My Passport Expires While I'm in Guatemala: The Entry Stamp, the Prorroga and the Exit

Your stay and your passport run on two separate clocks, and almost every confused answer online comes from treating them as one. Guatemala authorises your stay in days. Your passport expires on a date printed by a government that is not Guatemala’s. When the second clock runs out first, the question is not am I now illegal — it is what does the published rule require me to do about the paperwork.

This page reports what published Guatemalan instruments say, and says so explicitly where they say nothing. It is not legal advice, and it does not tell you what to do about your documents.

In short: IGM publishes two tariff lines in this neighbourhood — US$10 for “Reposición de sello(s) de entrada en pasaporte vigente” (Subdirección de Control Migratorio) and US$15 for “Traslado de visa a pasaporte” (Subdirección de Extranjería) — but no instrument states which circumstances either service covers, and none mentions a replacement passport. Your authorised stay is expressed in days, not in passport validity: max 90 days, extendable once, capped at 180 days from entry. No instrument we read links passport expiry to the length of your stay, sets a deadline for the stamp transfer, or requires you to keep the old passport. Six months of validity is published — for visa issuance, not for entry. The replacement passport itself is your own government’s job, not IGM’s.

The two clocks

The two tariff lines that sit closest to this question

Nobody on the internet answers does my entry stamp carry into the new passport — and neither, in terms, does IGM. What IGM publishes is two named, priced services, in two different subdirecciones. Read them as names and prices, because that is all the instruments contain.

Three details in that table are easy to miss, and each one changes what you do:

1. Two different subdirecciones own the two jobs. The entry stamp is Control Migratorio. The visa is Extranjería. They publish separate fee lists. If you have both a visa and an entry stamp in the old book, that is two lines, not one.
2. The reglamento says sello, singular; the live web page says sellos, plural. Both are IGM. We report the difference rather than harmonising it, because we cannot tell you which controls.
3. The tariff attaches the service to a “pasaporte vigente” — a valid passport. That is the only condition either instrument states; it does not say whose passport, or in what circumstance.

What the tariff does NOT say — including the part we cannot resolve for you

• It does not say what the service is for. Neither Acuerdo IGM-029-2023, nor either live fee page, nor the Reglamento General says that “Reposición de sello de entrada” transfers a stamp out of a superseded passport into a replacement one. None of them mentions a replacement passport at all. The same is true of “Traslado de visa a pasaporte”: a name and a price, no stated circumstance.
• There is a competing published reading, and it belongs on this page. The Reglamento General del Código de Migración publishes a full route for a defective migratory-movement record: enmienda for nine listed field errors, the last of which is “9. Duplicidad de registros.” (Acuerdo IGM-017-2023, Art. 34), its requirement list and arancel (Art. 35), corrección “cuando el error en el sistema Informático del Instituto sea en el ingreso o egreso de una persona del territorio nacional” — in which the delegate “deberá razonar el sello de ingreso y/o egreso con el número de acta administrativa correspondiente” (Art. 36) — and anulación of an entry or exit that never took effect (Art. 37). On that reading the reposición is about a missing, erroneous or unreadable stamp, not about a new book. No instrument states which reading controls.
• No deadline. No instrument we read sets a period within which a stamp or visa must be moved into a new passport.
• No stated consequence for not moving it.

That is the honest state of the published record as of 2026-08-13: two names, two prices, two offices, and a documented procedure next door whose scope overlaps.

Extending your stay when the passport is the problem

The extension requirements are enumerated, and one of them is the crux.

Acuerdo IGM-015-2025 (Reglamento de Visas Guatemaltecas), Art. 15, “Prórroga de Visa de Turista o Viajero”, requires:

1. “Formulario de solicitud de prórroga de visa de turista o viajero;”
2. “Pasaporte válido y vigente donde conste el sello del último ingreso a Guatemala. En caso de extravío del pasaporte en territorio guatemalteco, podrá presentar documento de viaje válido y vigente;”
3. “Boleto de viaje de salida del país o tarjeta de crédito internacional o constitución de garante guatemalteco presentando para el efecto acta notarial de constitución de garante guatemalteco bajo declaración jurada y constancia actualizada de registro de garante guatemalteco;”
4. “Comprobante de pago.”

