1. Why this landed in your inbox
If you have booked a flight into Da Nang, you are now expected to hand the Vietnamese immigration department your details before you land. Not at a desk, and not on a paper card in the arrivals hall. Online, within three days of arrival, with a QR code at the end of it.
The form is called Pre-Arrival Information, or PAI. Travellers call it the digital arrival card, the pre-arrival declaration, or just the arrival QR. It is the same thing, and the only place it exists is the Immigration Department's own portal at prearrival.immigration.gov.vn.
Almost everyone who reads this site eventually lands at Da Nang International. Fly in, spend a week or a season in Hoi An, run to Lao Bao when the visa clock runs down. The PAI sits at the front of that journey, on the inbound flight, which is why it belongs on this site and not just on a general Vietnam travel blog.
Two things are true at once here, and the rest of this page holds both. The form is quick and free and takes about five minutes. And a large number of travellers pay a fake site between 20 and 80 USD for it because they search instead of typing the domain. Getting that part right is most of the job.
2. What the form is, and what it is not
The PAI collects what a paper arrival card used to collect. Your name as printed in the passport, passport number, date of birth, nationality, the visa or exemption you are entering under, your flight number, the airport you land at, and the address of your first night in Vietnam. You submit it, an OTP code goes to your email, and the system gives you back a confirmation with a file number and a QR code.
Four things it is not, and each one causes its own kind of trouble.
It is not a visa. The portal collects data. It does not accept applications and it does not approve anything, and the officer at the counter will not read it as permission to enter. You still need your e-visa, approval letter or exemption. Arriving with a QR code and no e-visa is arriving with no visa.
It is not the e-visa portal. The e-visa lives at a different address and produces a different document, at 25 USD for single entry and 50 USD for multiple.
It is not the health declaration that Decree 165/2026/ND-CP introduced at border gates. That one belongs to the Ministry of Health and stays switched off unless the ministry names a disease risk. Section 8 deals with it.
And it is not a fee. The form is free on the government portal. Any site asking for a card number to file a compulsory arrival card is selling you something you can submit yourself in the time it takes to make coffee.
3. Does a Lao Bao visa run need one?
No. This is the question people ask us at the desk more than any other, so it gets a straight answer.
The PAI is an air arrival system. The five airports listed below are where it operates. Land gates are not connected to it, and neither are seaports. Cross the Sepon river bridge at Lao Bao, walk back through the Vietnamese re-entry window, and nobody will ask you for a QR code, because the system has nothing to do with that window.
That means the run itself is unchanged. You still need a valid e-visa with Lao Bao selected as the port of entry, a passport with six months of validity left, and the printout in your hand. The page for the e-visa side of the run covers the port field, and the step-by-step guide covers the day itself.
Where the PAI does enter the picture is the flight out. If a re-entry is refused and you fly to Bangkok from Da Nang, you leave on an outbound flight and there is no declaration to file on the way out. When you come back in, days later with a fresh e-visa, that inbound flight into Da Nang is a PAI arrival, and you file it then. The refusal page walks through that route, and section 7 below covers the two documents you now hold at once.
4. Which airports ask for it
The rollout moved airport by airport through the first half of 2026 rather than arriving everywhere on one date. The dates below come from airport and airline advisories plus foreign embassy notices, because the department has not published a single decision document with all five on it.
- Tan Son Nhat, Ho Chi Minh City (SGN): 15 April 2026
- Phu Quoc International (PQC): 1 June 2026
- Noi Bai, Hanoi (HAN): 8 June 2026
- Da Nang International (DAD): 15 June 2026
- Cam Ranh, Nha Trang (CXR): June 2026
Da Nang is the one that matters here. Since the middle of June, foreign arrivals landing at DAD are asked to have the declaration done before they reach the immigration hall.
Several smaller international airports are not on the list. Cat Bi for Hai Phong, Lien Khuong for Da Lat, Phu Bai for Hue, Can Tho and Vinh do not collect it yet. If your itinerary routes you through one of those, nothing changes for you today.
One caveat worth carrying: the list has grown four times since April, and the dates above come from advisories rather than one published rule. Before you fly, open prearrival.immigration.gov.vn and check that your arrival airport is on it. It is the only source that is current by definition.
