A few weeks ago, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa walked into a café in the Old City of Damascus and paid for a coffee with a Visa card. He posted it himself.

The caption said: "For more than 15 years, this simple transaction was impossible."

That one video tells you most of what you need to know about where Syria is right now.

Recent Syrian Updates in 2026

---

Recent Syrian Updates in 2026

The Caesar Act, which had cut Syria off from the global banking system since 2019, was repealed by Congress in December 2025.

The broader US sanctions programme had already been terminated in mid-2025, and in August 2026 Washington removed Syria from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation the country had carried since 1979.

The EU lifted its economic sanctions in May 2025, and the UK followed shortly after.

Syria went from one of the most comprehensively sanctioned countries on earth to a country that can process a Visa payment at a restaurant, and it happened in roughly eighteen months.

---

What this means practically for travellers

Cards are starting to work in Damascus and Aleppo, primarily at the bigger hotels and restaurants,

Outside of those, cash still runs things, and that will take time to change as the banking infrastructure catches up with the legal permission to use it.

It is reported that ATMs are now available in Damascus, but in the meantime, we still stick with the suggestion of still relying on the cash payments and bringing US dollars to be converted into the Syrian Pound.

Travel insurance is available again from most international providers, which was completely closed off two years ago.

Flight connections into Damascus and Aleppo are increasing. Slowly but surely, Syria seems to open up with warmer relationship with the rest of the modern world once again.

 

---

The ESTA question

This one comes up a lot, and the honest answer is: it has not been resolved yet.

Since 2016, any traveller from a Visa Waiver country who has visited Syria since March 2011 has technically been ineligible for ESTA to enter the US. Syria's removal from the terrorism list and the repeal of the Caesar Act have not yet triggered a formal change to that rule. We are watching it closely and expect it to change, but if you are an American-based European traveller who visits Syria with us, check your ESTA status before your next US trip. It is worth knowing where you stand.

---

The Syrian refugees and the diaspora

The Refugees and the Diaspora Coming Home

Something significant is happening on the ground that the international news cycle has not quite kept pace with. People are returning to Syria. The UN reported half a million Syrians going home by mid-2025, and Syrian asylum applications to Europe dropped by two thirds in the first half of that year compared to the previous one. The direction of movement, for the first time in over a decade, is towards Syria rather than away from it.

The Trump administration terminated Temporary Protected Status for Syrian nationals in the United States in September 2025, giving roughly 4,000 people 60 days to voluntarily leave or face deportation. The official reasoning was that conditions in Syria no longer prevented safe return. Whether you agree with that assessment or not, the practical effect has been to push more Syrians back to a country that is actively trying to absorb them alongside the diaspora returning voluntarily from Europe and the Gulf.

What this means for anyone visiting Syria is a country that is noticeably more alive than the one that existed under the full weight of sanctions and civil war. Hotels in Damascus were reporting high occupancy in late 2025, straining existing capacity. There is a buzz to the city that our guides on the ground describe as genuinely new.

---

The Regional Situation

We get asked about the Iran War (ahem - Conflict) situation regularly, particularly after the February 2026 conflict between the US, Israel, and Iran.

Syria's position throughout that period was, oddly, one of the more stable ones in the region. With no US military bases and no Iranian military infrastructure on Syrian soil, the country had no obvious targets for either side, and that logic still broadly holds. We monitor the regional picture continuously and adjust our planning accordingly. We would not be running tours if we did not believe the risk was manageable.

---

What Changes Next in Syria?

For fifteen years, the sanctions that devastated Syria's economy also accidentally preserved something that travellers who came with us valued: a country where the souk had not yet been replaced by a shopping mall, where the café you sat in was a Syrian café run by a Syrian family rather than a franchise, where international tourism money flowed to local businesses because there was no international alternative. That is starting to change as Saudi investment flows in and global brands begin making enquiries about market entry. The Syria that exists right now, before all of that settles into something more familiar and more homogenised, is genuinely worth seeing.