Read requirement 2 closely. It asks for two things at once — a valid passport and the last-entry stamp inside it — which is precisely the combination a replacement passport breaks. And it writes one express escape hatch: extravío, loss, inside Guatemalan territory. In that case “podrá presentar documento de viaje válido y vigente”.

It does not name expiry. We searched Art. 15 and the surrounding reglamento for vencimiento, vencido and expirado applied to the traveller’s own passport, and found nothing. So: the instrument provides an express alternative for a lost passport and no provision was found addressing an expired one. That is a gap in the published text — not permission to use the loss route, and not a bar on doing so.

On timing, the same article is explicit about why you file early: “La solicitud podrá hacerse antes de expirar el plazo otorgado para no incurrir en multa por estadía irregular o causa justificada de expulsión.” And it states what can follow if the extended period itself runs out: “Al expirar el plazo de permanencia otorgado con su respectiva prórroga, el Instituto Guatemalteco de Migración podrá imponer la sanción justificada de expulsión del territorio nacional y cancelar la Visa otorgada, esto sin perjuicio de la aplicación de la multa por exceso en permanencia.”

The mechanics of the extension itself — where you file, what the office is, what the form is called — are covered on the IGM immigration hub and in the CA-4 border run page, which owns the prórroga-versus-border-run comparison.

Leaving the country: what is published, and what is not

The practical shape of that table: the reason the entry stamp matters on the way out is Art. 193(f) — the fault is framed as lacking proof of regular entry, and the Code nowhere defines what counts as that proof. Two published routes sit next to that gap without either one being written for it: the US$10 “Reposición de sello(s) de entrada en pasaporte vigente” tariff line, and the Reglamento General’s enmienda/corrección/anulación procedure for a defective movement record (Acuerdo IGM-017-2023, Arts. 33-37). Which one covers a superseded passport is not stated anywhere we found.

The six-month rule, stated precisely

This is repeated everywhere online, usually wrongly, and the correction is a distinction rather than a flat denial.

Where six months IS published:

• Visa issuance. “Asimismo, la visa guatemalteca se emitirá en pasaporte con vigencia mínima de seis meses, documento de viaje válido y vigente o de forma electrónica.” (Acuerdo IGM-015-2025, Art. 3)
• The visa granted while a residency file is pending. Requirement 2 is “Pasaporte original vigente cuyo plazo de vigencia no podrá ser menor a seis meses” — for a visa that “tendrá una vigencia de 90 días improrrogables”. (Art. 21)
• Foreign-origin supporting documents. Not the passport, but worth knowing when you are assembling a file: “Dichos documentos al momento de su presentación deben tener una fecha de emisión no mayor a seis meses, salvo que en el propio documento se establezca una vigencia distinta.” (Art. 26; the same rule appears at Acuerdo IGM-016-2025, Art. 52)

Where six months is NOT published:

• IGM’s entry checklist. Item 1 is “IDENTIFICARSE POR MEDIO DE DOCUMENTO DE VIAJE VÁLIDO: Pasaporte en buen estado al cual se le verifica autenticidad y vigencia)”. Its separate registro-migratorio list opens with “Pasaporte vigente en buen estado;”. No months figure appears in either.
• The CA-4 manual IGM applies. Sección III: “Identificarse por medio de documento de viaje válido (pasaporte al cual se le verifica autenticidad y vigencia);”. Sección IX, B.1: “Deben portar su respectivo pasaporte vigente y en buen estado”.
• The Código de Migración. It sets validity terms for Guatemalan ordinary passports — “La vigencia de los pasaportes ordinarios será de cinco o diez años” (Art. 94) — and no minimum remaining validity for a foreigner’s passport.

