX is the state's charge on foreign visitors who enter, written into the Ley de Derechos as Article 51-Octies and set at 2.5 UMA. For 2026 that comes to 293.28 pesos a person, about USD 17. ^{1, 2, 3}

The money is owed the moment you enter the state, by whichever airport, port or road you use. Pay it the week you book, or on your phone in the taxi line at 11 p.m. What the state wants is a QR code with your passport number on it, ready when somebody asks for it. ⁴

This charge has been running since 2021. The first version was Article 74-Bis of the state's Ley de Hacienda, in force from 1 April 2021 at the same 2.5-UMA rate. A decree published on 23 December 2022 moved it into the Ley de Derechos, where it sits today as Article 51-Octies. Local press dates the launch to 2022 and puts the opening price at 224 pesos, so the fee has climbed about 31 percent. ^{8, 1, 5}

How much is VISITAX in 2026?

The official site prints no peso figure anywhere you can read it. The law does the arithmetic for you.

The rate lives in the statute, and the statute points at an index. Article 51-Octies sets the charge at 2.5 UMA. The UMA is the unit Mexican law uses to price all kinds of fees, and INEGI fixed its daily value at 117.31 pesos from 1 February 2026. Multiply the two and you get 293.275 pesos per foreign visitor. ^{1, 2}

Go looking for that number on visitax.gob.mx and you come up empty. The home page and the FAQ print no amount at all; the figure surfaces inside the payment flow, after a passport number goes in. A June 2026 report from a Cancun news site quotes 293 pesos, roughly USD 15 to 18, which lands on the law's own arithmetic. ^{4, 7}

Thirty-four dollars for a couple barely moves a two-week budget, and it is exactly the sort of charge that arrives in pesos on a dollar card. If your card adds a foreign transaction fee, spend a minute on how those fees stack with the exchange rate before you tap. ³

Who pays, and who is exempt

The law charges foreign visitors who enter the state. Its words are las personas visitantes extranjeras, with no carve-out by age, nationality or length of stay. Mexican citizens and residents sit outside it. So does a traveler who spends the whole trip in Yucatan or Campeche and stays clear of Quintana Roo. ¹

One exemption is written into the article itself. Enter Quintana Roo over the state's southern border, the land crossing from Belize south of Chetumal, and the fee falls away. The statute grants a full exemption for that entry point. A full exemption, not the ten percent discount the aggregator blogs describe. ¹

Cruise passengers sit in a real dispute between two arms of the same government. Article 51-Nonies charges cruise passengers a separate state right of USD 5, collected by the cruise line with the ticket, and says paying it covers the VISITAX as well. The official FAQ says the opposite: every foreign tourist owes the fee, regardless of way of departure. Both are the government's own words. ^{1, 4}

So ask the cruise line in writing what it has already collected on your behalf, and keep the answer with the boarding documents. Sailing in through Cozumel, the portal's FAQ takes the harder line and confirms that the fee reaches the island. ⁴

Children are the other open question. The article names foreign visitors and stops there. Reports disagree: a Cancun outlet says infants and children pay like everyone else, a local site reports under-15s exempt, and the airport's page says the rate is the same for all ages. Asked directly, the state portal's FAQ says only that all foreign tourists must pay, naming no age or rate. Budget a fee for every passport in the party. ^{7, 5, 9, 4}

Is VISITAX the same as the cruise passenger fee?

Three charges reach visitors on this coast, and they come from two levels of government. Here is which is which.

Three separate fees reach visitors on this coast. VISITAX is the state charge on foreign visitors entering Quintana Roo. Quintana Roo also charges cruise passengers USD 5 at their first port in the state, collected with the cruise ticket. Mexico's federal Derecho de No Residente, the DNR, charges non-resident cruise passengers at any Mexican port. ^{1, 10}

The DNR doubled from USD 5 to USD 10 on 1 August 2026, under a phased schedule that reaches USD 15 on 1 July 2027 and USD 21 on 1 August 2028. Trade press traces that schedule to Mexico's tourism ministry. It belongs to the federal government, and it sits entirely apart from anything Quintana Roo collects. ¹⁰

How do I pay VISITAX safely?

