14+Years Experience1,500+Cases Handled97Nationalities Served4.9Google Rating
Armenian Passport and ID Card: Application, Fees and the 2026 Reform
A ten-year Armenian passport carries a state duty of AMD 28,650 (about USD 79 at the Central Bank of Armenia official rate of 363.44 on 18 September 2026), and an identity card carries AMD 5,950 (about USD 16). Both figures are set by Law HO-215-N and were confirmed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs announcement of 31 July 2026. They belong to a new regime: Law HO-210-N on the Identity Document replaces the 2011 Passport Law and the 2011 Identification Cards Law, and it takes effect no later than 1 November 2026.
What is settled and what is not
Enacted law. HO-210-N was adopted on 11 May 2026 and published on 29 May 2026. It is passed legislation awaiting commencement, so its rules are certain and only the start date is open.
Draft regulation. The three Government Decisions that set out how an application is processed, checked and handed over were published for public consultation on 9 September 2026. None had been adopted when this page was written. Every sentence below that rests on a draft says so.
At a glance
- Passport state duty: AMD 28,650 for a ten-year passport at age 16 and over.
- ID card state duty: AMD 5,950 for a five-year card.
- The card comes first. From age 16 a passport issues only to a citizen who already holds an identity card.
- Decision timing: notification on the 14th working day after biometric capture inside Armenia, and between the 14th and 45th day for applications made through a diplomatic mission.
- Biometrics: photograph at any age, fingerprints from age 6, signature from age 16.
- Start date: the tenth day after the authority announces the launch of the unified electronic platform, and in any event no later than 1 November 2026.
- Your current passport: valid to the expiry date printed in it, subject to one qualification set out below.
The identity card becomes the gateway to the passport
Article 3(2) of HO-210-N provides that a citizen aged 16 or over may obtain a passport only if they already hold an identity card. An identity card is available from age 6 and becomes mandatory at 16. A passport itself stays voluntary at every age.
For a person who has just been granted Armenian citizenship, the sequence runs: the citizenship decree, then entry in the State Population Register with a Public Service Number, then the document application. Entry in the Register and a PSN are preconditions to applying at all, and absence from the Register is one of the listed refusal grounds under Article 10(12)(3). Anyone completing a naturalisation file should expect the document stage to sit behind the Register stage. Our Armenian citizenship page covers the decree stage itself.
There is no consular exception to the sequence. A citizen abroad who holds no identity card cannot skip the card and apply for a passport at a mission.
Validity periods
| Document and age | Validity |
|---|---|
| Passport, under 6 | 3 years |
| Passport, 6 to 16 | 5 years |
| Passport, 16 and over | 10 years |
| Identity card, from age 6 | 5 years |
Under the repealed 2011 Passport Law, passport validity for men of conscription age was tied to their military registration status. HO-210-N does not carry that validity restriction forward. The new framework says nothing at all about whether military registration remains a precondition to issuance, so the current practice requirement, that men of conscription age be registered with their territorial military office before a first passport issues, has been neither repeated nor expressly abolished.
State duty
| Document | State duty | Approx. USD |
|---|---|---|
| Citizen passport, 10 years | AMD 28,650 | USD 79 |
| Identity card, 5 years | AMD 5,950 | USD 16 |
| Expedited processing | Not yet set | Not yet set |
| Biometric capture at your home | Not yet set | Not yet set |
USD figures are converted at the Central Bank of Armenia official rate of 363.44 on 18 September 2026 and move with the rate. The surcharges for the expedited track and for biometric capture at an applicant’s residence await a Government Decision, so no figure can be given for either.
HO-215-N expresses the duty as a multiple of the base duty, 28.65 times for a citizen passport and 5.95 times for an identity card. It carries the same commencement mechanism as HO-210-N, with the same 1 November 2026 backstop.
How an application will run
Two elements of the process are fixed in the statute. Notification of the decision falls on the 14th working day after the visit at which biometric data is submitted. The clock starts at that visit, so an online form filed weeks earlier does nothing to advance it. Applications made through a diplomatic mission are notified between the 14th and 45th day.
The internal stages come from the draft issuance procedure and are therefore provisional. As drafted, they run: a preliminary completeness check within 2 working days, an appointment offered within 2 working days, the office visit for photograph, fingerprints and signature, automated and expert checks over 4 working days, and the authority’s decision within 6 working days. An expedited track for an additional fee compresses the whole sequence.
