Vietnam Pre-Arrival Declaration 2026
The free QR form you file before you land, and how it fits a trip to Haiphong
Somewhere between booking the flight and standing at the immigration counter, Vietnam added a step. The pre-arrival declaration is a short online form run by the Immigration Department, and it wants your passport details, your flight number and the address where you will sleep in Vietnam. File it, and the system emails back a QR code. Show the QR code at the counter and you skip the paper card. Skip the whole thing and you will be typing it into your phone in the arrivals hall at Noi Bai while the queue you were hoping to beat moves past you.
The reason this page exists on a Haiphong site is simple. Cat Bi, the city's own airport, has a thin international network, mostly Seoul and a handful of mainland Chinese cities, so almost everyone heading to Haiphong for more than a short visit comes in through Noi Bai in Hanoi and drives down. Noi Bai went onto the pre-arrival system on 8 June 2026. That means the form has to be dealt with before the drive, not after it. It is free, it takes about three minutes, and it does not replace your visa.
The short version
Officially the portal calls it pre-arrival information, and the Vietnamese name on the site is PAI. Calling it a digital arrival card is common enough in English, though it is not a card and nothing physical is issued. You finish the form, you get a file number and a QR code, and the border police can pull your details before you reach the desk.
The pilot started at Tan Son Nhat in Ho Chi Minh City on 15 April 2026. In the first fortnight the department counted 161,596 declarations and 119,854 successful submissions, which is a useful number to remember: roughly a quarter of the people who tried it got something wrong first time. Most of those failures were flight numbers that did not match the airline's booking record.
Which airports, and since when
It arrived airport by airport rather than nationwide on one date, which is why older guides disagree with each other. The order as it was announced and reported:
- Tan Son Nhat (SGN), Ho Chi Minh City: 15 April 2026, the original pilot.
- Phu Quoc (PQC): 1 June 2026.
- Noi Bai (HAN), Hanoi: 8 June 2026. This is the one that matters here.
- Da Nang (DAD): 15 June 2026.
- Cam Ranh (CXR), for Nha Trang: June 2026.
On 17 June 2026 the US embassy in Hanoi told American travellers that Vietnam was extending the declaration to all airports in the country for any international passenger who does not hold a Vietnamese passport. Through July the remaining international airports were folded in, so the practical advice now is to treat it as a national requirement rather than checking a list.
That includes Haiphong's own airport. Cat Bi (HPH) sits about five kilometres from the city centre and runs international services on a limited set of routes, mostly Seoul Incheon and mainland Chinese cities such as Guangzhou, Kunming, Nanning and Shenzhen. If you land on one of those, the same form applies and there is no reason to gamble on being waved through.
Filling it in, step by step
Everything happens at prearrival.immigration.gov.vn. Have your passport and your flight booking on the desk next to you before you start, because the form punishes guesswork.
- Open the portal. Tap Create and Submit Pre-arrival Information and clear the CAPTCHA. There is no account, no password and no payment step.
- Set the arrival date and port of entry. The window is three days. If your flight lands in Hanoi on the 14th, the earliest the system will take is the evening of the 11th. Filing a fortnight out does not work, and neither does filing at the gate queue with no signal.
- Type your name as the passport shows it. Capitals, no accents. A Vietnamese machine reader is comparing characters, and an accented letter or a middle name left out is enough to make the record fail to match.
- Get the flight number right. It has to agree with the airline's booking record. This is the single most common reason a submission is rejected, and the department has published the failure rate to prove it.
The details that sink submissions
Accommodation means where you are actually sleeping, not a friend's address you half remember and not the office. If you land in Hanoi and go straight down to Haiphong, the answer is the Haiphong hotel or apartment, with the street and ward spelled the way the booking spells it. On a re-entry later, whatever address you give should match the booking you hold. Decree 286/2026/ND-CP, in force since 15 September 2026, widened the sharing of immigration data across ministries and provincial people's committees and pushed sponsors to coordinate temporary residence declarations, so a tidy, consistent address trail is worth having.
Then the email. The portal sends a six digit code to the address you entered, and you have to type it back to validate the declaration. Use an address you can open on your phone abroad, because a work address behind a corporate login will strand you. If it does not arrive, check the spam folder before you start over.
One form covers one traveller. Groups of friends travelling together each file their own, though the portal will let you fill in a relative's or a partner's form in the same sitting. The email confirmation comes with a file number and a QR code, and the portal also carries a lookup function if you need to update a declaration after you have filed it. Save a screenshot and print a copy. Phones die, and a printout weighs nothing.
Noi Bai, then the drive down
Haiphong is about 120 km from Noi Bai, and the drive on the Hanoi-Haiphong expressway takes two to two and a half hours depending on how the city end behaves. So the arrival day looks like this: land in Hanoi, show the QR code at the counter, collect the bag, get in the car, and be in Haiphong by mid-afternoon. The declaration is the only part of that you can finish before you leave home. Do it the night before the flight rather than in the taxi to the airport.
Two practical notes for people who land and then want to keep moving. First, if a Haiphong visa run is the point of the trip, the pre-arrival QR is the wrong form to be thinking about. The run itself exits and re-enters at the Huu Nghi land gate in Lang Son, and the paperwork that matters there is your 90-day e-visa, which has to be approved before you travel. The Huu Nghi page walks through the gate step by step, and if the date on your current stamp is already behind you, start with the overstay page instead, because a new visa cannot be processed while an overstay file is open.
Second, if your nationality cannot enter China without a visa, a run from here is not a same-day affair. The cost page prices both the 3.6M VND private car and the failed-run version of the trip, and the honest summary is that Na Meo or Lao Bao need an overnight. Arrivals into Noi Bai are covered in more detail on hanoivisarun.com, since that site owns the Hanoi end of the corridor, and the visa rules themselves sit on namvisa.com.