So the accurate sentence is: six months is a visa-issuance condition, not a published Guatemalan entry requirement. What IGM publishes is what the migration officer applies at the post. Carriers are not outside that framework: the Code makes them pay “toda obligación pecuniaria originada en razón del rechazo” of a passenger who fails the entry requirements (Art. 213), the tariff reglamento prices that at US$3,000 per passenger rising to US$10,000 (Acuerdo IGM-029-2023, numerals 4.2.12-4.2.13), and the reglamento issues them IGM’s own boletas de control migratorio, which the traveller then presents at the post (Acuerdo IGM-017-2023, Art. 18). The broader entry-versus-carry split is worked through in do you have to carry your passport in Guatemala.

If you live here: the residency is inside the book

For residents the paperwork gap is bigger, because the reglamento treats the passport as the physical carrier of the residency.

Two things follow from that last row, and they are the useful part. First, IGM’s own checklist anticipates the case of a resident whose stamped visa is absent or expired, and routes it to the DPI instead. Second, the Subdirección de Extranjería publishes a tariff line named “Traslado de visa a pasaporte”, US$15.00 — the name and the price are what the instruments give; the circumstances it covers are not stated in any of them.

Note which document identifies you day to day: temporary and permanent residents “deberán identificarse con el Documento Personal de Identificación que les será extendido por el Registro Nacional de las Personas” (Decreto 44-2016, Art. 100) — a RENAP document, not an IGM one. Two authorities, two documents. The residency pathway itself is covered in Guatemala residency.

Getting the replacement passport itself

Not an IGM matter. The Código de Migración recognises other states’ travel documents without issuing them:

• Art. 90: travel documents also include “aquellos expedidos por las autoridades migratorias de otros países para que sus nacionales puedan ingresar, permanecer y egresar de Guatemala conforme el derecho migratorio vigente en el país.”
• Art. 103: “También son documentos de viaje los extendidos por autoridades migratorias de otros países y que le permiten a los nacionales de ese país registrar la autorización, ingreso, permanencia y egreso a territorio guatemalteco.”

The Code’s passport articles are not all about the same passport, so the scope has to be stated exactly. Arts. 91, 92, 94, 95 and 96, together with Art. 90’s first and final paragraphs, are about passports issued by IGM — Art. 90’s final paragraph: “El pasaporte es el documento de identidad de los guatemaltecos en el extranjero, y es expedido de forma exclusiva por el Instituto Guatemalteco de Migración.” Art. 90’s second and third paragraphs are not: they are the recognition rule for other states’ documents, quoted above. And Art. 93 is not either: its “Documento Especial de Viaje” is issued to refugees recognised by Guatemala, and the article says of them “se debe indicar que no son nacionales”.

That matters for one sentence readers keep tripping on. Art. 95’s rule that a passport is annullable “cuando ha expirado por cumplirse su plazo de vigencia” belongs to the IGM-issued regime — Art. 95’s own first paragraph reads “Los pasaportes son nulos cuando no son emitidos por el Instituto Guatemalteco de Migración, no cumplen con las características definidas en el presente Código o su reglamento y cuando se les ha incorporado visas falsas de otros países.” It is not a statement about your foreign passport, and this page does not use it as one.

For the consular side — who issues what, and how long it takes — see:

• US Embassy Guatemala: citizen services
• Canadian Embassy in Guatemala

We deliberately do not restate consular fees or processing times here. Those pages own them, and duplicating a fee is how a stale number spreads.

