In short: Guatemala does not treat cats as a lighter case than dogs on entry. One MAGA-VISAR sheet governs both species and sets exactly three requirements: a veterinary health certificate, a vaccination card showing rabies given not less than one month before travel — with an explicit exception for animals under 3 months of age — and an inspection by SEPA/OIRSA at USD 14.00 per pet. No quarantine, no microchip and no import permit appear on that sheet. Foreign-language documents must be rendered into Spanish. And if the cat leaves Guatemala more than 30 days after arriving, it needs an export certificate to go. This page reports published requirements; it is not veterinary or legal advice.
Our customs guide covers what you may carry in a suitcase. A live animal is not baggage, and it is not customs that decides — it is the Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganadería y Alimentación (MAGA), through its Viceministerio de Sanidad Agropecuaria y Regulaciones (VISAR), with the physical check performed at the border by SEPA/OIRSA inspectors.
The useful thing to know before anything else is that Guatemala publishes one sheet for dogs and cats together. Most cat owners arrive expecting a lighter regime because that is how the United States works in the opposite direction. Inbound to Guatemala, the species makes no difference at all. Where it makes an enormous difference is on the way back out — and that is a different instrument entirely, covered in taking a pet from Guatemala to the USA.
The three requirements, as written
VISAR’s sheet is titled Requisitos para el ingreso y egreso de mascotas (perros y gatos) a la República de Guatemala and sets out entry in a single table, Cuadro No. 1.
| Inciso | Requirement | What the sheet says it must show |
|---|---|---|
| a) | Certificado de Salud — stamped and signed by a veterinarian in professional practice | The pet’s “nombre, edad, sexo, raza, color y demás características físicas”; that it was examined and found in good health and free of clinical signs of infectious-contagious and/or parasitic diseases; vaccines applied, indicating the validity date; and deworming with products approved by the country of origin |
| b) | Carnet de vacunación — stamped and signed by a veterinarian in professional practice | That the pet was vaccinated against rabies, indicating its vigencia, applied “en un período no menor a 1 mes antes del viaje”. “Exceptuando Animales menores de 3 meses de edad.” Other vaccines applied according to age are to be indicated |
| c) | Inspection by SEPA/OIRSA personnel at any point of entry — air, sea or land | You hand over a copy of each of (a) and (b) and pay "$14.00 (de acuerdo al peso) por cada mascota" |
Three documents-and-a-fee. That is the whole published entry regime for a pet cat.
What is conspicuously absent
The sheet does not mention a quarantine period. It does not mention a microchip. It does not mention an import permit, a pre-arrival application, a rabies titre, or a cat-specific vaccine such as FVRCP. It does not set a validity window for the health certificate in days.
These are silences in the governing sheet, and they are worth reading precisely. A silence means the requirement is not published there — it does not mean an inspector has no discretion. Inciso c) gives SEPA/OIRSA the inspection power at every point of entry, and the sheet’s own closing recommendations tell travellers to check destination-country requirements and carrier requirements in advance and to travel with one or two photocopy sets of the paperwork.
The rabies window, and the kitten exception
This is the single most cat-specific fact on the sheet, because cats are far more often moved as kittens than dogs are.
- The rabies vaccination must be applied not less than 1 month before the trip.
- Animals under 3 months of age are excepted.
- The card must state the vaccine’s vigencia — its validity date.
The bilateral certificate that the United States and Guatemala use carries the matching attestation in English: “The animals were vaccinated against rabies. Animals younger than 3 months of age were not vaccinated.”
Note what the exception does and does not do. It excepts the animal from the rabies requirement in inciso b). It does not except it from the health certificate in inciso a), and it does not except it from the SEPA/OIRSA inspection and fee in inciso c).
An upper bound is where the sources diverge. The requirement sheet prints only the one-month floor plus the instruction to show the vaccine’s validity date. MAGA’s earlier press announcement of the pet requirements, dated 23 April 2021, phrased the window as “un período no menor a un mes y no mayor a un año” — not less than one month and not more than one year. We report both, name which document each came from, and do not resolve the difference: the sheet is the requirement document, and the upper bound appears in the announcement.