Biometric capture is delegated to a private partner engaged under a public-private partnership agreement with the Ministry of Internal Affairs authority. The decision to issue or refuse cannot be delegated and stays with the state under Article 13(3). Intake, document collection, completeness checks, notifications, biometric processing, printing and handover can all be delegated under Article 14, and the partner may use the data only for issuing the document.
One practical point deserves attention before you apply. Document data is drawn from the State Population Register, so a missing or incorrect entry there has to be corrected before any document can issue. A wrong patronymic or an out-of-date address in the Register will stop the application rather than be fixed inside it.
Need help with an Armenian passport or ID card?
Tell us about your situation and we’ll respond within 1 business day.
Who can collect the document
The rules below come from the draft issuance procedure published on 9 September 2026 and had not been adopted when this page was written. They are the clearest statement available of how handover is intended to work, and they may change in the adopted text.
A passport may be collected by a third party holding a notarised power of attorney from the applicant. The draft attaches no condition of illness, absence abroad or other justification to that route. The private partner verifies the collector’s identity and authority, records their particulars and attaches the authority documents to the electronic file, and the representative is exempt from biometric verification at handover.
An identity card is normally collected in person. The draft excludes the ordinary notarised-proxy route for cards, then preserves express exceptions. A legal representative, or someone holding that representative’s notarised power of attorney, may collect for a citizen under 16 or for a person declared legally incapacitated. Where personal attendance is impossible because of specified disability, health, mobility or cognitive circumstances, and for people in prison or detention, the persons authorised to apply on the applicant’s behalf may also collect.
The draft also requires a new card password to be created before an identity card is handed over. It does not describe that step as an activation, and it does not give it as the reason for excluding proxy collection, so the common explanation that a card must be collected personally because its PIN is set at the counter is an inference and not the wording of the draft.
Two deadlines bite at this stage, and the first is in the statute. A document not collected within 12 months loses force under Article 12(1)(5), and those 12 months run from receipt of the notification that the document will issue. The draft procedure repeats the same 12-month limit and requires the old corresponding document to be surrendered at handover unless it has been declared lost or stolen. Article 10(16) lets you ask for the old passport back with its pages hole-punched.
Choosing how your name is spelled in Latin letters
A procedure for requesting a preferred Latin spelling already exists, and it is in force now under Government Decision 725-N of 23 June 2017. It does not depend on the new law or on any draft. The institutional names in that decision were updated in July 2023, so the bodies involved today are the Language Committee and the Migration and Citizenship Service. Older references to the State Language Inspectorate or to a police passport service are out of date.
The default is transliteration under the national standard. If you disagree with the default spelling, the Migration and Citizenship Service bears the duty to obtain a certificate from the Language Committee on whether your preferred spelling is permissible. You may submit supporting documents, and the Committee answers within five working days of receiving the request. The Service keeps a database of past answers so that analogous cases do not go back for a fresh certificate each time.
Separate alignment rules cover the situations that generate most mismatches: a surname taken through marriage to a foreign citizen, adoption or recognition of paternity abroad, and a child carrying a foreign-citizen parent’s surname. In that last case the child must hold no foreign-issued passport. A person who acquired Armenian citizenship and holds only a foreign-issued birth certificate may match the Latin name on that certificate. Each of these routes aligns the Latin spelling without amending the Armenian entry in the Population Register.
The five working days is the Language Committee’s own period for returning its certificate. No official source sets a combined deadline for a document application that includes a spelling exception, so the total time for such a case cannot be stated.
Your existing passport and ID card
Passports and identity cards issued before the new law starts stay valid until the expiry date printed in them. Article 16(5) says so in its first sentence, and no replacement exercise is imposed on anyone.
The second sentence of the same article adds a qualification that matters in practice. Once you acquire a new identity document after commencement, the document you held from before commencement loses force. Article 12(1)(2) makes the same point for replacement by a new document of the same kind. So the validity of your current passport survives the reform, and it ends when you take a new one, whichever comes first.
Article 10(16) allows a new document to be applied for at any time, so there is no need to wait for a current passport to run down before moving to the new type. Foreign nationals holding an Armenian residence card should read our residence permits page, since foreigner residence cards fall inside the same law and carry biometric data on the same basis.
