Umrah vaccination: Peshawar pilgrims can fly without it until 25 October, then the certificate is compulsory

Update, Friday 16 October 2026: Peshawar's deadline moves to 25 October. Umrah pilgrims departing from Peshawar can travel without the vaccination certificate until 10am on Sunday 25 October 2026, instead of the 10 October cut-off they were working to, Ghulam Murtaza Shah, focal person for Border Health Services, said, as ProPakistani reported. Border Health Services has sent notices to airlines and travel agents. After that time, unvaccinated pilgrims will not be allowed to travel. In Peshawar, vaccination is at the Federal Government Medical Centre on Shami Road. No change has been announced for Karachi, where the grace period ended on 10 October.

Peshawar flyers, in short: booked to leave before 10am on 25 October, you can still board without it; leaving later, get vaccinated now, ideally 10 days before you fly.

Earlier, 23 September 2026:

If you are flying for Umrah in the next few weeks, the vaccination certificate is now the document most likely to stop you at the gate, and the dates have just moved.

Karachi airport has extended its grace period by 15 days. Pilgrims departing from Jinnah International can travel without the vaccination proof until 10 October 2026. After that date it is required to board.

Peshawar airport starts on 15 October 2026. The Federal Airport Health Department has told Umrah pilgrims and passengers travelling on Saudi visit visas that the certificate becomes mandatory from that date, with travel allowed without it up to 14 October.

Only the NADRA certificate counts

This is the part catching people out. The rule that took effect nationally on 15 September 2026 does not accept a vaccination card from a clinic, a hospital slip or a photocopy. Border Health Services, which sits under the federal health ministry, was explicit: no other vaccination card is acceptable after 14 September 2026. What is required is the NADRA-integrated digital certificate, generated against your CNIC.

The vaccines covered by the requirement are polio, meningitis, yellow fever and influenza, with meningitis and influenza the two that matter for a standard Umrah trip.

How to get it

1. Register through the PakID app or at a NADRA e-Sahulat centre, so your record is linked to your CNIC.
2. Get vaccinated at an authorised centre. In Karachi that is the Federal Government Civil Dispensary near the Old Terminal, where five NADRA facilitation counters have been set up, with the Jacob Lines dispensary due to start shortly. In Peshawar it is the Civil Surgeon's Office, which has 20 counters and two NADRA facilitation centres being installed.
3. The certificate is issued digitally, which is the point: a digital record is harder to forge than a stamped card.

Give it ten days

Dr Syed Murtaza Shah Bukhari of Border Health Services has advised travellers to get vaccinated at least 10 days before departure. That is not bureaucratic padding. A meningitis vaccine needs roughly that long to give useful protection, and Saudi Arabia's own entry rules expect it.

If you leave it to the airport, you are told to arrive six hours before departure to be vaccinated there, and in Karachi thousands of passengers have been queueing at a single dispensary. Elderly travellers, women and families with infants have had the worst of it.

What it means in practice

Three things worth doing this week if you have an Umrah booking before the end of October:

• Check whether your record already exists in the PakID app before you go anywhere. If a childhood polio record is already linked to your CNIC, you may need fewer shots than you think.
• Book the vaccination for a weekday morning. The dispensaries are running one or two sites per city.
• Tell whoever is travelling with you. The requirement is per passenger, not per booking, so one unvaccinated family member holds up the whole group.

Fares, visa fees and the Saudi riyal all move together on a trip like this. Our riyal rate page carries the dated interbank run, and the currency converter will price a spending budget in rupees.