Drone permits in Morocco: how to film legally

Start with the bad news, because it catches almost everyone out: Morocco is one of the strictest countries in the world on drones. This is not a grey area you negotiate once you land. It is a closed framework. You come in through the procedure, or you do not come in.

What follows is that procedure as it stands in 2026, from the point of view of someone who files it before every aerial shoot. It is not legal advice, and the rules do move — always confirm the current position with the authorities before committing a budget.

Recreational flying is banned. Size makes no difference.

Recreational drone flying has been prohibited in Morocco since 2015. The ban draws no line between a seven-kilo professional rig and a 249-gram DJI Mini. Weight does not help. Location does not help. Being discreet certainly does not help.

This is the first thing foreign productions get wrong. In most of Europe, a sub-250g drone sits in a light-touch category: register online, respect a few limits, fly. That reasoning does not transfer. There is no "small drone, small rules" tier here.

The aircraft has to get into the country first

Second point, and the one that costs unprepared crews the most: a drone does not clear Moroccan customs without prior import authorisation.

Seizures on arrival are common. Depending on the airport and the officer, the aircraft is held until you leave, or confiscated. You will not resolve it at the desk, and a client letter will not help. Import approval is applied for in advance, with the aircraft's serial number, and it is rarely granted outside an identified professional context.

The practical consequence: for a foreign production, bringing your own drone is nearly always the slowest and riskiest route. Renting locally, or working with an operator whose equipment is already properly imported, removes the entire step.

The flight authorisation, and who actually decides

Civil aviation oversight sits with the National Civil Aviation Agency and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. But there is a detail most write-ups miss, and it changes how you prepare: the decision on a flight request is taken at Wilaya level — the provincial prefecture.

Which means this is not one uniform national process. It is a local file, assessed locally, at the pace and with the habits of that province. Shooting in Rabat, Casablanca and Agadir in the same week is not one authorisation. It is three.

Other services weigh in depending on the location and nature of the flight — the Royal Gendarmerie in particular, and airport authorities as soon as you approach controlled airspace.

Broadly, what you will be asked for:

• A recognised pilot, with their qualification, named for the mission
• Valid aeronautical liability insurance
• Aircraft identification, with serial number and proof of lawful import
• The flight plan: dates, times, precise coordinates, altitudes, ground perimeter
• The purpose of the shoot, and who it is for

The filming permit everybody forgets

Here is the most expensive mistake, and the most common one. The right to put the aircraft in the air is not the right to record what it sees.

As soon as footage is captured for release — film, commercial, music video, documentary, branded content, even a vertical cut for social — you also need authorisation from the Moroccan Cinematographic Centre (CCM). It runs in parallel to the aviation file, with its own paperwork and its own clock.

A crew that has its flight authorisation and discovers the night before that the CCM approval is missing does not shoot. I have watched it happen. The drone was airborne, entirely legally, and the cards came back empty.

Timelines, honestly

For a complete, clean file over an unrestricted area: 10 to 20 working days.

That assumes nothing is missing. In practice a file usually comes back once for a badly completed item, and the clock restarts. And it stretches significantly as soon as the shoot touches:

• an airport perimeter or controlled airspace
• a military site, a barracks, a border zone
• an official building or a protected residence
• a large public gathering
• night flying

My working rule: three weeks minimum between project sign-off and first take-off, five if there is night work, crowds, or more than one city. A client calling on Monday to shoot on Friday will not get legal aerial footage, and nobody should promise them otherwise.

What this does to your budget

Stop thinking of it as "drone hire". The real cost of a legal aerial shot in Morocco breaks down like this:

1. The file — assembling it, chasing it, handling the back-and-forth. That is human time, not equipment.
2. Pilot and insurance — a live qualification and a current policy, not a hobby.
3. The flight itself — often the shortest part of the whole operation.
4. The lead time — the invisible cost. A campaign that has to ship in ten days cannot include a legal aerial shot unless the file is already moving.

A quote that ignores the first three lines is not describing a legal shoot. It is describing a risk that somebody will eventually carry.

The sensible shortcut

For a brand, an agency or a foreign production, the short path is nearly always the same: work with a local operator who is already compliant.

The foundation — properly imported equipment, a qualified pilot, insurance, a history of accepted files — already exists and does not need rebuilding. Your shoot still needs its own authorisation, which remains mandatory, but it starts from a credible file rather than from zero.

That is what we do on every aerial project. We have flown at night over Rabat, and live above crowds of more than thirty-five thousand people for a worldwide broadcast — in both cases with the corresponding authorisations, obtained beforehand, not hoped for afterwards.

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Planning something in Morocco that needs aerial footage? Let's talk — and let's talk early, because the administrative calendar is the real constraint, not the weather.

To see what the result looks like: our drone and aerial work, and the FOX World Cup operation, shot live across two cities.