Men, You Can Wear Shorts in Panama. I Promise Nobody Will Arrest You.

If you have spent more than twenty minutes researching life in Panama, you have encountered it. In blog posts, in Facebook groups, in expat forums going back a decade. The warning, delivered with solemn authority: Men must wear long pants in Panama. It is the culture. It is required. Pack accordingly.

I packed accordingly. We both did. Several pairs of long pants each, carefully selected for breathability. Two pairs of shorts, included mostly out of stubbornness and a vague feeling that there would be some situation — the apartment, perhaps, or a quiet beach — where they would be permitted.

I would like to report that I arrived in Panama City and immediately saw through this received wisdom with clear eyes and a cool head. What actually happened is that I arrived at Terminal 2, walked from Immigration to the Metro entrance dragging luggage in ninety-degree heat and full humidity, and by the time I reached the platform I had sweated completely through my long pants and was conducting an internal debate about whether I was about to pass out or merely die.

The debate in my head went something like this: Will I ever be able to stand this? followed immediately by What exactly are they going to do to me if I wear shorts? followed by Why did I not ask that question before I packed.

What the Internet Gets Wrong — and What It Gets Right

By the end of our first full day, I had started paying attention. And what I noticed, on the streets of Panama City, in the Albrook Mall, on the Metro, in grocery stores, was men in shorts. Not many — maybe one in ten, perhaps fewer — but they were there. They were not being escorted from the premises. No one was pointing. No official was approaching with a pamphlet about cultural expectations.

They were just men, wearing shorts, going about their day in a country where it is extremely hot.

So I did what any reasonable person would do after a full day of unnecessary heat suffering: I started asking questions and paying closer attention for the rest of the trip.

Here is what I actually observed, and what the nuanced version of the truth turns out to be.

Where Long Pants Are Actually Required or Expected

There are genuine contexts in Panama where long pants on men are the appropriate and expected choice. They are real. They are just more specific than “Panama.”

Notice anything about this list? None of these are your Tuesday afternoon. None of these are the grocery store, the Metro, the mall, the casual restaurant, the neighborhood walk, the errand run, or roughly 90% of the hours in a day when you are simply living your life in a tropical city.

Where Shorts Are Perfectly Fine — Which Is Most Places

The actual cultural norm, as best as I can characterize it after a week of observation, is roughly this: Panamanians tend to dress somewhat more formally than Americans in equivalent situations. A Panamanian man going to the mall might wear pressed pants where an American would wear shorts. This is real. But it is a tendency, not a law, and it is a tendency that Panamanians themselves do not follow rigidly — because it is, in fact, extremely hot.

A Brief Appreciation of the Pensionado Discount on Thermal Dignity

Panama’s Pensionado visa comes with a formal list of legally mandated discounts — 20% off doctor visits, 15% off hospital bills, 10% off medications, 25% off utilities. What it does not include, but arguably should, is a 100% exemption from unsolicited advice about what foreigners must wear to avoid cultural offense in ninety-degree heat.

We are retirees. We worked for decades. We are moving to a tropical country by choice. The idea that we would spend our retirement years sweating through khakis on the Albrook Metro platform because a 2014 blog post said we had to is, with respect to that blog post, not the retirement we had in mind.

The Actual Rule, Which Is the Same Rule Everywhere

Read the room. That is it. That is the whole rule.

If you are going somewhere formal, dress formally. If you are going somewhere casual, dress for the weather, which in Panama City is hot and humid essentially every day of the year. If you are unsure whether a place is formal, err toward the pants and reassess once you arrive. This is exactly the same judgment you would apply in Miami or New Orleans or any other warm American city — you just might apply it slightly more conservatively in Panama because the cultural baseline is a notch more formal.

But sweating through long pants on the Metro because an internet forum warned you that shorts are culturally disrespectful? That forum was writing about formal occasions and the advice escaped into the general population, as internet advice tends to do, stripped of all its necessary qualifications.

The Packing Correction We Are Making for the Move

When we actually relocate — as opposed to research trip, where we were tourists playing by tourist caution levels — the wardrobe plan is different. Long pants for: the government office, the bank, the attorney, the formal dinner. Shorts for: everything else, which is most of a life.

Panama City is approximately 9 degrees north of the equator. The average daily high is in the low-to-mid 90s Fahrenheit. The humidity is substantial. These are not conditions under which a person of any age or nationality wants to be wearing more fabric than the situation requires.

The men in shorts I saw on the Metro during our April 2026 trip had figured this out. They looked comfortable. They looked like they knew something the forum posts did not. They were right.

The Actual Practical Guide, In Table Form, Because We Like Tables

One Genuine Caveat, Because We Don’t Do Brochure

The tendency toward more formal dress in Panama is real, and some older or more traditional Panamanians do notice and form impressions based on how foreigners dress. You are guests in someone else’s country and there is genuine value in erring toward respect rather than comfort when the situation is ambiguous. This is true.

It is equally true that passing out from heat exhaustion on the Metro platform does not reflect well on anyone, is a poor start to an international relocation, and is entirely avoidable if you pack sensibly and reject the idea that shorts are inherently disrespectful in a tropical country.

The goal is to be comfortable, presentable, and contextually appropriate — not to perform discomfort as proof of cultural sensitivity. Panamanians, as a general population, are warm, welcoming, and not particularly preoccupied with the leg coverage choices of visiting Americans. They have other things going on.

What We Wish Someone Had Told Us

The real advice, which nobody ever seems to lead with, is this: Panama is a tropical country where context determines appropriate dress, exactly as it does everywhere else. There are formal settings that require formal clothing. There are casual settings where shorts are fine. The proportion of your time spent in formal settings is probably 10% or less. Pack the rest of your suitcase accordingly and save yourself a day of unnecessary suffering on the Metro.

We brought several pairs of long pants and two pairs of shorts. The long pants got used for the attorney meeting and the nicer dinners. The shorts got used for approximately everything else, once we worked up the courage to ignore the forums.

The courage, it turned out, was not required. Just the shorts.