🇨🇾 Country guide · updated 2026-09
Drone laws in Cyprus
Cyprus needs a warning before it needs a guide.
On 4 March 2026 the Minister of Transport, Communications and Works signed an order prohibiting all civil drone flights over the territory and territorial waters of the Republic of Cyprus, for any reason, until further notice. It is listed in the gazette as ΚΔΠ 110/2026. We have not found a published revocation of it. The Department of Civil Aviation's own pages carry no notice of the order and describe ordinary flying as normal, and the government issued a separate two-day nationwide drone ban for an EU summit in April 2026 — which would be pointless if a blanket ban were still absolute. So the ban has very probably been eased. But nobody has said so in writing that we can find, and we are not going to guess on your behalf. Ask the Department of Civil Aviation before you fly, and treat everything below as the rules that apply when flying is permitted.
At a glance
- Registration
- €15
- Registration portal
- UAS Cyprus portal
- Maximum height
- 120 m above ground level in the Open category.
- Insurance
- Not required by national law
- Authority
- DCA (Department of Civil Aviation)
Cyprus needs a warning before it needs a guide. On 4 March 2026 the Minister of Transport, Communications and Works signed an order prohibiting all civil drone flights over the territory and territorial waters of the Republic — for any reason, until further notice — after drones struck the British bases at Akrotiri. We have not been able to find an official revocation of that order, and the Department of Civil Aviation's own pages carry no notice of it either way; they describe ordinary flying as though nothing had happened. Government behaviour since suggests the blanket ban eased in practice, but nobody has told the public so in writing. Read the section below before you pack a drone for Cyprus. Everything else on this page — the €15 registration, the airport zones, the insurance rule — is what applies when flying is permitted.
Country-specific decision path
Before you choose a launch point in Cyprus
- Confirm your operator paperwork Registration required — €15. In the EU. One EU/EEA operator registration covers this country. Open UAS Cyprus portal
- Check the exact route on the official map Cyprus UAS geographical zones is the national starting point; read every condition covering the complete route, not only the launch pin. Open Cyprus UAS geographical zones
- Apply the local layer Before anything else: check whether civil drone flying is currently permitted in the Republic at all. Review the Cyprus zone and nature checks
Registration in Cyprus
The Republic of Cyprus applies Regulations 2019/947 and 2019/945, in force here since 31 December 2020. The national layer sits in ministerial decrees; the geographical zones rest on decree 190/2024 as amended by 123/2025. Three separate jurisdictions share the island and only one of them is covered by this page. EU rules apply in the Republic of Cyprus. The British Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia are administered separately and set their own drone policy. The Turkish-administered north is outside EU and Republic aviation law altogether, and we do not report its rules.
We had the validity as ongoing. It is not: operator registration in Cyprus runs for three years and then has to be renewed. The remote pilot theory certificate runs for five. The authority registers the operator and not the drone in the Open and Specific categories, and exempts drones under 250 g that carry no camera or sensor, or that are toys under Directive 2009/48/EC. Note also what is in circulation and wrong: several legal and drone sites still describe Cyprus as having free registration, a 50 m ceiling and a 1 km distance from residential areas. That is the national regime from the 2015 decrees, replaced at the end of 2020. On whether an operator number from another EU or EEA state is accepted here without registering again — EU law says one registration serves the whole Union, but we could find no Cypriot page saying so in as many words, so we do not present it as confirmed by Cyprus.
What it costs: €15 — Three years.
In the EU. One EU/EEA operator registration covers this country.
How to register
- First settle whether flying is permitted at all right now — see the note on the 2026 prohibition order below
- If you hold an EU or EEA operator registration, EU law says it serves here too; Cyprus does not confirm this in writing that we could find
- Otherwise register as an operator at uas.drones.gov.cy for €15, valid three years
- Take the A1/A3 online training and test if your drone needs it
- Load the authority's geo-zone file (KMZ or JSON) before you plan a flight — there is no interactive web map
- For Zone B around Larnaca or Paphos, file an airspace reservation request at least ten working days ahead, with €1,000,000 third-party cover
You register as an operator — not the drone. Registration is required from 250 g, or below 250 g if the drone can transfer more than 80 J of energy, or if it carries a sensor able to capture personal data. CE-marked toys are exempt. Put your operator number on every drone you fly and set it in Remote ID.
