also called airport transit visa · ATV
A visa required to pass through a country, or sometimes just its airport, en route elsewhere.
A transit visa is permission just to pass through a country on your way somewhere else, sometimes only to change planes inside the airport. It is a much smaller thing than a tourist visa, which lets you actually leave the airport and spend time there. The trap is that some passports need one even when you never step past the gate.
You book a cheap flight home that connects through a third country, planning to just wait at the gate. At check-in you are told your passport needs a transit visa for that airport, you do not have one, and the airline refuses to let you board the first leg.
Some passports need one even without leaving the airport, and missing it can block a connection.
The difference is the whole point, so here is each one in a line.
These are the ways to get in for a short visit, not to live there.
A tourist visa is the standard leisure entry, visa-free travel skips the visa entirely for short stays, and a visa on arrival is bought at the border.
A transit visa only lets you pass through, an eVisa is applied for online before travel, and an ETA is a pre-screening approval that is not itself a visa.
Hayya is Qatar's entry-permit portal, and landing permission is the entry an officer actually grants at the border, which can differ from what a visa-free list implied.
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