IVF in Georgia: Articles 141–144 of the Civil Code, a 30-Day Entry Cap, and One Published Price in Seven Clinics (2026)

Is Georgia the Right Destination for You?

It fits if your plan needs something the law has to name for you to use it: donor eggs, a gestational carrier, or parentage that appears on the birth certificate in the intended parents’ own names. It fits a self-egg IVF or ICSI itinerary too, since two legs of roughly 15–22 days do sit inside the 30-day visa-free entry. It does not fit families who want the invoice settled before they fly, families needing age-stratified national outcome data, same-sex couples, or anyone who wants donor anonymity.

Articles about IVF in Georgia open with the same two claims: surrogacy is legal, and it is cheap. Neither is wrong. Both also let a Chinese family fall flat on its face in five specific places.

First, what Georgia gives you is the widest permission to treat, not the smoothest way home. Its Civil Code sets out donor eggs, surrogacy, and the intended parents being registered directly as the parents on the birth certificate — while a Chinese departmental regulation expressly forbids medical institutions and medical personnel from performing surrogacy techniques of any form. Both rule sets hold at the same time, and no bilateral agreement between the two countries says a single word about the stretch in between, which is your child’s paperwork.

Second, entry for mainland Chinese passport holders runs on a mutual visa exemption agreement: 30 days on a single entry, no more than 90 days cumulative in any 180-day window, and “staying beyond 30 days” is expressly one of the situations that requires you to apply for the relevant visa before entry — not to improvise once you land in Tbilisi.

Third, from 1 January 2026 tourists entering Georgia must hold travel medical and accident insurance with a sum insured of no less than 30,000 lari, and must present the documentation on arrival. Guides written in 2025 and earlier do not contain this line.

Fourth, Georgia publishes no national ART outcome registry, so every success rate you are shown in Tbilisi is a clinic’s account of itself.

Fifth, list prices are almost entirely opaque. Of the seven Tbilisi institutions in this site’s database, exactly one publishes a verifiable cycle price on its own FAQ page (€2,500–€4,500, collected for our database on 26 August 2026); the other six are recorded on this site as “no published tariff — enquiry required”. That is a different market entirely from Thailand, where ten clinics let you assemble your own bill before you fly.

Georgia’s real value sits somewhere else. It is the only destination in this series that writes third-party gamete donation, gestational surrogacy, and birth registration naming the intended parents into enacted law at the same time. If your plan needs donor eggs, or if a uterine factor means the pregnancy cannot be carried on your own body, Georgia gives you articles of law you can cite rather than a grey-area practice.

This chapter is about landing: entry, flights, transport, lodging, climate, medication at the border, the legal framework, the child’s documents, and the bills. Medical totals across destinations are in the IVF cost guide 2026; cycle mechanics are in How IVF is done step by step; clinic selection is in How to choose an IVF clinic; the full picture on where surrogacy is lawful is in Countries where surrogacy is legal in 2026.

Where Georgia genuinely wins

• It is the only destination this site covers where donor eggs, gestational surrogacy, and the intended parents registered directly on the birth certificate are all three written into enacted law. Article 143(5) of the Civil Code and article 7(4) of the 1997 Reproductive Health Act are texts you can quote by article number — not an in-house clinic policy.
• Entry rests on a bilateral treaty, not on a unilateral courtesy — and the agreement’s own text does not confine the exemption to “tourism”, so treatment itself does not breach the exemption conditions (see the visa and entry section).
• There are direct flights. China Southern operates Urumqi–Tbilisi, roughly 5 hours 30 minutes one way — one fewer connection than most European destinations (see the flights section).
• The country now has national ART volume statistics for the first time. Geostat, Georgia’s National Statistics Office, has published IVF clinic statistics since December 2024 (17 clinics and 4,154 procedures in 2023) — no success rates, but the scale of the industry is no longer a black box (see the law and regulation section).
• Ground costs are low and verifiable: metro 1 lari, land transport 0.5 lari with free transfers, taxi flagfall 4 lari, and birth registration free (see the city transport and the birth-registration sections).
• Chinese-language service is not a complete blank: of the seven Georgia institutions on this site, two have Chinese recorded in their language lists (see the language and payment section).

Where Georgia falls short — said plainly

• The price opacity is structural. Six of seven clinics publish no tariff; one gives a €2,500–€4,500 cycle range. That is a different thing from “cheap” — you cannot assemble the bill yourself before you leave home.
• There is no clinic-level outcome data and no national success rate. The law requires clinics to file statistical reports with the Ministry of Health, but the ministry’s annual report contains no ART data, and the statistics office’s figures carry no stratified pregnancy rates.
• Georgia operates no sperm bank, egg bank or embryo bank — donor eggs have to be matched case by case, so the schedule’s elasticity is set by the donor, not by you.
• Access for single women is contradictory inside the sources of law themselves. The 1997 Act names “a woman without a male partner”; a 2016 ministerial order words the indication as “women and men in a marriage or a de facto marriage”. Same-sex couples have no legal basis at all.
• Chinese regulation expressly forbids medical institutions and personnel from performing surrogacy, and the child returns to China on a travel document with a DNA parentage test possibly demanded — that uncertainty is the largest cost in a Georgia plan (see the section on bringing the baby home).
• A mandatory insurance obligation was added from 1 January 2026, which guides written before that date do not mention.
• Most clinics do not offer Chinese. Contract communication defaults to English or Russian, and who supplies the interpreter has to be written into the agreement.

When another destination answers better

Do You Need a Visa for IVF in Georgia?

No — if you hold an ordinary mainland Chinese passport you travel on a mutual visa exemption agreement between the two governments, and there is nothing to apply for. That answer, however, has a hard ceiling and, as of 1 January 2026, an insurance condition bolted onto it.

The three hard numbers in the agreement

The Chinese Embassy in Georgia and Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs give consistent positions, and three figures decide whether your itinerary fits:

The agreement’s own text does not limit the purpose of the exemption to “tourism”, which is to say it does not prohibit you from receiving assisted reproduction treatment while entering visa-free. But the same embassy note draws a different line:

“For a stay exceeding 30 days, or for settling, taking up work, studying, reporting as a journalist or any other activity that requires prior approval from the competent authorities of the other side, the relevant visa must be applied for from that country before entry.”

That single sentence sets the shape of the trip: any plan that needs more than 30 continuous days in Georgia cannot be completed on the visa exemption.

From 1 January 2026: insurance of at least 30,000 lari is a condition of entry

The Chinese Embassy in Georgia issued a notice on 29 December 2025 (original, verified 28 October 2026):

Under the latest provisions of Georgia’s Tourism Act, from 1 January 2026 all tourists entering Georgia must hold travel medical and accident insurance with a sum insured of no less than 30,000 lari, and must present documentation containing the necessary clauses on arrival.

Three things you have to settle yourself, because the embassy notice does not expand on them:

1. The consequence of arriving uninsured. That notice does not list any penalty provision, and this site could not retrieve the text of the Tourism Act amendment or the border-control enforcement practice.
2. What “necessary clauses” actually covers. 30,000 lari is the minimum sum insured for medical and accident cover — it is not the same as your IVF complications being in scope. Most travel policies list assisted reproduction, infertility treatment, pregnancy and related complications as exclusions, while the things you would realistically claim during a stimulation cycle are ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), bleeding or infection after retrieval, and anaesthesia reactions. Getting the insurer to confirm “assisted-reproduction-related complications” in writing before you buy matters more than the number on the sum insured. What can go wrong with medication: IVF medications explained.
3. Your stay must sit inside the policy period. If you travel in two legs, each policy has to cover its own entry-to-exit dates.

The US Embassy in Tbilisi published a notice on the same subject on 31 December 2025, headed Georgia To Require Insurance For All Tourists Starting 1/1/2026. The body of that page returned 403 to this site and could not be retrieved, so it is recorded here only as evidence that a third government agency flagged the same requirement.

Extension, overstay and residence: three accounts that must not be mixed

Keep these four numbers apart. The visa-free 30 days is a stay allowance; the extra 30 days is an exceptional permission; 90 days is a residence threshold; and 90 days in any 180 is your visa-free quota. A 14-day retrieval trip plus a 7-day transfer trip consumes 21 days of the quota and does not trigger residence registration — but both legs must fall inside the 90 days of one 180-day window.

The e-visa portal and the 96-hour visa-free transit: two fallback routes

• E-visa portal: evisa.gov.ge (verified 28 October 2026). If your plan needs more than 30 continuous days, take this route rather than relying on an extension once you are there.
• 96-hour visa-free transit: from 1 February 2020, Chinese citizens meeting conditions such as holding a valid third-country visa may transit for 96 hours free of visa. Transit is not a lawful basis for receiving treatment in Georgia, and this site does not recommend building an itinerary around it.

Counting backwards: Georgia has no arrival card we could verify

Whether Georgia operates an electronic arrival declaration this site could not verify. On this pass we searched the Foreign Ministry’s consular issues page, the e-visa portal and Tbilisi city hall’s tourism pages, and found no online arrival declaration form aimed at visa-free entrants — nothing equivalent to Thailand’s TDAC or Malaysia’s MDAC. “We did not find it” is not the same as “it does not exist”; within 72 hours of departure, rely on your airline’s pre-departure guidance and the notices on the evisa.gov.ge homepage. The reverse-planning therefore turns on two things rather than on a form:

1. Your insurance start date must precede your entry date, and the policy period must cover the whole stay.
2. At the end of leg one you must already have decided whether leg two needs a visa. If donor-egg matching or surrogacy steps push the total past 30 days, the visa has to be in place before you depart.

Can You Fly Direct to Tbilisi?

Two direct routes, and the two published schedules disagree

This site verified two China–Tbilisi direct services on 28 October 2026, but they are not equally well sourced:

How to read that. The civil aviation report is a plan for the 2026 summer-autumn season (from late March); the China Southern page shows schedules you can currently book. Today is late October 2026, and the winter-spring season switched over around 25 October — planned and operated frequencies regularly differ. The usable conclusion is that direct flights exist, the Urumqi route is about 5.5 hours one way, but “daily” is not a fact you can build an itinerary on. The Shanghai route carries the same caution: it was written up as a 15 July launch under the summer-autumn schedule, and whether it continues on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday through the winter-spring season could not be verified — do not anchor a retrieval date to it. One further note: the same China Southern page describes Tbilisi airport as a hub served by Georgian Airways, Aeroflot, Alitalia and Azerbaijan Airlines, and Georgia’s international connections have shifted frequently in recent years. Everything here follows what you find when you actually book.