Coming from the United States: the two-page bilateral certificate
VISAR’s sheet carries a separate heading for pets arriving from the United States. Owners may present either:
- The protocol agreed between the two countries — “Certificado de Salud para la Exportación de Perros, Gatos de los Estados Unidos a Guatemala”, which the sheet says consists of two pages and is available on the MAGA-VISAR website; or
- The ordinary Certificado de Salud of inciso a).
Either way, incisos b) and c) — vaccination card and SEPA/OIRSA inspection with the fee — still apply.
The bilateral form is published on the US side by USDA APHIS as the Veterinary Health Certificate for Export of Dogs, Cats from the United States of America to Guatemala. Its attestations are short and are worth reading before a vet appointment, because they are what the veterinarian is signing:
- the animals were examined and found to be healthy and free from clinical signs of infectious, transmissible, and parasitic diseases;
- the animals were vaccinated against rabies, with the under-3-months exception noted above;
- the animals were treated for endo- and ectoparasites with products approved by the country of origin.
APHIS-accredited veterinarians submit health certificates for USDA endorsement through VEHCS, the Veterinary Export Health Certification System, and APHIS states the printed endorsed certificate must accompany the animal.
No validity period in days is printed on the certificate itself, and APHIS’s Guatemala pet-travel page does not state one either. If you need a working assumption, the binding published figure is the one on the Guatemalan sheet: the rabies vaccination not less than one month before travel.
A genuine contradiction between the two authorities
APHIS’s Pet Travel From the United States to Guatemala page states that “Guatemala’s Ministry of Agriculture (MAGA) requires a valid import permit prior to the embarkation and importation of animals.”
MAGA-VISAR’s own pet requirement sheet lists no import permit. Its entry table has three incisos, and a permit is not among them.
We are reporting this as a conflict between two authorities rather than resolving it, because each is authoritative for its own side and neither cites the other’s instrument. Name the body per fact: the permit statement is APHIS’s; the three-requirement entry table is MAGA-VISAR’s. APHIS publishes a MAGA contact for exactly this kind of question — telephone 2413-7000, Monday to Friday 08:00–16:30 — and VISAR’s sheet publishes its own animal-quarantine contact: cuarentenaanimal@maga.gob.gt, telephone 1557 extension 7426, at 7a. avenida 12-90 zona 13, edificio VISAR.
The 30-day trap on the way out
This is the requirement that catches people who came for a season and then leave.
VISAR’s sheet has a heading of its own: pets leaving Guatemala more than 30 days after the day of entry must obtain a Certificado Sanitario de Exportación (for Central America) or a Certificado Zoosanitario Internacional de Exportación (for the rest of the world) before departure.
| Item | What the sheet publishes |
|---|---|
| Where it is issued | MAGA’s export window, in the AGEXPORT building, 15 avenida 14-72 zona 13 |
| Telephone | 24223400 |
| Cost | USD 6.25 |
| What you must bring | Certificates a) and b) for each pet |
| Where it is presented | Any point of exit — air, sea or land |
A cat that arrives and leaves within 30 days is not sent to that window by the sheet. A cat that stays longer is. There is no published grace period, and no published fast-track.
One caveat about the sheet’s own cross-references, verified on 2026-08-11. The procedure link printed on the sheet, asisehace.gt/es-GT/tramites/397, no longer resolves to a procedure page — it returns a redirect to pronacom.org. And the CDC link printed on the sheet for US-bound pets redirects to CDC’s general “Bringing an Animal into the U.S.” page rather than to the dog-import page it names. Both are source-migration problems in a 2024 document, not evidence that the requirements changed. Use the bodies’ current pages, and see our Guatemala-to-USA guide for what CDC publishes now.
Airlines are a separate layer, and not a legal one
Whether a cat may travel in the cabin, what the carrier weighs it in, and what it charges are carrier policy, not Guatemalan law. No airline policy substitutes for MAGA’s three requirements, and no MAGA requirement obliges an airline to carry an animal.
