BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – In a significant policy shift aimed at boosting tourism and cross-border connections, Spain announced Wednesday it has included nine Caribbean Community (Caricom) member states among 60 global nations whose citizens can now enter the country without a visa for short-term stays.
The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Madrid released the official list of newly added countries, identifying the nine Caricom nations as Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, The Bahamas, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and St Vincent and the Grenadines. Notably, five other Caricom members – Jamaica, Guyana, Suriname, Belize, and Haiti – were left off the revised visa-free roster, their citizens still required to complete the standard Schengen visa application process.
Beyond the Caribbean bloc, the Spanish government also extended visa-free access to ordinary passport holders from eight African countries for stays not exceeding 90 days. The African nations added to the list are Botswana, Namibia, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mauritius, Seychelles, Cape Verde, and Rwanda. Travelers from these countries are now permitted to enter not only Spain but the entire Schengen Area without prior visa approval, marking a major easing of travel restrictions.
The new visa-free arrangement covers all short-term visits, including leisure tourism, business engagements, and personal trips, within the 90-day limit across any 180-day rolling period – the standard timeframe for Schengen Area short stays.
The policy change leaves the status quo unchanged for most other Caribbean and African nations, whose citizens will still need to obtain a valid Schengen visa before departing for Spain or any other participating country in the border-free Schengen zone. Regional tourism officials across the Caribbean have already signaled cautious optimism that the change could drive increased visitor arrivals from the nine qualifying nations, supporting the recovery of the region’s tourism-dependent economies after years of global travel disruptions.