All other Chinese cities still need a connection. The Tbilisi airport homepage lists Moscow, Istanbul, Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi as its main international connection markets (homepage, verified 28 October 2026), but publishes no route-by-route timetable. The two usual routings from China are “domestic city → Urumqi → Tbilisi” or “domestic city → Istanbul / Dubai / Doha → Tbilisi”, and total travel time between those two shapes can differ by more than six hours — a material risk when you must be at the clinic on a specific day of stimulation.

Tbilisi airport (TBS): municipal bus 337 and a fixed-rate official taxi

The airport’s own “to and from the airport” section splits the two official options across two sub-pages (both verified 28 October 2026).

① Municipal bus 337 (airport’s official bus page)

• Verbatim: “The municipal bus stop is located in front of the Arrival hall and provides passenger transportation on route # 337 – Airport – Tbilisi city center – Airport.” This is a municipal service, not an airport shuttle, so the unified city fares apply: 1 lari for 90 minutes of unlimited travel, 3 lari for a day, 20 lari for a week (the last two purchasable only on a subscription card).
• The page gives first and last as “Timetable : 06:59 | 22:59.” Arrive outside that window and it is taxi or ride-hailing only.
• The route runs via Rustaveli Avenue, Kostava Street and Queen Tamara Avenue to Station Square 1. None of those stops is close to the Vake or Saburtalo clinic districts, so a connection is still needed.
• ⚠ An official note that is very easy to miss: “In case of payment by mobile application or cash … the passenger will not be able to use the 90-minute unlimited travel package”. In other words, paying by app or in cash forfeits the 90-minute free transfer — to keep it you need a Metro money card or a contactless bank card.

② The airport’s official taxi desk (airport’s official taxi page)

• Verbatim: the desk sits in “the terminal, just at the curbside of the Arrival Hall”, offers 24-hour service, and lists “Fixed rate to city center: 40 GEL”, “To suburban areas: 50 GEL”, with a journey of “20-30 minutes, depending on traffic”.
• This is the only official airport-to-city amount this site retrieved, and it is more checkable than any blogger’s estimate. It is a fixed rate, and the page does not say whether luggage, waiting or a night surcharge is included — confirm verbally before you get in.

③ Where the airport’s own FAQ page disagrees — recorded as it stands. On an earlier pass this site retrieved “the municipal bus serving the airport is route 37, every 30 minutes from 07:00 to 21:00; the airport bus runs every 30 minutes from 12:00 to 00:00” from the airport’s FAQ page. That FAQ page returned 404 on 28 October 2026 and we could not re-verify it, whereas the two sub-pages above were verifiable on the day. This article uses route 337 and 06:59 | 22:59, and lists “the airport FAQ body is no longer reachable, so route 37 and the bus timings cannot be cross-checked” in the source inventory at the end.

Getting in and out of the city: the official fixed rate first, the meter behind it

Tbilisi city hall published new taxi tariffs in a press release of 9 January 2026, effective 10 January 2026 (municipal site, verified 28 October 2026):

Two caveats about these figures. ① The headline of that same press release says “from 1 January”, while the body and the government’s English page say effective 10 January 2026; this site follows the body and records the discrepancy in the source inventory. ② The table above is the in-city metered tariff; the airport-to-city journey runs on the 40 lari official fixed rate from the previous section, and the two must not be blended. Derived figures such as “the meter formula gives 25 lari” are not published in this article — they only show that a gap can exist between a metered fare and the fixed rate, and whether such a gap is lawful depends on whether the driver charges within the municipal cap (see the ride-hailing fare control below).

Kutaisi airport (KUT): do not treat it as Tbilisi’s second airport

Kutaisi airport’s own site states it sits about 17 kilometres from Kutaisi city centre (homepage), while Tbilisi city hall and rail information only establish that the Tbilisi–Batumi line passes through Kutaisi with a journey of about 2 hours 20 minutes to 2 hours 45 minutes (municipal transport page, verified 28 October 2026). The city’s own English tourism page states flatly that Kutaisi airport is more than 230 kilometres from Tbilisi (travel.tbilisi.gov.ge). For an itinerary based on a Tbilisi clinic, KUT is not a usable alternative entry point.

Flight and transfer items we could not verify

• The current actual frequency of the Urumqi–Tbilisi route (the China Southern page and the civil aviation report disagree) and its fares.
• The flight number, aircraft type and cabin prices on the Shanghai–Tbilisi route, and whether it continues on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday in the winter-spring season — that route exists here only as a media story relayed by a government portal, and no primary airport or carrier release was obtained.
• Whether the airport’s official taxi 40 lari fixed rate includes luggage charges, waiting time or a night surcharge.
• The body text of the airport’s former FAQ page (recording “route 37, 07:00–21:00” and “airport bus 12:00–00:00”) — it returned 404 on 28 October 2026 and cannot be compared with the route 337 position.
• Transfer costs from Kutaisi airport: the airport’s transport sub-pages list only taxi and bus operator names and phone numbers (Kutaisi taxi page, bus page); the fare fields are empty, and this site quotes no amount.
• Georgia’s passenger rail timetable (the official site would not load on this pass).

What Does Getting Around Tbilisi Cost?

Only three things in this city have official fares we could put our hands on — but one of them is worth more to you than the others, because it decides whether you buy a travel card at all.

Metro at 1 lari, land transport at 0.5 lari

From Tbilisi city hall’s official mobility page (Mobility, verified 28 October 2026):

• Metro fare 1 lari; land transport (buses and cable cars) 0.5 lari, in force since 15 December 2019.
• Free transfers inside the land-transport network: the city’s announcement of 13 September 2019 reads “All routes of land transport in Tbilisi will be interconnected and transfers will be free”. That free transfer has a payment-method precondition — see the next two items.
• Day and weekly passes exist, but only on a subscription card. The most complete fare ladder this site retrieved comes from Tbilisi airport’s official bus page (bus sub-page, verified 28 October 2026), verbatim: “1 GEL – 90 minutes unlimited free travel”, “3 GEL – 1-day unlimited travel”, “20 GEL – 1-week unlimited travel”, “40 GEL – 1-month”, “100 GEL – 3-months”, “150 GEL – 6-months”, “250 GEL – 1-year”, and every tier except the 90-minute one is marked “package purchase is possible only with a subscription card”. The 90-minute tier may be paid with a Metro money card and with various bank cards. The city hall’s own Mobility page does not list these tiers, so this site records it exactly as found: “listed on the airport’s official page, not on the municipal page”.
• Paying by mobile app or in cash forfeits the 90-minute unlimited ride. Same page, verbatim: “In case of payment by mobile application or cash … the passenger will not be able to use the 90-minute unlimited travel package”. For someone shuttling between accommodation and clinic every other day through stimulation, this decides whether to get a travel card — not merely whether you save 0.5 lari.
• Cards are operated by SaaS, the operator of the “Tbilis Card” (registered address Rustaveli Avenue 26), with a 2 lari card deposit (official tariff page, verified 28 October 2026).
• Routes and timetables are searchable at tbilisitransport.ge (English routes page).

Accessibility: the section a patient on stimulation should read first

A municipal announcement of 25 March 2021 (original, verified 28 October 2026) states that “at present only 2 Tbilisi metro stations are equipped with accessible lifts”, and that the accessibility retrofit does not yet cover all 20 stations. The city’s official accessibility information page (travel.tbilisi.gov.ge) likewise records that metro entrances have stairs, accessible lifts exist only at specific stations, and wheelchair users must telephone in advance.

What that means for an IVF itinerary is very specific. From about day 6 of stimulation onward, bloating and enlarged ovaries are the norm, and retrieval and transfer days are usually handled by a clinic-arranged vehicle rather than public transport. If you or your companion has any mobility difficulty, settle the transfer arrangements with the clinic in writing at the protocol stage — do not build the plan around “the metro costs 1 lari and is convenient”. Several of the Tbilisi clinics recorded on this site carry wheelchair-accessible facility tags (see the clinic cards at the end).

Cable cars and the city’s terrain

Old Tbilisi is built across hills and a river valley, and the municipality publishes three cable-car fares (Mobility page): Rike–Narikala 10 lari return, 5 lari single; Kazbegi–Kus Tamar 7.5 lari return; Mtatsminda 7.5 lari single, 10 lari return. The practical consequence for choosing where to stay: accommodation on the valley floor and accommodation on the hillside have completely different walking costs to a clinic, and the uphill stretch in summer is the obvious one (see the climate section).

Ride-hailing: two platforms, and the fares are capped by the city

• Bolt operates in Georgia (bolt.eu/ka-ge); Yandex Go provides service in Georgia through yandex.ge (page), and its specific pricing algorithm is not published on that page.
• A municipal announcement of 28 February 2025 states that from 1 March 2025 maximum fare caps apply to Bolt and Yandex Go, warning that “charging above the cap will be fined” (original, verified 28 October 2026). Put this to use in your itinerary: if a late-night fare back from the clinic looks anomalous, you can appeal to the platform on the basis that a government cap exists.
• No per-kilometre price is published officially, and this site quotes no blog estimates.

What we could not verify about city transport

• First and last service times for the metro and regular bus network (the municipal page gives only cable car hours, 10:00–23:00; the airport page gives route 337’s “Timetable : 06:59 | 22:59” but no network-wide operating hours).
• The progress of the metro accessibility retrofit across all stations — the official position stops at the 25 March 2021 statement, “only 2 stations have accessible lifts”.
• Current fares and boarding rules for the marshrutka minibuses.
• Where travel cards are sold, how they are topped up, and where subscription tickets (day / week / month) are obtained — the fare ladder is official, the issuing channels were not retrieved.
• The e-scooter rules mentioned on Tbilisi city hall’s English pages.

Can You Rent an Apartment Near the Clinic in Georgia?

What we can state with confidence

Tbilisi city hall’s English tourism page divides accommodation into hotel / hostel / guesthouse / apartment (page, verified 28 October 2026) and publishes no price ranges whatsoever. Beyond that, this site could not retrieve the verbatim legal text of any requirement that short lets or guest accommodation be registered, from any Georgian government site.

What we cannot state — which is the more important half

What this site did retrieve are two practice readings from a Georgian law firm (secondary sources, both authored by LL.M. Nino Zhvania, GeorgiaLaw 23 September 2026 and 14 September 2026):

• Operating a short let without registration: a fine of up to 30,000 lari, plus disgorgement of the unlawful proceeds.
• Another page by the same author gives a different figure: 300 euros per unregistered letting.
• An individual letting their own home occasionally is tax-free and needs no registration.

