Kuwait and El Salvador Sign Mutual Visa Waiver Agreement for Diplomatic, Special, and Official Passports at 81st UN General Assembly

Kuwait and El Salvador signed a mutual visa waiver agreement in New York on September 25, 2026, covering holders of diplomatic, special, and official passports. The signing took place during High-Level Week of the 81st UN General Assembly.

Kuwait’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Jarrah Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah and El Salvador’s Foreign Minister Alexandra Hill Tinoco signed the accord. The agreement concerns entry-visa exemptions for the listed passport categories.

The ceremony took place at the Permanent Mission of the State of Kuwait to the United Nations. The two ministers signed during a bilateral meeting in New York, on the sidelines of the General Assembly’s high-level events.

The scope is limited. Ordinary passport holders are not covered by the agreement described in the announcement.

The exemption covers selected government travel documents

The covered documents are diplomatic, special and official passports. The arrangement therefore applies to a defined group of travelers using those categories, rather than creating visa-free access for all citizens of either country.

That distinction separates official travel from ordinary tourism or other personal travel. The agreement concerns the waiver of entry visas for the specified documents; it is not a blanket change to entry rules for Kuwaiti or Salvadoran passport holders.

The signing also took place against an existing official-passport framework. El Salvador already appears in visa-waiver listings related to Kuwait’s arrangements for diplomatic and official passports. That background suggests the new accord may formalize or update an existing arrangement, rather than open ordinary tourist travel without visas.

The agreement’s stated scope remains the controlling detail: it names specific passport classes. Its signing does not, by itself, establish a broader exemption for travelers carrying ordinary passports.

Commercial travel listings describe different ordinary-passport rules

Travel-industry databases show a separate picture for ordinary passports. They list El Salvador as visa-free for Kuwaiti ordinary passport holders, while listing Kuwait as visa-required for El Salvador ordinary passport holders.

Those entries are not government policy documents. They describe ordinary-passport access in commercial databases, while the newly signed accord addresses diplomatic, special and official documents. The two sets of information concern different passport categories and should not be treated as interchangeable.

The agreement was signed by the foreign ministers during a bilateral meeting in New York. Its stated coverage remains focused on official and diplomatic travel, not ordinary passport access.