Can I fly a drone in Morocco?

I have to be completely straight with you on this one, because it's the question where wishful thinking costs people their expensive kit. Morocco heavily restricts drones, and the practical reality on the ground is that bringing one in without an official, prior authorisation is effectively prohibited. Customs officers at the airports actively look for them — including in checked luggage, which they X-ray — and they routinely confiscate drones on arrival. Travellers report their drones being taken at Casablanca, Marrakech and other airports and held, with retrieval on departure being difficult, slow or simply not happening.

There is, technically, a legal route: drone use requires authorisation, and importing one is meant to go through prior permission from the Moroccan authorities, which involves bureaucracy, paperwork and time. In practice this process is geared toward professional film productions and commercial operators with local fixers, not individual tourists wanting aerial holiday clips. I've almost never seen a regular traveller successfully obtain a permit for personal use, and even those who research it thoroughly usually conclude it isn't worth the effort and risk.

So my honest, money-saving advice is blunt: leave the drone at home. The downside risk — landing in Morocco, having your several-hundred-or-thousand-dollar drone seized at the airport, and possibly not getting it back — far outweighs the upside of a few aerial shots. I've had to console more than one guest who ignored this and arrived to watch their drone disappear into a customs locker. It is genuinely not worth it.

If aerial-style imagery is important to your project, the workarounds are real. Hire a licensed local production company or fixer who already holds the permits and can fly legally on your behalf — that's how the professional footage of Morocco you see is made. You can also buy or licence existing aerial stock of the famous locations. And for personal shots, the elevated viewpoints do a lot of the work: the Spanish Mosque hill over Chefchaouen, the Marinid Tombs over Fes, rooftop terraces over Marrakech, and the high dune crests in the desert give you sweeping, near-aerial perspectives with no drone needed.

Bottom line, and I say this to protect you: don't gamble. Drone rules in Morocco are strict, enforcement at the border is active, and the loss is real. Plan your visual trip around ground-level and viewpoint photography — Morocco is so rich for that — and skip the drone entirely unless you're a professional with a permit and a local fixer in place.