The boundary between those three statements is exactly the Airbnb question. Georgia distinguishes “occasional letting of your own home” from “operating a short let as a business”, but the criterion for that distinction (number of days? number of lettings? whether it goes through a platform?) could not be verified from the legal text by this site. The 30,000-lari and 300-euro figures come from different pages by the same author, so this article does not merge them and does not adopt either as a conclusion.

So the lodging strategy for a Tbilisi cycle looks like this

1. Build around licensed hotels. They issue a formal confirmation and an invoice, which lines up far better with the mandatory insurance, with border checks, and with the “stay a few more days to finish the paperwork” scenario in the section on bringing the baby home.
2. If you take an apartment-type unit, ask the host for written confirmation of its registration status, and record in the booking correspondence who bears the cost if you are required to leave.
3. Choose the district by clinic address. All seven institutions recorded in this site’s database sit in Tbilisi, with addresses spread across Vake (Barnov Street and the Anjaparidze area), Saburtalo (Paichadze Street) and the old town / Sololaki area. During stimulation you attend every other day, so “actual commute time from bed to clinic” matters far more than “close to the sights”.
4. Keep room to shift dates. A retrieval cycle can lengthen as follicles develop, and a free-cancellation rate is worth more than the one night’s accommodation it saves.

When Is the Best Season to Travel to Georgia for IVF?

Monthly normals (Georgia’s Hydrometeorological Service)

The World Weather Information Service city page for Tbilisi, published under the World Meteorological Organization and sourced to Georgia’s Hydrometeorological Service (www.meteo.gov.ge), gives 1961–1990 averages (city page, verified 28 October 2026):

Source: WMO World Weather Information Service — Tbilisi, data from the Hydrometeorological Service of Georgia, 1961–1990 averages, verified 28 October 2026. For rain days the same source yielded only three anchors: about 4.0 days each in January and December, and about 9.7 days in May as the annual maximum. Its monthly maximum- and minimum-temperature fields came back empty, so this article lists no monthly extremes.

Two official sets of numbers that do not agree — and how to read that

Tbilisi city hall’s own climate page (in Georgian, თბილისის კლიმატი) gives a different set: annual mean 12.7 °C, January 0.9 °C, July 24.4 °C, annual precipitation 560 mm, absolute maximum 40 °C.

• July’s 24.4 °C matches exactly between the two; January differs by 0.8 °C; the annual 560 mm differs from the twelve-month sum of the table above (495.5 mm) by more than 60 mm.
• Neither page explains the difference (reference period, station attribution, whether upland stations are included), so this article merges nothing, averages nothing, and does not pick one as the answer.
• The discrepancy is itself the most useful lesson in this section: two official sets of normals for the same city can differ by 1 °C and 60 mm — every summary figure on a clinic’s page deserves the same question about its underlying source and reference period.

What the climate does to a treatment timeline: three practical conclusions

The conclusion first: Georgia has no climate window in which a month is unusable. That differs from other destination manuals on this site — the Thailand guide has to cost out monsoon rain and PM2.5, US city guides have to cost out blizzards and wildfire AQI. Tbilisi has no evidence of any of the three. The monthly normals are useful for excluding the following three risks, not for picking a lucky month.

1. Summer (July–August): warm, but irrelevant to the laboratory. Mean temperatures sit near 24 °C, with an absolute maximum record of 40 °C (municipal page). You attend monitoring every other day during stimulation, so the heat does not affect the embryology lab — it affects your daily commute and your sleep. The one hard requirement for a summer plan: accommodation with reliable air conditioning, and a short transfer to the clinic (see the district guidance in the lodging section).
2. Winter (December–February): the city keeps treating, but travel between regions may not. Mean temperatures from December to February sit in the 1–4 °C band. We found no official record of clinics closing or roads shutting inside Tbilisi itself for snow; but Georgia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs Roads Department does maintain a “RESTRICTIONS ON THE ROADS” section (agency page), which during heavy snow in January 2026 published notices restricting traffic by road section and vehicle type (relay in Georgian-language media, secondary). The implication: if you keep stimulation monitoring in Tbilisi but move other business between Kutaisi or the mountains in winter, that risk is yours. The specific sections and effective dates could not be verified on this pass — georoad.ge and roads.gov.ge both failed to connect — so do not trust any claim that “such-and-such section was closed on such-and-such date”.
3. Rain: only May really needs an umbrella. May carries 77.6 mm and about 9.7 rain days, both the annual maxima (table above). The practical effect is on road conditions and commuting; it is not a reason to postpone a cycle.

High and low seasons: there is no official definition, so this guide prints no “cheapest month”

Georgia’s official tourism portal, georgia.travel, run by the National Tourism Administration, carries only qualitative seasonal descriptions (winter suits winter sports, September is still good for hiking, summer is crowded). It has never published a low-season / high-season definition or month-by-month visitor numbers. So this section does not write sentences like “accommodation is cheaper by X% in March” — this site has no source for such a number. Pricing comes from asking your clinic leg by leg once your retrieval date is fixed (see the cost section).

Altitude and physical load: can be ruled out

The municipality’s geography page gives Tbilisi’s altitude as 380–600 metres (in Georgian, tbilisi.gov.ge/page/9). That elevation adds no burden at the level of hypoxia or sleep architecture — there is no climate-side physiological risk to a stimulation or transfer cycle here. What squeezes your timeline is the ceiling on your stay and the paperwork, not the altitude.

Warning channels and what this section could not verify

Verifiable official channels: the weather warnings page of the National Environmental Agency, meteo.gov.ge/En/Warnings; the nea.gov.ge homepage (weather warnings plus an app download); the meteorological information hotline 1501; and the unified police / ambulance / fire number 112 (Chinese Embassy reminder of 25 April 2025). The national tourism portal adds a tourism hotline, *9898, in the footer of georgia.travel.

Not verified (and therefore not printed anywhere in this article):

• Georgia’s grading thresholds for heat, fire-risk and air-quality warnings — the channels exist; the definitions were not retrieved.
• On the search day (28 October 2026) the warnings page rendered only routine weather (possible light rain and fog, south-easterly wind 6–11 m/s); the bodies of any heat or fire-risk items did not load.
• The specific road sections, vehicle types and effective dates of winter restrictions — georoad.ge and roads.gov.ge all failed to connect.
• Tbilisi’s absolute minimum temperature on the municipal page: the rendered figure lost its minus sign and cannot be confirmed, so it is not used.
• Any official position on Tbilisi drinking-water safety (whether boiling is needed, whether the tap is drinkable).

Can You Bring Your Own Stimulation Medication Into Georgia?

Where the rules actually sit: the Medicines Act, not the customs page

Tbilisi city hall’s English tourism page states, in its “Medicines” section, that prescription medicines must be bought in pharmacies against a prescription, and that import, export and transit permits for narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and precursor chemicals are issued by the Ministry of Health under article 11(5) of the Medicines Act (page, verified 28 October 2026).

The gap has to be stated plainly. From the Revenue Service (customs, customs.gov.ge) and from the legislative gazette (matsne.gov.ge), this site could not retrieve the verbatim day or quantity limit for medicines carried for personal use, and could not retrieve the text of article 11(5) of the Medicines Act. Therefore:

• This guide does not write “you may carry X days’ supply” — this site has no primary source for such a number.
• This guide does not write “stimulation injections are prescription medicines here” — the registration and prescription classification of FSH, hCG and GnRH agonists in Georgia could not be verified.

So what do you actually do

1. Default to having the medication dispensed locally. Stimulation doses are adjusted as follicles and oestradiol are monitored, and carrying your own drugs is precisely what keeps each adjustment out of the local medical record. How dosing is adjusted: IVF medications explained and Fertility drugs guide.
2. If you genuinely must carry them, make the paperwork readable on the spot: the original prescription or medical certificate, the medicines in their original packaging with labels, a quantity consistent with the length of your trip, and text in English. Discretion at the border sits with the Georgian side, and this site could not verify any duty-free allowance.
3. Confirm controlled and psychotropic ingredients separately. Georgia passed amendments on 12 March 2024 tightening prescription and register control of narcotic and psychotropic drugs (law-firm reading, secondary; the gazette text would not load on this pass). For any analgesic or sedative containing such ingredients, obtain written confirmation from the Ministry of Health or your clinic before departure.
4. Retrieval is done under sedation, and that medication is arranged by the clinic. Every clinic recorded on this site describes retrieval as ultrasound-guided with anaesthesia and theatre facilities (see the clinic cards and the hospital profiles), so there is no “patient brings their own” question for that category.

E-cigarettes: import prohibited from 1 September 2026

A law-firm practice page of 2 July 2026 (secondary, link) states that from 1 September 2026 e-cigarettes are prohibited from import outright, and goods in transit are also detained by customs. The corresponding announcement from Georgia’s Revenue Service could not be retrieved on this pass. The practical consequence: do not bring a vape in “for convenience on the journey”, and do not count on carrying one through a connection.

Medication items we could not verify

• The day or quantity limit for medicines carried for personal use.
• The prescription classification and import-registration status of gonadotropin injections in Georgia.
• Any declaration threshold or duty-free allowance for bringing medication in.
• The border treatment of cannabis and CBD products (no official position found on this pass).

How Do Phones, Payment and Language Work in Georgia?

Currency and payment

Georgia’s legal currency is the lari (GEL) — the only currency you will pay clinic bills, taxis and metro fares in — and 1 lari divides into 100 tetri (National Bank of Georgia, verified 28 October 2026). This article converts nothing, for the reasons given in the cost section.

• Card acceptance: Visa’s official acceptance page lists Georgia as a market where its cards work (visa.com, verified 28 October 2026); the equivalent Mastercard position could not be verified on this pass.
• The embassy takes exactly two payment methods: the Chinese Embassy in Georgia states that “all fees for consular applications must be paid in person at the embassy, in cash or by TBC bank card; online payment is not supported” (FAQ of 29 May 2025). On the day you file for your child’s document, you must therefore be carrying cash or a local TBC card.
• Do not assume Alipay or WeChat Pay work. This site found no Georgian official or clinic page accepting a Chinese wallet.

Data and registration

• Magti (magticom.ge/en/prepaid), the Cellfi / Magti combined portal (cellfi.ge/en/prepaid-plans), Silknet (Georgian only, silknethub.ge).
• Tourist plan prices and eSIM support could not be verified from the operators’ official pages on this pass — the pages render dynamically and the body text was not retrieved.
• Whether a foreign passport can complete real-name registration for a prepaid SIM also could not be verified. SIM registration in Georgia is a telecommunications-regulation matter, and the municipal tourism page states only that foreign nationals may buy a card from an operator or an authorised dealer against their passport.

