Belarus requires its tour guides to know the state ideology and to promote “the uniqueness of the Belarusian model of social development” to visitors. The rule is eighteen months old, and state outlets have announced every step of it. They report the count of foreign entries every week, but the effort to win visitors over appears mostly in pro-government Telegram.
On 21 October Belarus’s National Tourism Agency published 22 professional and ethical requirements for tour guides and guide-interpreters. Guides must know the foundations of the state ideology, bring ideological work into their job and help strengthen the country’s positive international image. The audience is real: by 19 October the border committee had counted 200,754 visa-free entries by foreigners this year. What we cannot see is what guides actually say on their tours, because no one has recorded it.
Twenty-two requirements
The list was carried by BelTA, SB, Zviazda and the legal portal. Guides must “know the foundations of the ideology of the Belarusian state, implement directions of ideological work in their professional activity, and help strengthen the positive international image of the country and recognition of the uniqueness of the Belarusian model of social development”, as BelTA summed up the text. Gazeta.by read the document as banning “incorrect assessments” of Belarus and other countries, and as obliging guides to stop guests who make them. Reform noticed that the new list dropped a clause on respecting the rights of the authors of excursion texts.
Guides must know the foundations of the state ideology, bring ideological work into their job and help strengthen the country’s positive international image.
One independent Telegram channel went further than the text. Its headline said guides must strengthen “Lukashenko’s positive image” (BelNovosti). The document speaks of the country’s image, not his.
Eighteen months old
The ideological clauses are not new. The ministry of sport and tourism added them in a resolution of 30 April 2025, in force from 11 July 2025 (Sputnik). On 14 May 2025, the day the resolution appeared, eight independent outlets reported it, among them Nasha Niva and Zerkalo. State outlets did not hide it either. BelTA reported it the same day. In July it ran the headline “Know the foundations of ideology, strengthen the country’s image” (BelTA). A state television talk show asked “Do we need a state ideology?” and explained the guide rules (ONT).
Two months before the resolution, an official interviewed by SB had put the purpose plainly: excursions are not only for learning, they “carry a powerful ideological function” (SB). October’s act moved the rules from the ministry to the new National Tourism Agency and kept that core.
The document speaks of the country’s image, not his.
Who comes, and how often
Belarus’s border committee publishes a weekly count of visa-free entries by foreigners, and state outlets reprint it. By 19 October 2026 the count stood at 200,754 (BelTA), against 190,476 on the same date a year earlier (BelTA) and 224,591 for the whole of 2025 (SB). Most entries are by neighbours. Since April 2022, the committee says, it has counted 735,792 entries from Lithuania, 461,789 from Latvia and 165,324 from Poland (State Border Committee).
These are entries, not people. Someone from a border district who crosses for fuel or shopping twenty times a year counts twenty times, so the number of different visitors is smaller, and nobody publishes it. The Polish figure also covers four and a half years, not one: Poles account for about one in nine of all visa-free entries since 2022.
Counted, not courted
Since January 2025 our archive holds 1,639 state items on visa-free entry for foreigners, almost three times as many as independent outlets published. Most are the weekly number. Only 47 of them, 3 per cent, used the language of persuasion: seeing Belarus “with one’s own eyes”, myths, stereotypes or propaganda dispelled. In pro-government Telegram channels the share was 17 per cent, 109 of 632. One channel set videos of protests in France against “safe, peaceful, calm, warm and cosy” Belarus, which “welcomes guests” without visas, and added the count (Reserve Side).
Belarus’s border committee publishes a weekly count of visa-free entries by foreigners, and state outlets reprint it.
How sure we are
The requirements and their history are High: the texts are on the legal portal and were reported the same way by state and independent outlets. The entry figures are High as official counts, but they count crossings, not people, and include anyone who entered visa-free, not only tourists. The share of items using a persuasion frame is Medium: it rests on a short word list, and a television segment can persuade without those words.
Only 47 of them, 3 per cent, used the language of persuasion.
How it fits
How it fits. This is the first test of T5, the thesis that the state’s messaging also addresses an audience outside the country. The institutional side supports it: the guide rules aim explicitly at the “international image” and at what foreign visitors come to think. The media side supports it only weakly. State outlets address their own readers with a weekly count, and the persuasion frame lives mostly in pro-government Telegram. A simpler reading is that the guide rules target domestic groups, such as schoolchildren and work collectives, and that the international clause is boilerplate. If the tourism agency’s figures show that most guided excursions serve Belarusians, the rules are a domestic ideology measure with an international label. For now T5 stays at Low confidence, with one partial test.
What to watch
By 31 December 2026, the border committee’s count of visa-free entries by foreigners for 2026 passes 2025’s total of 224,591. We expect it does, with High confidence.
By 31 March 2027, a Belarusian state outlet reports a guide disciplined or denied attestation for breaching the new requirements. We expect it does not, with Medium confidence.
By 31 December 2026, Lithuanian or Latvian officials publicly warn their citizens about the ideological rules for guides in Belarus, in items in our archive. We expect they do not, with Medium confidence.
Method and limits
We collected all items in our archive since January 2025 that name tour guides together with requirements, attestation, ideology or image, and read the headlines by month and segment. For visa-free entry we counted items since January 2025 that mention entry without visas together with foreigners or the neighbouring nationalities, and marked those with words of persuasion or of risk. A query on state output in Polish, Lithuanian and English returned nothing, because our archive does not separate state items by language in a usable way, so we could not measure foreign-language production. Thesis tag: T5.