One address collects this fee: visitax.gob.mx. The portal's own FAQ points there, and to companies the state tax service authorizes to collect. Everything else offering to handle your VISITAX is a middleman charging for the privilege. ⁴

1. 01

   Read the address bar before anything else

   The official portal ends in .gob.mx. Type it yourself instead of following an ad or a link buried in a booking confirmation. ⁴

2. 02

   Enter the passport details for every traveler

   The form wants passport numbers and your dates. The peso amount appears here, inside the flow. The public pages print no figure at all. ⁴

3. 03

   Pay through the portal or an authorized company

   The FAQ names both routes: the official portal, or a company the SATQ has authorized to take the payment. ⁴

4. 04

   Save the QR code where you can reach it offline

   Screenshot it, mail it to yourself, print one copy for the passport wallet. Airport Wi-Fi has a talent for failing at the checkpoint.

5. 05

   Lost the code? Pull it back with the passport number

   The portal has a recover-your-receipt route that returns the QR code from a passport number, and it stays open for at least a year after your departure date. ⁴

• The domain settles it. The official portal ends in .gob.mx. Anything else, however official the seal on the page looks, is a third party. ⁴
• The price settles it twice. The state fee is 293 pesos, about USD 17. A checkout asking far more than that is selling you a service on top of the tax. ^{1, 2, 3}
• Ads sit above search results. During booking week, type the address instead of clicking the first thing a search engine offers.
• One payment covers one passport. Pay once per traveler and keep each QR code with the passport it belongs to. ¹

The gray zone is wider than scam or official. cancunairport.com, the airport's privately run information site, publishes a clear VISITAX explainer and a form link. It is a useful page, and it sits outside the government: no .gob.mx, no official standing, and a stamp saying the content was last updated in 2024. Read it for orientation, then pay on the state's own site. ⁹

What happens if you skip it?

No fine lands at the border, and nothing stops you at arrivals. Local press reports no immediate penalty for entering the state without having paid. The reckoning waits for departure day, when you have a flight to catch. ⁵

Travelers reported targeted VISITAX checkpoints at Cancun International through 2026, usually set just before the escalators up to security screening. Officials in high-visibility vests ask departing passengers for the QR code. Not every passenger gets stopped. ⁶

Get stopped without a code and you settle up on the spot. A June 2026 account describes travelers pulled out of the security line and made to pay the tax on a phone or at a kiosk before walking to the gate. No arrest, and no separate penalty beyond the tax itself. The real cost is the queue, and the queue turns up on the one morning you have a plane to board. ⁷

Whether a kiosk exists to pay at is genuinely unsettled. That same June 2026 account describes kiosks inside the terminal and lines forming at them. The airport's information site, last updated in 2024, says payment happens online only, with no desks or cashiers anywhere in the building. Pay before you travel and the question stops mattering. ^{7, 9}

Where VISITAX fits in a Riviera Maya budget

Seventeen dollars a person is the smallest line in the trip and the easiest to forget. Pay it the week you book the flights, while the passport numbers are already open on the screen. Then it sits quietly beside the other fixed charges and stops being a problem. ^{1, 2, 3}

VISITAX buys no tickets. Every ruin, park and cenote inland charges at its own gate, and the collector changes from one to the next: a federal institute here, a municipality there, a community cooperative at the cenote down the track. Ask who is collecting, and take the receipt.

Two weeks on this coast is a long string of small charges with different owners. Marine parks bill their own conservation fees, and MMT breaks down how marine park and conservation fees work and prices a week of boats in the Cozumel diving budget. For getting around the country and what the rest of the trip costs, start at the Mexico travel guide.