Time difference: UTC+4 the whole year

Georgia abolished summer time from the last Sunday of June 1996 and has kept UTC+04:00 year-round since (municipal English page, verified 28 October 2026). The relationship to Beijing time is therefore constant: Tbilisi is four hours behind Beijing, all year.

Two practical uses: ① for remote consultations and report turnaround, Tbilisi working hours only begin after about 15:00 Beijing time; ② the trigger injection is timed on the local clock, and that is four hours earlier than the same clock time in Beijing — do not infer it from your phone’s automatic time zone.

Language: only 2 of the 7 clinics on our database have Chinese on record

This is the section where Georgia needs cold water thrown on it. Chinese-language service is not the norm here.

How to read that table. Only two clinics carry zh in the language field of their own profile material; the other five are ka/en/ru. “There are many Chinese residents in Tbilisi” is not the same as “the clinic has Chinese”. Before signing, require the clinic to confirm in writing which language communication runs in and whether medical interpretation is provided, and write responsibility for translation into the agreement. GGRC, Innova and Vita Nova are tagged with translation services in our records, but with no languages specified.

Re-checking the clinics’ own sites on the same day: the statements are narrower than our records

On 28 October 2026 this site re-checked each clinic’s own website for its language terms. The result does not fully match the table above, and the direction of the difference is “narrower”:

• SILK MEDICAL (silk-medical.com): the English site contains only “24/7 English-speaking coordinators” and makes no statement about Chinese-language service; the site metadata on its other domain lists Russian as the site language.
• Gagua Clinic (gaguaclinic.ge/en): the language list is English and Georgian only — one fewer than our record — and there is no translation clause.
• Zhordania Clinic’s English page carries neither a language list nor a translation statement; the GGRC and Vita Nova domains would not load on the day; LeaderMed’s site is a script-only page whose body could not be extracted — so the language terms of those three could not be verified.
• The other end of the market: some Georgia-based service providers (not admitted to this site’s clinic database, and not endorsed by this article) state that their site interface includes Simplified Chinese and that free translation is provided. Note that “a Chinese-language website interface” and “a Chinese-speaking coordinator in the clinic” are two different things, and the languages of the translation are never stated on the page.

The conclusion stands, but its basis changes. Article 19 of Georgia’s Patient Rights Act requires only that a medical institution “consider the patient’s capacity to understand” and explain using as little jargon as possible; it does not require interpretation or translation (English text in the legislative gazette). In other words, Chinese-language communication in Georgia is not a statutory right — it is a voluntary term offered by the clinic. Where our internal record and a clinic’s current wording diverge, what governs is the language the clinic confirms to you in writing on the day you sign.

What Does the Treatment Timeline Look Like in Georgia?

The clinical sequence is the global standard; the medical detail (protocols, monitoring markers, the retrieval and transfer procedures) is in How IVF is done step by step and What happens during egg retrieval. This section answers one question only: how many days each step needs in Tbilisi, and how that lines up against the 30-day visa-free ceiling.

Stage 0: remote consultation and data submission (no travel)

Send first: AMH, baseline FSH/LH/E2, antral follicle count on transvaginal ultrasound, semen analysis, infectious-disease screening, thyroid function. Because Georgian list prices are opaque (see the cost section), the value of submitting your data remotely is that it forces the clinic into a first written quote — do not buy a ticket before you have one.

Stage 1: protocol agreed (no travel)

Three things must be in writing at this stage: ① two quotes, one with medication and one without; ② if donor eggs or surrogacy are involved, the signing and notarisation arrangements for the legal documents — they are the precondition for the first link in the birth-registration chain; ③ the language of communication and who provides translation (see the language and payment section).

Stage 2: the first leg (stimulation plus retrieval)

The LeaderMed clinic profile published on this site records the position that a whole IVF cycle typically takes about 18–20 days, and international patients are advised to stay about 10–14 days in Tbilisi (figures taken from that clinic’s own website, collected for our database on 26 August 2026). Stimulation requires monitoring visits every other day for ultrasound and bloods, so the length of this leg is set by monitoring frequency, not by the price of a flight.

Stage 3: fertilisation, culture and the decisions (you may leave)

ICSI, blastocyst culture and PGT-A are done in the laboratory and the patient need not stay. The actual number of days a PGT-A report takes could not be retrieved verbatim from any Georgian clinic’s official pages — this must be confirmed with the clinic in writing, because it sets the timing of leg two.

Stage 4: the second leg (transfer plus pregnancy test)

A frozen embryo transfer cycle typically takes 5–8 days, covering monitoring visits, the transfer itself and the pregnancy blood test. The pregnancy test (serum HCG) is done about 12–14 days after transfer, and our clinic records are consistent on that point.

The full timeline, measured against the 30-day visa-free cap

Three conclusions:

1. A self-egg IVF or ICSI itinerary in two legs totals about 15–22 days, inside the 30-day single entry and inside the 90-in-180 cumulative cap. That is why Georgia remains a workable option for a standard cycle.
2. A donor-egg cycle’s stay length is not set by you — it is set by donor matching. Georgia operates no gamete banks (law-firm reading, secondary), so donation is matched case by case, and this site obtained no official figure from any clinic for how long matching takes.
3. The surrogacy timeline sits wholly outside the visa-free framework. The LeaderMed clinic profile on this site records a surrogacy programme at roughly 16–18 months (collected for our database on 26 August 2026). The intended parents need not be in Georgia throughout, but the stretch of delivery → birth registration → apostille → travel document needs a person present in Georgia, and it very easily exceeds 30 days. This is the part of a Georgia itinerary where a visa must be obtained before departure rather than hoped for afterwards.

Two hidden costs in the schedule

• The Public Service Agency’s 10 working days run “after a complete application”. Incomplete documents — above all the notarised surrogacy agreement and the clinic’s confirmation of the carrier’s voluntariness — restart that clock (PSC service page).
• Embassy business is in person. Travel documents and passports require an appointment and on-site capture of photograph and fingerprints, and online processing for newborns has not been opened (embassy FAQ of 29 May 2025). One visit is not the same as collecting on the day.

What Does Georgian Law Actually Permit?

Three layers of law, and they are not of equal rank

One thing you must know: Georgia has no single unified “assisted reproduction act”, and no dedicated embryo or gamete bank statute. The three texts are not consistent with one another in their wording — the next subsection is one example — and this is exactly the layer that “surrogacy is legal in Georgia” explainers skip.

Who may be treated: the sources of law give two different answers

• Article 7(4) of the 1997 Act provides that “an infertile woman, as well as a woman without a male partner, may carry a pregnancy created by in vitro fertilisation”, and recommends assisted conception for women over 35 (gazette text, verified 28 October 2026).
• Article 10 of the 2016 Order No. 129 words the indication for IVF as “women and men in a registered marriage or a de facto marriage, with infertility confirmed by examination”.

The tension between those two sentences is the real answer to whether a single woman can have IVF in Georgia: nothing expressly prohibits it, but the technical standard writes the eligible category as “married or in a de facto marriage”. This site found neither an official prohibition on accepting single women nor an official permissive interpretation of them. Conclusion: a single patient taking this route must obtain the clinic’s written undertaking to accept her at the protocol stage — “the law does not forbid it” is not a basis to rely on. As for same-sex couples, Georgia has no legal basis permitting them to receive assisted reproduction; this site found no official text on the subject.

Donor eggs: lawful, compensation permitted, not anonymous, and no banks

• Donation is expressly permitted: article 7(1) of the 1997 Act allows the use of donated gametes and embryos.
• Donor information is not confidential. Article 11(3) reads, verbatim, “donor data are not confidential”, and article 11(4) requires donor information to be reported to the birth-registration authority — Georgia is not an anonymous-donation regime, which is the opposite of most European destinations.
• Compensation is allowed, with a hard edge. Article 11(1) permits payments of compensation; article 7(3) prohibits paying a donor “any fees related to a pregnancy”.
• Egg donor eligibility is set by article 14 of the 2016 Order No. 129: aged 25–35, at least one child of her own, and having completed medical and psychological screening.
• Georgia operates no sperm bank, egg bank or embryo bank — no statute authorises any such institution. Donor eggs must therefore be matched case by case, which directly sets the elasticity of your schedule (see the timeline section).

Surrogacy: in statute since 1997, with the intended parents named on the birth certificate

• Only one form is allowed: article 7(2) of the 1997 Act permits gestational surrogacy only — “traditional surrogacy is not permitted”, i.e. the carrier may not use her own egg.
• Who may commission: article 7(4) words the principals as “spouses in a de facto marriage or a formally registered marriage”.
• Carrier conditions: article 13 of the 2016 Order No. 129 — aged 25–35, already has a biological child of her own, and confirmed suitable by medical and psychological examination.
• No commercial profit: article 10 prohibits seeking commercial profit through gestational surrogacy, and prohibits medical institutions from running gestational-surrogacy programmes for foreigners or stateless persons where the purpose is commercial profit.
• Parentage: article 143(5) of the Civil Code makes the commissioning parents the legal parents; article 143(6) provides that the agreement can be enforced through the courts only before the child is born.
• Genetic-link requirement: the statement that “at least one intended parent must have a genetic link to the foetus” was not found in the gazette text — it is the prevailing account of law firms and clinics (secondary).

The two new boundaries written in 2025

• Non-medical embryo sex selection prohibited: an amendment of 24 June 2025, in force from 1 September 2025, with the sole exception of avoiding hereditary disease.
• An age floor for ART: the same amendment of 24 June 2025 added article 13¹ to the Health Rights Act. This site reads the gazette wording as meaning ART applies to people aged 18 and over; the verbatim scope of any exception below 18 was not retrieved, so where a minor is involved (fertility preservation before cancer treatment, for example) go by the gazette text and the clinic’s written statement.

Regulation: who licenses, who inspects, and what the fines are

• Licensing: the Legal Entity Service of the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development issues operating licences under the Licensing and Register of Licences Act (official page, verified 28 October 2026).
• Inspection: the State Labor Office supervises compliance with medical technical regulations, and article 15 of the 1997 Act requires clinics to be inspected at least once every three years.
• Penalties: an amendment of 3 July 2025 to article 175 of the Code of Administrative Offences — breaching ART procedure rules costs an individual 1,500 lari and an institution 3,000 lari; operating without a licence or in breach of licence conditions costs an individual 1,000 lari and an institution 3,000 lari.
• There is no dedicated reproductive-medicine regulator. This site checked the Ministry of Health, the National Statistics Office, the Legal Entity Service and the State Labor Office, and found no ART-specific supervisory body at any of the four.
• Self-regulation: an industry body, ReproGEO, exists (reprogeo.org), but this site could not verify whether it publishes a member roster or quality standards.

