Volcanoes and travel insurance in Indonesia: the advice just changed

The FCDO's Indonesia advice carries a dated update: "FCDO no longer advises against all travel to volcanoes in Indonesia and will no longer advise against all travel in the event of future volcanic eruptions." It adds that it has published new information about volcanoes, "including information from the local authorities who enforce exclusion zones on a number of volcanically active sites".

Read that as a shift in who draws the line. The FCDO has stepped back from a blanket national position and pointed at the Indonesian authorities who set and enforce zones site by site.

Source: FCDO — Indonesia travel advice, warnings and insurance (updated 18 September 2026)

This is the part that is easy to miss because it looks like a safety story.

The FCDO's standing position across its advice is that travel insurance can be invalidated if you travel against FCDO advice. So while a blanket advise-against-travel warning stood over Indonesian volcanoes, a trek up one was arguably travel against advice — with whatever that implied for a claim, including for something unrelated to the volcano.

Removing the blanket warning removes that particular problem. It does not make the volcano safe, and it does not make every insurer's position identical. It changes one input into whether cover responds.

With the national warning gone, the operative boundary is local and it moves.

The FCDO notes that "local authorities may evacuate communities near an eruption, and exclusion zones can change at short notice", and advises checking with local authorities and news reports before travelling to areas prone to volcanic activity. In an eruption it directs you to follow local advice on areas to avoid, exclusion zones, and what to do if air quality is affected.

Two practical consequences. An exclusion zone you entered is a hard fact an insurer can point at, regardless of FCDO wording. And because zones change quickly, the check has to be recent — a guide's assurance from last season is not a status.

Air quality is the underrated one: ashfall affects people with respiratory conditions well outside any exclusion zone, and flight disruption reaches much further again.

Source: FCDO — Indonesia, extreme weather and natural disasters

To be clear about scope: we do not sell single-trip travel insurance, and we cannot tell you how a particular insurer will treat a particular volcano. We are an introducer for international health and life cover for residents.

What we can say is that advisory status is the thing to check, and to check it with your own insurer in writing. Pre-existing conditions are excluded and cover is governed by the Regency Assurance policy wording.