We are not publishing a carrier fee table on this page. On 2026-08-11 we could not load a current pet policy from a carrier’s own site to verify one — the pages we attempted returned a 404 and a timeout — and a fee table sourced from anywhere other than the carrier is a table that will be wrong. VISAR’s own closing recommendation says the same thing in the sheet’s words: consult the transport company’s requirements in advance. Ask the airline that will actually fly the sector, and get it in writing before you buy the ticket.
Edge cases worth knowing
- Route of entry does not change the paperwork. Inciso c) applies the inspection at “cualquier punto de ingreso al país (aéreo, marítimo y terrestre)” — any point of entry, air, sea and land. Overland arrivals from Mexico or Belize are not a lighter path.
- The fee is per pet, and stated as varying by weight. The sheet’s wording is "$14.00 (de acuerdo al peso) por cada mascota". It publishes the figure and the weight qualifier, but no weight bands. No band table was found.
- Two pets means two of everything. Certificates a) and b) are required “por cada mascota” on both the entry and the exit tables.
- Species scope. The sheet’s title and every heading name perros y gatos. It is not written for rabbits, ferrets, birds or reptiles, and no equivalent published sheet for those species was located on the VISAR site as of 2026-08-11. Those species are also subject to separate wildlife and CITES controls that this page does not cover.
- Bring photocopies. The sheet’s recommendations tell travellers to carry one or two photocopy sets of the requested paperwork in case an entity asks for them, and inciso c) requires you to hand over a copy of each certificate at inspection.
- Dogs from the USA are the same inbound path, and our older walkthrough of the US-side logistics is at bringing your dog to Guatemala from the USA.
Sources
- Requisitos para el ingreso y egreso de mascotas (perros y gatos) a la República de Guatemala — Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganadería y Alimentación (MAGA), Viceministerio de Sanidad Agropecuaria y Regulaciones (VISAR), Dirección de Sanidad Animal, Departamento de Protección y Sanidad Pecuaria. Cuadro No. 1 (incisos a, b, c), the United States heading, the foreign-language heading, Cuadro No. 2 (incisos a–d), the 30-day heading, and the closing recommendations. maga.gob.gt — retrieved 2026-08-11 (3-page PDF).
- Guatemala integra requisitos para ingreso y egreso de perros y gatos como mascotas — MAGA press release, 23 April 2021. Source of the “no menor a un mes y no mayor a un año” phrasing and of the attribution of the USD 14.00 inspection fee to Acuerdo Ministerial 114-2018. maga.gob.gt — retrieved 2026-08-11 (the page returned HTTP 403 to a direct request and was read through a text proxy).
- Veterinary Health Certificate for Export of Dogs, Cats from the United States of America to Guatemala — United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). Source of the three attestations quoted above. aphis.usda.gov — retrieved 2026-08-11.
- Pet Travel From the United States to Guatemala — USDA APHIS. Source of the import-permit statement, the VEHCS endorsement process, and the MAGA telephone 2413-7000 with hours Monday–Friday 08:00–16:30. aphis.usda.gov — retrieved 2026-08-11.
Not published / not found, as of 2026-08-11: MAGA-VISAR’s pet requirement sheet sets no quarantine period, no microchip requirement, no import permit, no rabies titre, no cat-specific vaccine list and no health-certificate validity window in days for a cat entering Guatemala — those requirements are absent from the instrument that would set them. No weight-band table was found behind the “de acuerdo al peso” qualifier on the USD 14.00 fee. No published VISAR requirement sheet was located for pet species other than dogs and cats. The USD 14.00 and USD 6.25 figures are published by MAGA in US dollars; no quetzal equivalent is printed on the sheet.
General information for travellers and people relocating, current as of 2026-08-11, reporting published requirements from the instruments named above. It is not veterinary or legal advice. Requirements change and enforcement is a matter for Guatemalan authorities — confirm with MAGA-VISAR (cuarentenaanimal@maga.gob.gt) and with your airline before you travel. En español: Traer un gato a Guatemala.