Reporting and oversight: why this guide prints no success-rate numbers for Georgia

Georgia’s position here is more subtle than “there is no registry at all”, and each strand is worth reading:

1. A statutory reporting duty exists, but no public register. Article 15 of the 1997 Act requires medical institutions to “submit statistical reports to the Ministry of Health in the established procedure”, but this site found no ART cycle counts or success rates in the ministry’s official statistics or its annual report (2024 report PDF).
2. National statistics appeared for the first time at the end of 2024. The National Statistics Office of Georgia issued a press release on 17 December 2024 (original PDF), publishing in vitro fertilisation clinic statistics for the first time: 17 clinics operating in 2023, 4,154 assisted reproduction procedures performed, 22,970 oocytes retrieved, 1,052 transfers completed, and 562 live births in 2022; 2024 data followed in a press release of December 2025 (that release).
3. Those figures cannot be converted into a success rate. The statistics are volumes only — no age-stratified clinical pregnancy or live-birth rates, no clinic-level data, and the denominator basis (per retrieval cycle, per transfer cycle or per started cycle) is not stated by the source. Dividing 1,052 transfers by 562 live births, or 562 by 1,052, produces a percentage that is a misuse of the data — the two figures come from different years and describe different statistical objects.

This guide therefore provides no success-rate figure for Georgia, at national or at clinic level. How you question a success-rate claim is itself a screening test — see IVF success rate guide and How to read IVF success-rate data.

If something goes wrong, who do you go to? Three routes — and no fourth

If something goes wrong, who do you go to? Four routes — and none of them is specific to assisted reproduction

1. Civil compensation: articles 4165 and following of the Civil Code (medical-negligence tort) plus articles 994 and following (breach of contract); an amendment of 10 June 2025 added periodic payments as a form of damages (gazette).
2. Administrative route: a complaint to the Ministry of Health can trigger suspension or revocation of a licence under article 21 of the Licensing Act (official page).
3. Emergency and reporting: the unified emergency hotline 112 (emergency112.gov.ge); the Ministry of Health runs a 022 line.
4. Patient rights: the Act on the Rights of Patients and State Services (27 July 2012), article 7, guarantees the right to clear information about medical services — but there is no ART-specific complaints mechanism (this site’s verified conclusion).

Where this verification disagrees with our own published pages

Two articles already on this site describe Georgia, and primary verification produced three points of disagreement. Under a report-only rule they are set out here rather than quietly rewritten, so readers can judge for themselves:

• The eligibility table in the complete guide to IVF abroad records Georgia as “same-sex couples: permitted”, “donor anonymity: anonymous” and “age limit: 53”. This site’s verified findings are: same-sex couples have no legal basis; donor information is not confidential by law (article 11(3) of the 1997 Act: “donor data are not confidential”); and the figure of 53 has no source anywhere in Georgia’s three layers of law.
• Countries where surrogacy is legal in 2026 records Georgia as “commercial surrogacy fully legal”. At the level of statute, Georgia permits gestational surrogacy, and article 10 of the 1997 Act expressly prohibits seeking commercial profit from it — “commercial surrogacy fully legal” is an industry shorthand, not a legal statement.
• The same page records Georgia’s eligible category as “married heterosexual couples only”, while the Civil Code and the 1997 Act word it as “a de facto marriage or a formally registered marriage” — unmarried cohabiting partners have a broader route to claim in Georgia than “married only” suggests.

How Do You Take the Baby Back to China?

This is the chapter that most distinguishes a Georgia guide from the other destination manuals. In Georgia, “whether you can have the treatment” is answered by statute; “whether you can take the child home” is answered by three separate documents from three different authorities — the Georgian civil registration body issues the birth certificate, the Georgian foreign-ministry channel issues the apostille, and the Chinese embassy issues the travel document. If any link jams, it converts directly into days of overstaying in Tbilisi.

Link one: whose name goes on the birth certificate

Article 143(5) of the Civil Code of Georgia states it directly: a child born through surrogacy is registered as the legal child of the commissioning parents (or of the single woman) (code transcript, verified 28 October 2026). Article 143(6) narrows the route to a pre-birth order: the intended parents can compel performance of the agreement through the courts only before the child is born, and the courts do not entertain such requests after delivery.

The Georgian registration authority’s own position is more useful in practice. Civil registration is handled by Georgia’s Public Service Development Agency (PSC) (official English service page, verified 28 October 2026), which states that a court order is normally not required, and is needed only if the surrogate refuses consent after the birth. The requirements and processing position on that official page:

Two traps here. ① Notarisation of the agreement and the clinic’s confirmation of voluntariness are preconditions of registration, not documents to be supplied later — at signing, confirm that the clinic can actually issue that confirmation. ② The same official page states that a surrogate who has given written consent may not subsequently terminate the pregnancy artificially, and that she has no right to use the child as leverage to demand additional compensation.

Link two: the apostille

Georgia is a party to the Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents, which entered into force for Georgia on 14 April 2007; China deposited its instrument of accession on 8 March 2023 and the convention entered into force for China on 1 July 2023. Public documents between the two countries — birth certificates among them — therefore travel by apostille rather than by case-by-case consular legalisation (Hague Conference status table, verified 28 October 2026).

One caution remains in practice: an apostille settles the formal validity of a document abroad. It is not an endorsement by the Chinese authority of the facts the document records — the parentage, the surrogacy arrangement — and those are judged in link three.

Link three: a travel document, not a passport

The Chinese Embassy in Georgia issued a notice on 18 July 2025 (original, verified 28 October 2026): Chinese citizens under 16 born in Georgia who apply for a passport or travel document for the first time must in principle complete the application form on the “China Consular” app, upload their documents, book an appointment slot, and attend in person as booked.

The same mission’s FAQ on app-based passport and travel-document services, dated 29 May 2025 (original, verified 28 October 2026), gives four positions that bear directly on your itinerary:

• Newborn business cannot be completed online. The original wording is that the mission has not opened online processing of passport and travel-document applications for newborns, and the timing of that will be notified separately — documents may be submitted online, but attendance in person is required.
• On-site capture is mandatory. Applicants must book a slot and bring whatever else must be handed over in person, where photographs and fingerprints are captured on site.
• No mail-in service, and payment on site only. All fees must be paid in person at the embassy, in cash or by TBC bank card; online payment is not supported.
• How to fill the form in a surrogacy case: “if, because of single parenthood, surrogacy or a similar reason, only one parent is recorded, enter “none” for the other parent and upload an explanatory statement among the supporting materials.”

That last line is the only publicly stated processing position touching surrogacy that this site found at embassy level. It shows a route exists — it does not give a document checklist, a review timeframe, or a fee schedule.

The substantive blood-relationship test on the Chinese side — using a neighbouring mission as a reference

The embassy in Tbilisi has published no dedicated notice here. What this site found instead are two positions from the Chinese Embassy in Russia (a neighbouring mission — these cannot be treated as the standard applied in Tbilisi):

• A notification of 22 June 2017 on surrogacy travel-document cases: “for children born through surrogacy applying for a travel document, this mission uniformly requires a DNA parentage test against the Chinese-side intended parents, in order to close off any channel by which a child of unlawful surrogacy enters on a travel document”.
• A notice of 9 May 2018 on the documents required from children born through surrogacy: a birth certificate, the surrogacy contract, and the parents’ passports or visas must be submitted, and parentage test samples must be collected inside the mission under the supervision of consular staff.

This is a scheduling conclusion, not a legal one. If Tbilisi likewise demands a DNA test with in-person sampling, your departure date has to leave room for the round trips of booking, sampling, review and collection, and the 10-working-day birth-registration clock does not cover that stretch at all. This site could not retrieve the Tbilisi mission’s document checklist or timeframes for travel documents for children born through surrogacy; that item must be confirmed with the embassy in writing by you before departure.

Who the Chinese rules actually bind

This has to be stated precisely, or the chapter reads as though China recognises the arrangement too:

• Ministry of Health Order No. 3 of 1991, Notice on Stopping the Illegal Practice of “Surrogacy”: “surrogacy in any form is to be resolutely stopped”.
• Administrative Measures on Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (Ministry of Health Order No. 14, in force 1 August 2001), article 3(2): medical institutions and medical personnel “shall not perform surrogacy techniques of any form”; article 22 sets penalties of warning, a fine of up to 3,000 yuan, and disqualification.
• Technical Standards on Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (Wei Ke Jiao Fa [2003] No. 176): medical institutions and medical personnel are “prohibited from buying or selling gametes, zygotes or embryos”.
• The revised Administrative Measures of 29 December 2015, article 14: medical institutions and medical personnel “shall not perform surrogacy techniques”; article 31 raises the penalty to a fine of 10,000–30,000 yuan plus disqualification.

These provisions bind medical institutions and personnel inside mainland China. They do not directly prescribe the consequences, for a citizen who had a lawful procedure abroad, for the child’s status — that is handled case by case through nationality determination and travel-document review. That is both the uncertainty in this chapter and the reason link three has to be confirmed with the embassy in writing before you fly.

What this chapter could not verify (fill it in yourself before departure)

1. The Tbilisi mission’s document checklist, review timeframe and fee schedule for travel documents for children born through surrogacy (only the “not yet online” and app-appointment positions were found).
2. Georgia’s own requirements for proof of parentage on departure (at customs or border-control level).
3. China’s public position on household registration (hukou) for children born abroad through surrogacy — no national-level document was found on this pass.
4. Whether the parents’ names on the birth certificate can be registered in Chinese-character or pinyin form as the intended parents wish (a registration technicality; no official explanation retrieved).

How Much Does IVF in Georgia Really Cost?

Prices published by the clinics themselves (original currency, no conversion)

Of the seven Tbilisi institutions in this site’s database, only one publishes a verifiable cycle price on its own website:

The table itself is the conclusion. Georgia is not a destination so cheap that you need not ask; it is a destination where you must ask clinic by clinic before you can build a budget. GGRC’s three tiers (three attempts / with a surrogacy guarantee / unlimited attempts) show that the local packages differ along “number of attempts” and “guarantee conditions” — precisely the two things a written quote is easiest to leave vague about.

What this site already publishes, in dollars

The only published magnitude we carry for Georgia is on the surrogacy path: the complete guide to IVF and surrogacy records Georgia at about $45,000–$70,000, and Countries where surrogacy is legal in 2026 records a complete surrogacy package at $40,000–$70,000 (medical, legal and agency costs included). The two site figures overlap almost entirely, and both are all-inclusive framings. They are not the same layer of number as the €2,500–€4,500 pure IVF cycle price above, and they cannot be added to it or compared with it. Global magnitudes for a self-egg cycle: IVF cost guide 2026.