Refusal, refunds and complaints
The grounds for refusing a document are exhaustive under Article 10(15), so nothing outside the statutory list can support a refusal. Article 10(12) lists the grounds that apply to every document: required documents or data not submitted, no legal right to the document, the applicant not registered in the Population Register, obviously false documents or data, inaccuracies or contradictions in what was submitted, material erasures in the name, patronymic, date of birth, parents or place of birth or in essential requisites, and unpaid state duty. Article 10(13) adds two grounds for passports only: the applicant is wanted for a crime, or is subject to another state’s wanted notice where Armenia has a ratified extradition treaty with that state.
State duty is refundable when the collecting body refuses the action, under Article 38(զ) of the Law on State Duty, with the procedure in Article 39. That is a general rule of the duty legislation and it does not reach optional private-service charges such as an expedited track or capture at your home.
Article 15 creates a complaint route with real timings: a non-property complaint to the authority within one month, a decision within two months, a decision binding on the private partner, an appeal to the Administrative Court against a refusal or partial refusal, and damages compensated by the authority under the rules on damage caused by administrative action. The scope is narrower than the timings suggest. Article 15 governs disputes between an applicant and the private partner over the delegated activities, meaning intake, biometric processing, production and handover. It is not a general appeal mechanism against a refusal to issue a document, and damages are not an automatic entitlement.
Applying from outside Armenia
Article 10(2) confirms that both documents can be applied for through an Armenian diplomatic mission or consular post, with notification between the 14th and 45th day. Biometric capture has to happen at a mission equipped for it, and no list of equipped missions has been published, so a citizen abroad cannot yet confirm from any official source whether their nearest post can take fingerprints. Check with the specific mission before booking travel around an appointment.
The identity card is designed to work as a travel document for leaving and re-entering Armenia where an international treaty allows it, which is the arrangement that operates among Eurasian Economic Union states. That capability sits in the draft description rules, so it should be treated as provisional until those rules are adopted.
When the new regime actually starts
Article 16(1) sets commencement at the tenth day after the authorised body announces the launch of the unified electronic platform on its official website, with an outer date of 1 November 2026. The ten-day trigger means the change can land with very little notice.
No announcement satisfying Article 16(1) had been located when this page was written. Statements made by the Ministry of Internal Affairs on 11 September 2026 and by the Migration and Citizenship Service on 18 September 2026 describe the rollout and the 1 November date, and neither is the statutory platform-launch notice. The safe planning assumption is the outer date, treated as the latest possible start and not as a confirmed one.
A second reform runs alongside. HO-233-N on the State Population Register, adopted on 3 July 2025, starts the day after the new Register data repository launches and no later than 1 January 2027. Because document issuance depends on a Register entry and a PSN, the two reforms have to be tracked together. The repository launch and the repository regulation required by Article 26(4) of that law were both unconfirmed when this page was written.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an ID card before I can get an Armenian passport?From age 16, yes. Article 3(2) of HO-210-N makes holding an identity card a condition of obtaining a passport. Below 16 a passport can issue without a card, and a card is available from age 6. The sequence applies equally to applications made through a diplomatic mission.Is my current Armenian passport still valid after the reform?It remains valid until the expiry date printed in it, under the first sentence of Article 16(5). The second sentence adds that it loses force once you acquire a new identity document after the law commences. No compulsory replacement exercise applies.Can someone else collect my passport or ID card for me?Under the draft issuance procedure a passport may be collected by a holder of a notarised power of attorney, with no further justification required. An identity card is normally collected in person, with exceptions for under-16s and legally incapacitated people through a legal representative, and for specified disability, health, mobility or cognitive circumstances and for detained people through the persons authorised to apply on their behalf. These rules are draft and may change on adoption.Can I choose the Latin spelling of my name?You can request a preferred spelling, and the procedure is already in force under Government Decision 725-N of 2017. The Migration and Citizenship Service obtains a permissibility certificate from the Language Committee, which answers within five working days. Separate rules allow alignment with a foreign spouse’s surname, a foreign adoption or paternity recognition, a foreign-citizen parent’s surname, or a foreign birth certificate, in each case without amending your Armenian Population Register entry.What happens to my state duty if the application is refused?Article 38(զ) of the Law on State Duty provides for refund where the collecting body refuses the action, and Article 39 sets the procedure. Optional private-service charges, such as an expedited track or biometric capture at your home, sit outside that refund rule.What happens if I never collect the document?It loses force 12 months after you receive notification that it will issue, under Article 12(1)(5). The state duty is not preserved, so a fresh application and a fresh duty follow.
Planning a passport or ID card application in Armenia?
Tell us about your situation and we’ll respond within 1 business day.