Flight rules
- Maximum height
- 120 m above ground level in the Open category.
- Line of sight
- Visual line of sight required.
- Weight classes
- Standard EU weight classifications.
- Night flying
- Night flying is allowed in the Open category. A drone with a class mark must show a flashing green light so it stays visible. You still have to keep it in sight, which is harder after dark, and national geographical zones apply exactly as they do in daylight.
- Weather
- Good weather required. Cyprus flies well most of the year, but summer heat shortens battery life.
Class marks C0–C6 have been mandatory since 1 January 2024. The transition period is over: a drone without a class mark may only be flown in A1 (under 250 g) or A3 (under 25 kg).
Where you may not fly
There is no single EU-wide distance from airports. Each country publishes its own UAS geographical zones, so check the national map or app before every flight.
Airports and controlled airspace
Larnaca and Paphos have mapped two-part zones. Zone A, shown in red, is prohibited: no drone operations at all. Zone B, in yellow, is restricted and can be entered, but only through an airport airspace reservation request filed at least ten working days in advance, with third-party insurance of €1,000,000 in place. Away from those two mapped areas the authority's general guidance is to stay at least 8 km from airports and heliports. The disused Nicosia airport lies inside the UN buffer zone and is not somewhere to test that rule.
Towns and cities
There is no separate city rule beyond the EU subcategories. What matters in a built-up area is whether you are inside a mapped zone, and the only way to know is to open the authority's zone file — Cyprus publishes its zones as a downloadable KMZ for Google Earth and a JSON feed for geo-awareness systems, not as a map you can browse on a web page.
Protected nature
Protected areas exist across the island — the Akamas peninsula, the Troodos massif, the salt lakes at Larnaca and Limassol — and some are drawn into the aviation zone file. We are not going to tell you which, because we cannot read the zone file's contents from the outside, and a list we could not verify would be worse than none. Open the KMZ and check your own spot.
Government and military sites
Government buildings in Nicosia, including the Presidential Palace. Military installations, of which the island has an unusual number.
Other restrictions in Cyprus
- The UN buffer zone, the Green Line, runs the width of the island. We could not confirm how it is drawn in the aviation zone file, but flying a camera drone over a demilitarised military line is a bad idea whatever the file says
- The British Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia set their own drone policy, separate from the Republic's
- Zones are entered by permission of whoever administers them; the yellow restricted zones in the zone file each have an administrator to ask
- We previously listed archaeological sites as restricted airspace. We could find no aviation instrument that does this — see the note below
Insurance
Cyprus does not require third-party insurance for ordinary Open-category flying, and we found no national instrument that goes below the EU threshold of 20 kg. But two situations do carry a hard requirement, and both are easy to walk into: an operational authorisation in the Specific category demands third-party cover of at least €1,000,000 for the whole duration of the operation, and so does a flight in Zone B near Larnaca or Paphos airport. Insurance broker pages claiming that every drone operator in Cyprus must be insured, sometimes at 750,000 SDR, do not match anything the authority publishes; we could not source that figure and do not repeat it.
Penalties
The authority publishes no tariff. Its pages say only that a violation is an offence and that offenders will be liable to penalties, and the prohibited Zone A page adds that violations there are subject to heavy fines and imprisonment — without a figure in either place. We looked for a euro amount in a named instrument and did not find one, so we publish none. Note separately that breaching the 2026 prohibition order is a different matter from an ordinary zone violation, and we cannot tell you what it carries.
Whatever the amount, the pattern across Europe is the same: paperwork failures are handled administratively, while flying near aircraft, over crowds, or inside a protected zone is what turns a case into a prosecution.
Visiting Cyprus with a drone
Before anything else: check whether civil drone flying is currently permitted in the Republic at all. A ministerial order of 4 March 2026 prohibited it entirely, until further notice, and we could not find a published revocation. If flying is open, the practical shape of Cyprus is this. Registration is €15 and lasts three years. Zones are not on a web map — you download a KMZ and open it in Google Earth, or feed the JSON to your geo-awareness app. Larnaca and Paphos have a hard prohibited zone and a restricted zone that needs ten working days' notice and a million euros of cover. Ordinary hobby flying needs no insurance. The island is divided: EU rules cover the Republic only, the British bases at Akrotiri and Dhekelia have their own policy, and the north is a different jurisdiction entirely.