5. The 72-hour window, and when to actually file
You cannot file this months ahead. The arrival date field will not accept a date more than three days out, so the form opens 72 hours before you land and stays open until you do.
Two days before the flight is the comfortable slot. It sits inside the window, it leaves room to resubmit if something fails verification, and it does not put you in a departure lounge typing a passport number with the gate already boarding.
Three practical notes for a Da Nang arrival.
Use the flight number of the aircraft that lands in Vietnam, not the first leg of a long-haul connection. A Singapore to Da Nang leg is what the airlines and immigration see; the Frankfurt to Singapore leg is not part of your arrival record here.
Do not file from the air. Airport wifi at the far end of a long flight is not a plan, and if the connection drops mid-form the session is gone.
If your flight number changes at short notice, file again. A declaration carrying a flight number that does not match the airline's manifest is exactly the sort of mismatch that gets noticed at a counter.
The clock runs on arrival time, not on when you start the form. Landing at 09:00 on a Saturday means the earliest submission is 09:00 on Wednesday, and a day earlier the portal will simply refuse the date.
6. Filling the form at a Hoi An hotel desk
The form is short. It takes about five minutes with your documents in front of you, and considerably longer if you are hunting for a hotel booking mid-way through, so gather these first: passport, e-visa or exemption details, flight number, and the address of your first night.
Open the portal and pick your language. Vietnamese, English, Chinese and French are all offered. Choose the option to create and submit a declaration and clear the CAPTCHA.
Enter your passenger details exactly as the passport prints them, middle names included. The portal will read a photo of your passport data page and pre-fill most of this, which is faster and less error prone than typing. Check what it reads. A letter O read as a zero is a real problem later.
Then the visa details. E-visa holders enter the reference number from the top of the approval PDF. Visa-exempt arrivals pick the exemption they are entering under. Add the trip details: flight number, arrival date, country of departure, purpose of visit, mode of transport. Mode is air for you, which is where the form stops being relevant to anyone doing an overland run.
Then the address. If you have not booked yet, put the hotel you intend to stay at, or a friend's address in Hoi An. Put the place you are actually sleeping, not the airport.
Finally, the email. The system sends a six-digit code to verify it. Enter the code, check the summary screen, and the portal issues a confirmation with a QR code and a file number. Screenshot the QR, download the PDF, and email it to yourself. Officers scan the code at the counter, and a phone with no signal at a Vietnamese airport is a normal thing, not an unlucky one.
7. The lookalike sites, and why this form has a scam problem
Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security has warned publicly that fake websites are impersonating the PAI system. The ones that have been caught were not just overcharging. They were built to take card details from people typing passport numbers into what looked like a government form.
The warning is worth taking seriously because the search results are a minefield. Pages using the words "Vietnam arrival card", "Vietnam immigration" and "Vietnam pre-arrival" rank well and look official, and some of them buy ads. A commercial site can use any of those phrases. It cannot use the domain.
So use the domain, character by character: prearrival.immigration.gov.vn. The part that decides it is immigration.gov.vn. And there is a second check available to anyone who wants one. The real portal serves an organisation-validated TLS certificate issued to Cục Quản lý xuất nhập cảnh, the Immigration Department, for immigration.gov.vn. A certificate authority only issues that class of certificate after verifying the organisation behind the site, so a lookalike domain cannot carry one.
On this form the practical rule is simpler than on the e-visa: if a page asks for a card number, it is not the government portal, because there is no fee anywhere in this process at all. Not a small one, not a service fee, not a priority filing. Free. If you are being charged, close the tab and type the domain yourself.
8. The health declaration, and why you probably do not need it
Every few months a blog post announces that Vietnam now requires a health form from every arrival. That post is usually wrong, and it is wrong in a way that sends people to a scam site.
Decree 165/2026/ND-CP, in force from 1 July 2026, sets up a border health declaration. It is a Ministry of Health form, it is separate from the PAI, and it is conditional rather than routine. It applies to groups the Minister of Health designates when a specific disease risk calls for it. On 8 July 2026 the Administration of Disease Prevention said as much in plain terms: it is not a declaration every traveller files.