Does a Huu Nghi visa run need the QR code?
Not today. When the department launched the system it said the next phase would cover other international airports and that it would work with the relevant agencies on deploying it at road border gates "according to actual conditions". By October 2026 the rollout had reached every major airport and the road gates were still in the study column. So a Haiphong visa run that exits and re-enters at Huu Nghi in Lang Son has not been asked for a pre-arrival QR code.
Treat that as a snapshot, not a promise. The portal already carries fields for land and sea entry in some versions of the form, which tells you where this is heading. If you are travelling in the next few weeks, ask at the gate on the day and file the form if someone asks for it. It is free and three minutes of your time.
What a Huu Nghi run does need is the China side. Crossing at the Friendship Pass means entering China to turn around, and roughly fifty nationalities can do that visa-free for up to 30 days under a policy that runs to 31 December 2026, with the UK and Canada added on 17 February 2026. The 240-hour visa-free transit does not help on a Vietnam to China to Vietnam turnaround, because it wants an onward ticket to a third country. US passports need a visa from the Chinese consulate in Hanoi, and nothing is issued at the gate. If China is closed to your passport, the Laos-side alternatives are Na Meo in Thanh Hoa and Lao Bao in Quang Tri, both of which mean an overnight rather than a day trip.
Four things with similar names
Half the confusion around this form comes from three other documents that sound almost identical and are filed by different people at different times.
The health declaration is the closest lookalike and it is genuinely separate. Decree 165/2026/ND-CP took effect on 1 July 2026 and sits alongside the Law on Disease Prevention and Control rather than being a pandemic emergency rule. It covers entry, exit and transit at airports, land gates and seaports, applies to everyone crossing regardless of nationality or visa status, and has a seven day window instead of three. Until the Ministry of Health launches its own portal, the paper form set out in the decree is what you use, and it is handed out on arrival. The Ministry can dial the requirement up or down depending on what is circulating in the region, so it is worth a glance at the airline's travel advisory before you fly.
The temporary residence declaration is the hotel's job, not yours. Vietnamese rules put the filing duty on the accommodation, and the fine for not declaring a foreign guest runs up to 40,000,000 VND. That one matters to you indirectly: give reception your passport when you check in and make sure the stay dates they file match the ticket you are actually on. If you move mid-stay, between the city and Cat Ba or Do Son, the new place files its own declaration.
And the e-visa is a different thing again. The pre-arrival form never replaces it. If you need a visa to enter Vietnam, you still need the visa, and the $25 single entry or $50 multiple entry fee at evisa.gov.vn is unchanged by any of this. The cost page covers that fee next to the run pricing so the two numbers agree.
Where it goes wrong
- Flight number that does not match the airline booking record. This is the department's own top cause of failed submissions.
- Filed too early. The window is three days, and the form will not accept a date outside it.
- Name typed with accents or a shortened middle name. Match the passport, capitals, no diacritics.
- Email you cannot open abroad. The six digit code goes there, and no code means no QR.
- Assuming one form covers a couple. Each traveller gets their own, even when you fill them in back to back.
- Paying someone. The declaration is free on the government portal. Tourism sites that charge a handling fee for it are selling you a form you can file yourself.
One more, and it catches people who have done this trip before. Passing through the airport in transit without clearing immigration does not require the declaration. Leaving the transit area to catch a domestic connection into the country does, and so does an overnight in Hanoi before the drive down. If you are going to stand in an immigration queue, the QR belongs in your hand.
Questions we get about the declaration
What is the Vietnam pre-arrival declaration?
It is a free online form run by Vietnam's Immigration Department at prearrival.immigration.gov.vn. You enter your passport details, your flight and where you are staying, and the system emails back a QR code. You show that code at the immigration counter instead of filling in a paper arrival card by hand. It began as a pilot at Tan Son Nhat on 15 April 2026 and spread airport by airport through June.
Does it apply at Noi Bai for Haiphong?
Yes. Noi Bai in Hanoi was added on 8 June 2026, and Noi Bai is where most Haiphong-bound travellers actually land, because Cat Bi has a thin international network. File within three days of landing in Hanoi, then get in the car for the two to three hour drive down.
Do I need it for a land visa run at Huu Nghi?
As of October 2026 the system is deployed at airports, and the Ministry of Public Security has said road gates come next. Nothing was required of land arrivals at Huu Nghi when we last checked, so treat the QR as an air arrival step and ask at the gate on the day.
Is it mandatory, and does it replace a visa?
It is separate from the visa and does not replace one. Visa exempt travellers still file it, and e-visa holders still need both. Enforcement firmed up through 2026: it became compulsory at Tan Son Nhat and Phu Quoc first, and on 17 June 2026 the US embassy told American travellers the requirement was being extended to all Vietnamese airports for any passenger without a Vietnamese passport. Arriving without it means typing the form into your phone in the arrivals hall, behind everyone who did it before boarding.
Is it the same as the Vietnam health declaration?
No. Two documents, two ministries. The pre-arrival declaration belongs to the Immigration Department, applies to air arrivals, and is filed within three days of landing. The health declaration sits under Decree 165/2026/ND-CP, effective 1 July 2026, is filed within seven days, covers entry, exit and transit at every airport, land gate and seaport, and is accepted on paper. Neither is the temporary residence declaration your hotel files after check-in.
Sorting this out from Haiphong
If you are already in the city and the trip ahead of you is a run rather than an arrival, the declaration is not your problem. The thing with a deadline on it is the e-visa, and the thing with the wrong date on it is your current stamp. Send your nationality, the date on your stamp and the date you want to travel on WhatsApp and we will tell you which of the two you are dealing with, and whether Huu Nghi is even open to your passport that week.