Exchange rates: this guide does not convert

• Every amount keeps its original currency (EUR, USD or GEL).
• The National Bank of Georgia’s October 2026 official lari reference rates against the euro and the dollar could not be retrieved from its site, so no conversion is offered anywhere. Settle at your bank’s published rate for the day and your card’s rate on the statement.
• Where a clinic’s own page publishes a conversion, we quote it as the clinic’s own conversion, with the collection date attached.

Non-medical costs

Three questions that beat asking “what does it all cost?”

1. “Does the €2,500–€4,500 tier include the stimulation medication?” Georgian clinic pages generally do not say at which layer this sits, and drug cost can exceed a third of a cycle’s total. What belongs on the list: IVF medications explained.
2. “Which three attempts are the ‘three attempts’ in the package?” GGRC’s standard package says three attempts — three retrievals, three transfers, or three frozen-embryo cycles must be confirmed in writing.
3. “What is the quote’s validity date, and what do you charge if a retrieval is cancelled?” This site could not verify whether Georgian clinics publish quote validity at all, so you have to require that line in the quote yourself.

The budgeting rule: Georgia’s cost structure is enquiry-plus-package, so taking the ceiling at the medication-included level is the only dependable method. Do not treat €2,500 as a cycle’s total cost — it is the only verifiable clinic figure on this site, and the wording that carries it says plainly that the price depends on the treatment plan.

What Should Your Pre-Departure Checklist Look Like?

Three to two months out

• Assemble documentation of your marriage or cohabitation — Georgian law uses the wording “a de facto marriage or a formally registered marriage”, clinics accept different forms, and this must be confirmed in writing in advance
• Hold the remote consultation and submit every value: AMH, FSH/LH/E2, antral follicle count on transvaginal ultrasound, semen analysis, infectious-disease screening, thyroid function
• Obtain two written quotes, with medication and without, and confirm the definition of “three attempts” if a package offers it
• Require the clinic’s operating licence number (issued by the Legal Entity Service) and check that the licensed entity matches the address you will actually attend
• If donor eggs are involved: confirm in writing the donor-matching timeframe and the scope of donor-information reporting (in Georgia that information is not confidential by law)
• If surrogacy is involved: confirm in writing the notarisation arrangements for the agreement and which party issues the clinic’s “voluntariness” confirmation — it is a precondition of birth registration
• Ask it out plainly: same-sex couples and non-medical sex selection are both unavailable in Georgia

Six to four weeks out

• Check your passport validity and confirm 30 days per entry is enough; anything over 30 days needs a visa obtained before departure
• Put the cumulative stay inside the 180-day window into your scheduling sheet
• Buy travel medical and accident insurance with a sum insured of at least 30,000 lari, and require the insurer to confirm in writing that assisted-reproduction-related complications, including OHSS, are within cover
• Book a free-cancellation hotel room; get the clinic’s cancellation charges for a called-off retrieval in writing
• Confirm with the clinic which language communication runs in, who provides medical interpretation, and who pays for it
• If your plan includes birth registration and a travel document: confirm the document checklist and the number of in-person visits with the Chinese Embassy in Georgia, in writing

Two weeks out

• Confirm with the clinic the trigger time (Tbilisi is four hours behind Beijing, all year), the fasting requirement on retrieval day, and the exact address to report to
• Time the accommodation-to-clinic commute for real and log a backup route; if you need wheelchair or mobility assistance, confirm it with the clinic and with the metro operator in advance
• Confirm the clinic’s accepted payment methods (euro, dollar or lari, and whether it takes cards) — do not assume a Chinese wallet works
• Have cash or a TBC bank card ready (the embassy’s consular fees take only those two, and only on site)
• Check whether you are carrying an e-cigarette — import has been prohibited since 1 September 2026

Carry-on bag on travel day (nothing here in checked luggage)

• Original prescriptions and medicines in their original packaging, if you genuinely must carry them
• Paper copies of every test report, plus a cloud backup
• Your insurance policy in English or Russian, open to the sum-insured page (for arrival checks)
• Accommodation confirmation and address
• Notarised copies of the surrogacy agreement or donation consents, where applicable
• Return tickets for both legs
• The clinic’s emergency number, Georgia’s emergency line 112, and China’s global consular protection hotline +86-10-12308

Georgian fertility clinics we profile

The Georgia clinics published on this site are listed below. Click any card for the full profile — physicians, services, cost notes, address and booking:

Five further Tbilisi institutions are recorded in this site’s database but have no published profile page: Gagua Clinic, GGRC Clinic, Innova Medical Center, Silk Medical and Zhordania Clinic. Their language lists and package structures are cited in the language and payment section and in the cost section above, and no links are placed here because they would point at pages that do not exist. All Georgia institutions are in the Georgia clinic directory.

To compare clinics systematically, read How to choose an IVF clinic and What is a fertility clinic. For the medical and legal premises of the donor-egg route, see Donor egg IVF guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do Chinese passport holders need a visa for IVF in Georgia?

No — you travel under the Agreement between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of Georgia on Mutual Visa Exemption for Holders of Ordinary Passports, signed 10 April 2024 (embassy announcement) and effective from 00:00 Beijing time on 28 May 2024: no more than 30 days per stay, and no more than 90 days cumulative in any 180 days (embassy note on the agreement). The agreement does not limit the purpose of visa-free travel to tourism, so receiving treatment does not breach the exemption. But the same note states that a stay exceeding 30 days requires the relevant visa to be applied for before entry — that is the line a Georgia itinerary is most likely to trip over.

Q: What extra insurance is required to enter Georgia from 2026?

Travel medical and accident insurance with a sum insured of at least 30,000 lari, and from 1 January 2026 it is a condition of entry (embassy notice of 29 December 2025, under Georgia’s Tourism Act). You must present documentation containing the necessary clauses on arrival. Two traps: ① this site could not retrieve any official text on the penalty for arriving uninsured; ② 30,000 lari is a minimum sum insured, not a sign that your IVF complications are covered — most travel policies list assisted reproduction and pregnancy-related items as exclusions, so require written confirmation from the insurer.

Q: Thirty days is not enough. Can I extend where I am?

You can extend by 30 days, but do not make it the plan. The Georgian Foreign Ministry’s position is that visa-free entrants may apply to the competent territorial body for a further 30 days (consular issues page); where that is filed, what it requires, and how often it may be granted are not available in verbatim official text, so this site cannot promise you the extension. The costs side is clear enough: an overstay is fined 60–120 lari, an overstay of 10 days to 2 years can bring a ban on entry of one month to one year, an overstay beyond two years a two-year ban, and anyone ordered to leave must depart at their own expense (articles 114¹ and 114² of the Public Law Code). If your plan needs more than 30 continuous days, get the e-visa at evisa.gov.ge before you fly.

Q: Can a single woman have IVF in Georgia?

The law does not expressly forbid it, but the sources of law contradict each other, so it is not an enforceable right. Article 7(4) of the 1997 Act on Reproductive Health, Family Planning and Assisted Reproductive Technologies states that “an infertile woman, as well as a woman without a male partner” may carry a pregnancy created by IVF, whereas article 10 of the 2016 Ministerial Order No. 129 words the IVF indication as “women and men in a registered marriage or a de facto marriage” (gazette text). This site found no official interpretation either way. The workable approach: require the clinic to write its acceptance of single patients into the treatment plan. Same-sex couples, by contrast, have no legal basis at all.

Q: Does Georgia allow donor eggs, and are donors anonymous?

Donation is lawful, compensation is permitted, and Georgia is not an anonymous regime. Article 11(3) of the 1997 Act reads, verbatim, “donor data are not confidential”, and article 11(4) requires donor information to be reported to the birth-registration authority; article 7(3) prohibits paying a donor any fees related to a pregnancy. Donor eligibility is age 25–35, at least one child of her own, and medical plus psychological screening (article 14 of Order No. 129). The other thing you must know: Georgia operates no sperm, egg or embryo banks, so donor eggs are matched case by case and the schedule is set by the donor. Medical and cost premises: Donor egg IVF guide.

Q: For a child born through surrogacy in Georgia, whose name is on the birth certificate?

The intended parents’. Article 143(5) of the Civil Code provides that a child born through surrogacy is registered as the legal child of the commissioning parents (or the single woman), and Georgia’s Public Service Development Agency’s official service page adds that a court order is normally not required — only if the surrogate refuses consent after the birth. Registration is free, takes 10 working days, or 3 expedited, and the requirements are a document from the medical institution confirming the fact of gestational surrogacy, a written agreement that has been notarised and confirmed by clinic personnel as to the surrogate’s voluntariness, and both parties’ passports (PSC official page).

Q: How does the child get back to China — a passport or a travel document?

In most cases a travel document, and you must attend the embassy in person. Georgia does not apply birthright citizenship: a newborn whose parents are both foreigners does not acquire Georgian nationality, and China determines the child’s status case by case. Three published positions from the embassy in Tbilisi: ① Chinese citizens under 16 born in Georgia applying for a passport or travel document for the first time must submit materials and book an appointment through the “China Consular” app (notice of 18 July 2025); ② newborn applications cannot be completed online — attendance is required for on-site photo and fingerprint capture, and fees are taken only in cash or on a TBC card (FAQ of 29 May 2025); ③ where only one parent is recorded because of single parenthood or surrogacy, enter “none” for the other and upload an explanatory statement. On whether a DNA parentage test is demanded, the Tbilisi mission publishes nothing specific — this site found only two Russian-mission documents from 2017 and 2018 requiring such tests uniformly, which are a neighbouring post’s practice and cannot be treated as the standard applied in Tbilisi. Confirm with the embassy in writing before you fly.

Q: How should I question a Georgia clinic about success rates?

Ask three things: what the denominator is, whether it is stratified by age, and whether it can be attributed to the clinic. Georgia’s National Statistics Office began publishing ART statistics in December 2024 (2023: 17 clinics, 4,154 procedures, 22,970 oocytes, 1,052 transfers; 562 live births in 2022), but the release carries no age-stratified pregnancy or live-birth rates, no clinic-level data, and no statement of the denominator basis. Any percentage you get by dividing 562 by 1,052 is therefore a misuse — different years, different statistical objects. The law requires clinics to file statistical reports with the Ministry of Health, yet no ART data appears in the ministry’s published reports. Every success rate you are shown in Tbilisi is a clinic’s account of itself. Methodology: How to read IVF success-rate data.