Commercial work
Specific-category work goes through the authority by one of three routes: a full SORA risk assessment, a predefined risk assessment, or a light UAS operator certificate, the last open to legal entities only. The application needs an operations manual, the risk-assessment evidence and proof of third-party cover of at least €1,000,000. The authority states a processing time of at least 65 working days once the fees are paid; it does not publish the fee amounts. Filming an archaeological site is a separate matter from the flight itself — the government's own filming-permits page lists authorisation from the Department of Antiquities for filming antiquities and authorisation from the Department of Civil Aviation for aerial filming as two distinct permissions. You would need both, and neither substitutes for the other.
Location planning
These are well-known photographic subjects to research, not recommended launch points or proof that a flight is allowed. Check the exact route against official airspace, nature, land-manager and people restrictions.
- Paphos coastline, outside the airport zones
- Troodos mountains
- Cape Greco
- Ayia Napa sea caves
- Akamas peninsula, checking the zone file first
- Larnaca salt lake, outside the airport zones
Apps and official maps
- drones.gov.cy — the Department of Civil Aviation's drone site, in English and Greek. The zones are published as a downloadable KMZ file and a JSON feed rather than as an interactive map
- uas.drones.gov.cy — the registration and application portal
- Note: a Google My Maps of Cypriot drone areas circulates and is even linked from EASA's country page, but its owner is shown only as «created by a user» and we could not confirm the authority made it. Use the official KMZ instead
Practical tips
- Check drones.gov.cy before you travel. A nationwide prohibition order was signed on 4 March 2026 and we found no published revocation of it
- Registration is €15 and expires after three years. It is not a one-off, whatever older pages say
- There is no interactive zone map. Download the KMZ into Google Earth, or the JSON into your app, and check your spot yourself
- Zone B at Larnaca and Paphos is enterable, but you need to file ten working days ahead and hold €1,000,000 of cover
- Ordinary hobby flying needs no insurance here — but a Specific-category authorisation and a Zone B flight both do
- The British bases at Akrotiri and Dhekelia set their own rules, and the north is outside Republic and EU law altogether
- Anything telling you Cyprus has a 50 m ceiling, a 1 km limit from housing, or free registration is describing the regime that was replaced at the end of 2020
Questions about flying in Cyprus
Do I need to register to fly a drone in Cyprus?
Registration required — €15. In the EU. One EU/EEA operator registration covers this country.
How high can I fly in Cyprus?
120 m above ground level in the Open category.
Do I need drone insurance in Cyprus?
Cyprus does not require third-party insurance for ordinary Open-category flying, and we found no national instrument that goes below the EU threshold of 20 kg. But two situations do carry a hard requirement, and both are easy to walk into: an operational authorisation in the Specific category demands third-party cover of at least €1,000,000 for the whole duration of the operation, and so does a flight in Zone B near Larnaca or Paphos airport. Insurance broker pages claiming that every drone operator in Cyprus must be insured, sometimes at 750,000 SDR, do not match anything the authority publishes; we could not source that figure and do not repeat it.
Can I fly a drone at night in Cyprus?
Night flying is allowed in the Open category. A drone with a class mark must show a flashing green light so it stays visible. You still have to keep it in sight, which is harder after dark, and national geographical zones apply exactly as they do in daylight.
What are the penalties for breaking drone rules in Cyprus?
The authority publishes no tariff. Its pages say only that a violation is an offence and that offenders will be liable to penalties, and the prohibited Zone A page adds that violations there are subject to heavy fines and imprisonment — without a figure in either place. We looked for a euro amount in a named instrument and did not find one, so we publish none. Note separately that breaching the 2026 prohibition order is a different matter from an ordinary zone violation, and we cannot tell you what it carries.
Official sources
Primary sources used for this guide, checked September 2026. Open the live national source again before flying; geographical zones and temporary restrictions can change between reviews.
- National authority DCA (Department of Civil Aviation) — official drone information
- Registration UAS Cyprus portal
- European framework Regulation (EU) 2019/947 — rules and procedures for operating unmanned aircraft
- Official maps directory EASA — national aviation authorities and geographical-zone sources
Rules change, and national authorities publish the current position. Before you fly, check DCA (Department of Civil Aviation) — it is linked at the top of this page too.