ABSTRACTThis work extends the integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA) method to latent models outside the scope of latent Gaussian models, where independent components of the latent field can have a near‐Gaussian distribution. The proposed methodology is an essential component of a bigger project that aims to extend the R package INLA in order to allow the user to add flexibility and challenge the Gaussian assumptions of some of the model components in a straightforward and intuitive way. Our approach is applied to two examples, and the results are compared with that obtained by Markov chain Monte Carlo, showing similar accuracy with only a small fraction of computational time. Implementation of the proposed extension is available in the R‐INLA package.