Q: What does one IVF cycle actually cost in Georgia?

This site can give one verifiable figure: €2,500–€4,500 per cycle (IN VITRO CLINIC / LeaderMed’s own FAQ wording, verified on our site 26 August 2026). The other six institutions publish no tariff; GGRC publishes a package structure (standard with three attempts / advanced guarantee / advanced Plus with unlimited attempts) without amounts. On the surrogacy path, this site’s published framing is about $40,000–$70,000 all-inclusive (see the complete guide to IVF and surrogacy and Countries where surrogacy is legal). This article converts no currency — the October 2026 lari reference rates could not be retrieved from the National Bank’s page — so settle at your bank’s rate.

Q: Are there direct flights from China to Georgia?

Yes, but the schedules exist in two official versions. China Southern’s Tbilisi flight-information page lists CZ6039 Urumqi 20:15 → Tbilisi 21:45, operating Sunday, Tuesday and Friday, with the return arriving in Urumqi the next morning; while a civil aviation report of 20 March 2026 says the 2026 summer-autumn season plans to increase the Urumqi–Tbilisi route to one flight daily. The two do not agree, and the winter-spring season switched over at the end of October, so treat the live booking display as the answer. Other Chinese cities connect through Istanbul, Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi or Moscow — the main international connection markets named on Tbilisi airport’s homepage.

Q: Do Tbilisi clinics offer Chinese-language service?

Do not assume it does. Of the seven Georgia institutions on this site’s database, only two have Chinese recorded in their language lists (LeaderMed and Silk Medical); the other five are Georgian, English and Russian. GGRC, Innova and Vita Nova are tagged with “translation services” but with no languages specified. More to the point: when this site re-checked the clinics’ own websites on 28 October 2026, Silk’s English site offered only “24/7 English-speaking coordinators” and Gagua’s listed only English and Georgian — narrower than our records. Article 19 of Georgia’s Patient Rights Act requires institutions to “consider the patient’s capacity to understand”, but does not require interpretation. “There are many Chinese residents in Tbilisi” is not the same as “the clinic has Chinese” — before signing, get written confirmation of the language of communication, who provides medical interpretation, and who pays.

Q: Can I bring my own stimulation injections from home?

This site does not recommend it, and there is no compliance allowance we can quote. Georgia’s medicine rules sit in the Medicines Act rather than on a customs page: prescription medicines are dispensed in pharmacies against a prescription, and import permits for narcotics, psychotropic substances and precursor chemicals are issued by the Ministry of Health (municipal English page, Medicines section). This site could not retrieve verbatim day or quantity limits for personal-use medication, nor the prescription classification of gonadotropins in Georgia, from either the Revenue Service or the legislative gazette. The more practical argument: stimulation doses are adjusted during monitoring, and only local dispensing puts each adjustment into your medical record. Medication detail: IVF medications explained.

Q: Can Georgia select the sex of an embryo?

No, unless there is a medical reason. Article 7(3) of the 1997 Act already prohibited sex selection of the foetus (except to avoid hereditary disease), and the amendment of 24 June 2025 tightened it further: from 1 September 2025, non-medical embryo sex selection is prohibited. Technical boundaries: Preimplantation genetic testing guide.

Q: Is Georgia cheap because the regulation is loose?

“Loose” needs splitting into two halves. The tightening half: operating licences are issued by the Legal Entity Service of the Ministry of Economy under the Licensing Act, article 15 of the 1997 Act requires clinic inspections at least every three years, article 175 of the Code of Administrative Offences as amended in 2025 sets 1,500 lari on individuals and 3,000 lari on institutions for breaching ART procedure rules, and the Ministry of Health can suspend or revoke a licence under article 21 of the Licensing Act. The laissez-faire half: there is no dedicated ART regulator, there is no mandatory reporting of treatment outcomes, and whether the industry body ReproGEO publishes a member roster could not be verified. Push your requirements onto paper: the clinic’s licence number, the actual wording of the consent forms, quotes both with and without medication, and the validity date on each quote.

Closing thoughts

Georgia is the strongest legal hand and the weakest price hand in this series. What it offers is unavailable elsewhere on our list: article 143(5) of the Civil Code registers the intended parents as the legal parents of a child born through surrogacy, and the Public Service Development Agency’s official page states that this normally needs no court order, is free, and takes 10 working days, or 3 expedited; donor eggs are a permitted activity, with donor eligibility (25–35, at least one child of her own, medical and psychological screening) written into a 2016 ministerial order; and article 7(4) of the 1997 Act even names “a woman without a male partner” among those who may carry a pregnancy created by IVF. Neither Thailand nor Malaysia gives you all three of those things.

But the price side is almost entirely blank. Of the seven Tbilisi institutions in this site’s database, one leaves a verifiable cycle price on its website (€2,500–€4,500 per cycle, verified on our site 26 August 2026), one publishes a three-tier package structure with no amounts, and one has had a domain that has not resolved since July 2026. Every quote you get in Georgia is asked for, not looked up — the exact inverse of the Thailand guide, where ten clinics publish tariffs and you can assemble the bill from home.

So the correct way to use Georgia is to work backwards from the legal documents, not to sort destinations by price.

• If you need donor eggs, third-party assisted reproduction, or treatment as a single woman — Georgia is the only destination in this series with all of that in enacted law, and belongs in your first round of consultations. But ask two separate questions: “can the treatment be done” and “can the child be brought back to China”. China’s Administrative Measures on Human Assisted Reproductive Technology state expressly that medical institutions and personnel shall not perform surrogacy techniques of any form, and the Chinese Embassy in Georgia’s newborn document service requires in-person capture of photograph and fingerprints, with online completion still not opened. Both rule sets hold at once, and no bilateral agreement says a word about the stretch in between. That uncertainty is the largest cost in a Georgia plan — not the cheapest line in its table.
• If you only need self-egg IVF or ICSI and want the budget settled before departure — Georgia should not be your first choice. Two legs of roughly 15–22 days do fit inside the 30-day entry, but “one of seven clinics publishes a price” means you cannot compare destinations without asking clinic by clinic.
• If you need legal parentage and usable cross-border documents at the same time — the intended parents can be registered directly on the birth certificate, and Georgia is a party to the Apostille Convention (in force on the Chinese side since 1 July 2023), so public documents between Georgia and China travel by apostille rather than consular legalisation. That chain is currently unique in this series. But two schedule inputs — how long a PGT-A report takes, and how long case-by-case donor matching takes, given that Georgia operates no sperm, egg or embryo banks — were not available from any clinic’s official pages, so the timeline cannot be built by inference.

Four things this site wants to say plainly:

1. The 30-day visa-free entry is a hard boundary, not a buffer. No more than 30 days per entry and 90 days cumulative in any 180, and the embassy’s note on the agreement states that a stay exceeding 30 days requires the relevant visa applied for before entry. The Foreign Ministry’s “a further 30 days may be applied for” is not a plan — the delivery → birth registration → apostille → travel-document stretch on the surrogacy path is the segment most needing an e-visa in hand before departure (evisa.gov.ge), not improvised in Tbilisi.
2. From 1 January 2026, travel medical and accident insurance with a sum insured of at least 30,000 lari is a condition of entry (embassy notice of 29 December 2025, under Georgia’s Tourism Act). A minimum sum insured is not the same as IVF complications being in cover: most travel policies exclude assisted reproduction and pregnancy-related items, and this site could not retrieve any penalty text for arriving uninsured. Get written confirmation from the insurer before you pay, and carry the policy wording with your travel documents.
3. The phrase “surrogacy is legal” leaves out article 10. Article 10 of the 1997 Act prohibits seeking commercial profit from gestational surrogacy, and prohibits medical institutions from running commercially-motivated gestational-surrogacy programmes for foreigners or stateless persons — while the $40,000–$70,000 all-inclusive figures this site publishes for Georgia are market quote framings. The tension between the two must be turned into a written answer before you sign. The question is not “do you do surrogacy” but “under which article does my arrangement fall, how is the agreement executed, and who issues the voluntariness confirmation”.
4. Every success rate in Georgia is a clinic’s account of itself. The National Statistics Office has published IVF clinic statistics since December 2024 (17 clinics and 4,154 procedures in 2023, 22,970 oocytes, 1,052 transfers, 562 live births in 2022), but there are no age-stratified pregnancy or live-birth rates, no clinic-level data, and no statement of the denominator basis — any percentage produced by dividing 562 by 1,052 misuses the data across years and across statistical objects. Clinics must file statistical reports with the Ministry of Health under the 1997 Act, yet no ART data could be found in the ministry’s published reports on this pass.

Order of operations: first check, against the law section, whether your status and your needs sit inside what the statute permits — above all the wording “a de facto marriage or a formally registered marriage”, article 10’s ban on profit from surrogacy, and the contradiction between the 1997 Act and the 2016 ministerial order on single women. Then use the three questions in the cost section to force the quote into two versions, with and without medication, with a validity date written on it. Then match your days on the ground against the visa-free ceiling in the timeline section. Only then do the airport, the neighbourhood and the month matter. Georgia is the least suitable destination in this series for “book the flight first, ask the clinic later”.

One further note: after this round of primary verification, Georgia’s legal and language positions disagree with two articles already published on this site in three places. Under a report-only rule, each is listed at the end of the law section above, for readers to weigh and re-check themselves.