What no instrument addresses (and what we searched)

Stating this plainly is the point of the page — and a negative is only as wide as the documents it was checked against, so here is the list. We read the full text of the Código de Migración (Decreto 44-2016), the Reglamento General del Código de Migración (Acuerdo IGM-017-2023 and its reforms by Acuerdo IGM-027-2023), the Reglamento de Visas Guatemaltecas (Acuerdo IGM-015-2025), the Reglamento de Residencias Guatemaltecas (Acuerdo IGM-016-2025), the Reglamento de Registro del Estatus Ordinario Migratorio (Acuerdo IGM-017-2025), the Reglamento de Tarifas por Servicios Migratorios (Acuerdo IGM-029-2023 and its reforms), IGM’s published entry-requirements page and both live fee lists, and the CA-4 manual. In those documents:

1. No provision found setting a deadline to move an entry stamp or a visa into a replacement passport, and none stating a consequence for not doing it. Note the narrowing: a published procedure does exist for a defective migratory-movement record — enmienda, corrección and anulación under Acuerdo IGM-017-2023, Arts. 33-37 — so what is missing is a rule about a replacement passport, not a procedure in general.
2. No provision found requiring a traveller to retain and present the superseded passport on exit — and none permitting its absence either. What is published is the exit documentation by reference: Acuerdo IGM-017-2023, Art. 26 requires “lo establecido en el artículo 61 del Código de Migración, en lo aplicable”, whose numeral 1 is a valid travel or identity document. Art. 89’s list still does not mention the old passport, and Art. 193(f) still penalises lacking proof of regular entry without saying what that proof is.
3. No provision found stating whether an authorised period of stay is shortened, voided or unaffected when the passport it was stamped in expires. The two are expressed in different units — Acuerdo IGM-017-2023, Art. 49 restates the 90/180-day permanencia in days, and Art. 15 leaves “el tiempo autorizado de estadía” to the delegate at the post — and no document in the list above connects them.
4. No provision found addressing the renewal or replacement of a foreign passport. Guatemala recognises the document; the issuing state makes it.
5. No published minimum remaining validity for a foreigner’s passport at entry. The reglamento-level entry provision requires “pasaporte válido y vigente y en buen estado” and states no months figure (Acuerdo IGM-017-2023, Art. 15), matching IGM’s checklist and CA-4 Sección III. Six months appears only as a visa-issuance condition.
6. No instrument states which circumstances the US$10 “Reposición de sello(s) de entrada” or the US$15 “Traslado de visa a pasaporte” service covers, and neither mentions a replacement passport. See the competing Arts. 33-37 reading above.

None of the above is a permission. A silence in the published record is a silence, and where an official has discretion — Art. 88’s second paragraph, Art. 89’s delegation, Art. 66’s reservation of IGM’s own administrative measures — the absence of a written rule is not the absence of a decision.

Related

• Do you have to carry your passport in Guatemala? — the entry checklist in full, and the separate carry duty
• IGM immigration hub — the office, the procedures, the fee tables
• CA-4 border run vs the prórroga — the two ways to extend a stay, compared
• USA to Guatemala visa requirements — entry terms for US travellers
• Guatemala residency — the residency pathway, categories and costs
• Can you re-enter Guatemala after being deported or refused entry? — what is and is not published about entry restrictions
• US Embassy Guatemala: citizen services · Canadian Embassy in Guatemala

Sources

Reform check: IGM’s hosted copy of Decreto 44-2016 carries no reform annotations, and Decreto 5-2022 amends Arts. 103, 107 Bis and 108 of Decreto 95-98, Ley de Migración (criminal offences, by its Arts. 1, 2 and 3 respectively), not Decreto 44-2016. In the Reglamento General (Acuerdo IGM-017-2023), the document carries exactly three reform annotations, all of them by Acuerdo IGM-027-2023 of 5 May 2023: Art. 27 and Art. 74 were reformed (by that acuerdo’s Arts. 1 and 2), and a new Art. 75 BIS, “Requisitos para la extensión de vigencia”, was added (by its Art. 3). Art. 76 carries no annotation. Arts. 15, 18, 26, 33-37 and 49 carry no reform annotation. Acuerdo IGM-015-2025 states at its Art. 40 that it derogates Acuerdo IGM-044-2023, the previous visa reglamento.