*Last updated: 28 October 2026. Entry and visa positions rest on the Chinese Embassy in Georgia’s announcement of 10 April 2024 on the signing of the China–Georgia mutual visa exemption agreement and its note on that agreement (effective 28 May 2024; no more than 30 days per stay; no more than 90 days cumulative in any 180; a visa required before entry for any stay over 30 days), the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs consular issues page (a further 30 days may be applied for by visa-free entrants), the FAQ pages at evisa.gov.ge (e-visa and the 96-hour visa-free transit), the embassy notice of 29 December 2025 on mandatory travel medical and accident insurance of at least 30,000 lari under Georgia’s Tourism Act, the embassy’s overseas safety consular reminder of 24 June 2025 (200 lari fine for unlawful residence; a residence permit is required beyond 90 days), and the gazette transcript of articles 114¹ and 114² of Georgia’s Public Law Code (overstay fines of 60–120 lari; entry bans of one month to one year for overstays of 10 days to two years and of two years beyond that; removal at the foreigner’s own expense). Aviation comes from China Southern Airlines’ Tbilisi flight information page (CZ6039 departing Urumqi 20:15, 5 hours 30 minutes, Sunday/Tuesday/Friday; CZ6040 return times) and the Civil Aviation Resource Net report of 20 March 2026, “2026 summer-autumn season: China Southern plans 101 routes in Xinjiang” (the “increase Urumqi–Tbilisi to daily” wording being a summer-autumn season plan); the Shanghai–Tbilisi direct service is available only through the Shanghai municipal government English portal notice of 30 April 2026 relaying China Daily (service from 15 July 2026, Wednesday/Friday/Sunday, no flight number or aircraft type), with no primary airport or carrier release obtained, so it is handled here as a second-hand relay; Tbilisi airport’s homepage names Moscow, Istanbul, Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi as its main international connection markets but publishes no route-by-route timetable. Airport transfers come from the airport’s official bus page (route 337 Airport–city centre–Airport, “Timetable : 06:59 | 22:59”, the fare ladder 1/3/20/40/100/150/250 lari with every tier except the 90-minute one restricted to subscription cards, and the note that app or cash payment forfeits the 90-minute unlimited package) and its official taxi page (24-hour desk, 40 lari fixed to the city centre, 50 lari to suburban areas, 20–30 minutes); the municipality’s press release of 9 January 2026 (taxi tariff from 10 January 2026: 4 lari flagfall, 1.40 lari per kilometre, 0.40 lari per minute waiting, 0.50 lari per large luggage item, 5 lari per animal trip); the municipality’s Mobility page (metro 1 lari, land transport 0.5 lari, the free-transfer announcement of 13 September 2019, and three cable-car fares including Rike–Narikala at 10 lari return); the SaaS card operator’s tariff page (2 lari deposit); the municipality’s announcement of 25 March 2021 (only two metro stations have accessible lifts, the retrofit not yet covering all 20 stations); the announcement of 28 February 2025 (maximum fare caps on Bolt and Yandex Go from 1 March 2025, with fines above the cap); the municipality’s English tourism pages (Kutaisi airport more than 230 kilometres from Tbilisi; metro entrance stairs and advance telephone contact for wheelchair users); and Kutaisi airport’s transport sub-pages, whose fare fields are empty and from which no amount is quoted. Accommodation rests on the municipal English tourism page’s hotel/hostel/guesthouse/apartment classification (no price ranges published); the two penalty figures appearing in that section (30,000 lari and 300 euros) come from different pages by the same author and are neither merged nor adopted as a conclusion. *

*Climate rests on the World Weather Information Service city page for Tbilisi, sourced to Georgia’s Hydrometeorological Service (1961–1990 monthly normals), alongside the municipality’s own climate page (annual mean 12.7 °C, January 0.9 °C, July 24.4 °C, 560 mm annual precipitation, absolute maximum 40 °C) and its geography page (altitude 380–600 metres); warning channels come from the National Environmental Agency’s meteo.gov.ge warnings page, nea.gov.ge, the meteorological information line 1501, the unified emergency number 112 (embassy reminder of 25 April 2025) and the *9898 tourism hotline in the footer of georgia.travel; winter road restrictions come from the Ministry of Internal Affairs Roads Department agency page, with the January 2026 restriction notices relayed by Georgian-language media (secondary). Medication rests on the Medicines Act as described in the “Medicines” section of the municipality’s English tourism page (prescription medicines dispensed against a prescription; import, export and transit permits for narcotics, psychotropic substances and precursor chemicals issued by the Ministry of Health). Telephony, payment and time zone come from Magti (magticom.ge), Cellfi (cellfi.ge) and Silknet (silknethub.ge), Visa’s official card-acceptance page (Georgia listed as a usable market), the National Bank of Georgia (lari GEL, 1 lari = 100 tetri — no October 2026 rate table retrieved), the embassy FAQ of 29 May 2025 (fees payable on site in cash or on a TBC card only), and the municipality’s English page stating that daylight saving was abolished from the last Sunday of June 1996 and UTC+04:00 kept year-round. *

*Legal and regulatory material rests on the matsne.gov.ge gazette for the 1997 Act on Reproductive Health, Family Planning and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (article 7 on eligible parties and prohibitions, article 10 on the ban on commercial profit, article 11 on donor information not being confidential and on compensation limits, article 15 on inspections at least every three years), the 2016 Ministerial Order No. 129 (article 10 on indications, article 13 on carrier conditions, article 14 on egg-donor eligibility), articles 141–144 of the Civil Code (article 143(5) on registering the commissioning parents, 143(6) on pre-birth judicial enforcement), the amendment of 24 June 2025 (non-medical embryo sex selection prohibited from 1 September 2025; article 13¹ of the Health Rights Act setting an ART age floor of 18), the Licensing and Register of Licences Act and the Legal Entity Service page of the Ministry of Economy, and article 175 of the Code of Administrative Offences as amended on 3 July 2025 (1,500 lari individuals, 3,000 lari institutions); the industry body ReproGEO’s own site. Law-firm readings (georgialaw.com pages of 12 March 2024, 20 June 2026, 2 July 2026, 14 September 2026 and 23 September 2026) and relays in Georgian-language media are flagged as secondary wherever they are used and must not be read as statutory text. Birth registration comes from the Public Service Development Agency’s official service page at psc.gov.ge (free; 10 working days standard, 3 expedited; normally no court order; requirements including a medical institution’s confirmation of the fact of gestational surrogacy and a written, notarised agreement with the clinic’s confirmation of the surrogate’s voluntariness); the apostille from the Hague Conference convention status table (the Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents in force for Georgia from 14 April 2007 and for China from 1 July 2023); travel documents and newborn paperwork from the embassy FAQ of 29 May 2025 (no online completion for newborns; on-site photo and fingerprint capture; fees by cash or TBC card only), the notice of 18 July 2025 (first applications by Chinese citizens under 16 born in Georgia must be filed and booked through the “China Consular” app), and its published wording that where only one parent is recorded because of single parenthood or surrogacy the other is entered as “none” with an explanatory statement uploaded. The DNA parentage test requirement is available only through two Chinese Embassy in Russia documents of 2017 and 2018, which are a neighbouring mission’s practice and are not treated as the standard applied in Tbilisi. On the Chinese side: the Administrative Measures on Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (Ministry of Health Order No. 14, in force 1 August 2001), article 3(2) and article 22, and the revision of 29 December 2015, article 14 and article 31 (fines raised to 10,000–30,000 yuan). Success-rate material rests on the National Statistics Office of Georgia’s press releases from December 2024 onward (2023: 17 clinics, 4,154 procedures, 22,970 oocytes, 1,052 transfers; 562 live births in 2022) and on the Ministry of Health’s published report pages, from which no ART data could be retrieved on this pass. *

*Costs come from IN VITRO CLINIC (LeaderMed)‘s official FAQ page (€2,500–€4,500 per cycle, collected for our database on 26 August 2026) and GGRC’s package-structure page (standard with three attempts / advanced guarantee / advanced Plus with unlimited attempts, none with amounts); surrogacy magnitudes quote this site’s published complete guide to IVF and surrogacy and Countries where surrogacy is legal in 2026. All amounts throughout keep their original currency, with no conversion. *

The following could not be verified on this pass and are flagged wherever they appear: the current actual frequency and fares of the Urumqi and Shanghai routes; through-fares and minimum connection times from other Chinese cities; the body of Tbilisi airport’s former FAQ page (its “route 37, 07:00–21:00” and “airport bus 12:00–00:00” cannot be cross-checked; the page returned 404 on 28 October 2026); whether the 40 lari airport fixed rate includes luggage or night surcharges; Kutaisi airport transfer costs; Georgia’s passenger rail timetable; metro and network-wide bus first and last services; the current progress of the metro accessibility retrofit; marshrutka fares and boarding rules; where travel cards are bought and topped up; the issuing channels for day, week and month subscription tickets; e-scooter rules; the criterion separating “occasional letting of your own home” from “operating a short let”, and the legal basis of the two penalty figures; accommodation price ranges; the grading thresholds for heat, fire-risk and air-quality warnings; the specific sections, vehicle types and effective dates of winter road restrictions; Tbilisi’s absolute minimum temperature on the municipal page (the minus sign is lost in rendering and the figure is not used); the official position on drinking-water safety; day and quantity limits for medication carried for personal use; the prescription classification and import-registration status of gonadotropins in Georgia; declaration thresholds and duty-free allowances for medication; the border treatment of cannabis and CBD products; tourist SIM and eSIM plan prices; real-name registration rules for prepaid SIMs on a foreign passport; the penalty for failing to hold the mandatory insurance and prevailing premium levels; where the stay extension is filed, with what documents and at what fee; whether ReproGEO publishes a member roster; a public path to verify a clinic’s ART licence; whether age-stratified success rates or clinic-level outcome data exist anywhere; the donor-matching timeframe; PGT-A reporting days; apostille processing time and fees; travel-document and passport fees; the embassy’s document checklist, review time and parentage-test practice for children born through surrogacy; Georgian exit requirements for proof of parentage; China’s public position on household registration for children born abroad through surrogacy; whether parents’ names may be registered in pinyin or Chinese characters at the intended parents’ wish; standalone interpreter and chaperone pricing; specific air and accommodation prices; and the National Bank’s official lari rates against the euro and the dollar. Where these gaps sit, the clinic’s written explanation and the live official page govern.

Medical disclaimer: this guide is reference material for planning care and travel. It is not medical advice, a diagnosis or a treatment recommendation, and it is not an endorsement of or assessment of any clinic. Stimulation protocols, medication, surgery and transfer strategy must be decided for you by a licensed reproductive medicine specialist working from your own case. The legal material here — on Georgia’s 1997 Act on Reproductive Health, Family Planning and Assisted Reproductive Technologies, the 2016 Ministerial Order No. 129, articles 141–144 of the Civil Code, the 2025 amendments, the Licensing and Register of Licences Act, the Code of Administrative Offences, articles 114¹ and 114² of the Public Law Code, the Tourism Act’s mandatory insurance requirement, the Medicines Act, the Hague apostille convention and China’s Administrative Measures on Human Assisted Reproductive Technology — is objective legal and regulatory information and is not legal advice. Several provisions are relayed from a gazette transcript or from law-firm and media secondary sources because the official originals could not be retrieved on this pass; eligibility and enforcement are decided by the competent authorities and by each clinic. In mainland China, medical institutions and medical personnel shall not perform surrogacy techniques of any form, and buying or selling gametes, zygotes or embryos is prohibited; what is described here is neutral legal information, not advice or encouragement. Entry, visa, customs and consular-document questions are governed by the live official positions of the Chinese Embassy in Georgia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia, the Public Service Development Agency of Georgia, Tbilisi airport and the competent authorities.