So as things stand, the average Hoi An arrival files one form, not two. If a health declaration is ever activated for your route, it will be free on a government site as well, and the ministry has stated that it does not use tokhaiyte.vn despite that domain circulating online as if it were official.
The confusion between the two forms has a commercial engine behind it. Two compulsory-sounding forms are better than one if you are selling form filing, and the people who end up paying twice are the ones who trusted whichever page ranked first.
9. At the Da Nang counter, and the honest version of "mandatory"
Somebody at the check-in desk in your departure city may ask to see the QR code. Some airlines have started doing it, the same way they already look at an e-visa approval before printing a boarding pass. If you do not have one and your check-in window is closing, that is the worst place in the trip to discover the form exists.
At Da Nang, the picture is softer than the headline. Notices at the airports where the system runs present the declaration as required, and Vietnam's missions abroad have told travellers to complete it before arrival. The American and Singaporean embassy notices use the word encouraged and add that it can be done on arrival. The Canadian travel advisory goes further and states outright that the digital arrival form is not a mandatory requirement for entry.
The honest position sits between those. Nobody we know of has been refused entry for skipping it, and no fine has been published for it. What happens without one is that your details get typed in at the desk instead of scanned, which adds time to a queue that is already the slowest part of arriving. Tan Son Nhat has QR kiosks and paper forms in the arrivals hall, and travellers report 20 to 40 minutes on top at peak hours.
Hoi An visitors should think about it as a five-minute job at the hotel on the day before the flight. That is cheaper than the alternative, and the alternative is doing it standing up while your queue walks past you.
10. Questions we get at the desk
Is the PAI the same as a visa?
No. It collects your details before you fly and nothing else. It does not accept applications and it does not approve entry. You still need an e-visa, an approval letter or a visa exemption, and an officer will not treat the QR code as permission to enter.
Do I need one for a Lao Bao visa run?
No. The declaration is an air arrival system. The Lao Bao land gate is not connected to it, so an overland run out and back needs nothing new. You still need a valid e-visa with Lao Bao as the port of entry.
How early can I file it?
Within 72 hours of arrival, so three days before at the earliest. The portal will not accept a date further out. Two days ahead is the comfortable slot.
Which airports use it?
Tan Son Nhat, Phu Quoc, Noi Bai, Cam Ranh and Da Nang. Da Nang has been on the list since 15 June 2026. Cat Bi, Lien Khuong, Phu Bai, Can Tho and Vinh are not on it yet.
What does it cost?
Nothing on the government portal. Lookalike sites charge between 20 and 80 USD for the same free form, and Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security has warned that some of them exist to harvest card details rather than to file anything.
Should I file one for my child?
Yes. Every foreign traveller who clears immigration needs their own declaration and their own QR code, including babies. A family of four ends up with four codes. You can add several passengers in one session on one device.
I am only transiting through Da Nang. Do I need it?
If you stay airside and never clear immigration, you are not entering Vietnam and the declaration does not apply. If your connection means you pass through the immigration hall, you file like anyone else.
I arrive without one. What happens?
You are not turned away. Your details are entered manually at the counter and you wait longer. At Da Nang there are also forms and QR codes available on arrival.
11. Where to go next
If the form is the last thing standing between you and a booked flight, file it at prearrival.immigration.gov.vn and keep the QR where you can reach it without a signal. Our sister site NamVisa has a longer walk through the same system in its digital arrival card guide, including the first-fortnight numbers from the Tan Son Nhat pilot.
If what you are actually planning is the border run, start with the step-by-step Hoi An visa run guide for the day itself, the e-visa page for the port field and the typos that get applications refused, and the Lao Bao extra fees page for the money you will actually be asked for at the windows. The Laos visa page covers visa on arrival, the exemption lists and the LDIF form that has been mandatory since January.
Running from Da Nang instead of Hoi An? Da Nang visa runs uses the same Lao Bao crossing with a shorter pickup. Coming down from Hue, Hue visa runs has the border hours and the holiday schedule in detail. And if you are weighing whether a run works at all this year, the 2026 rules page sets out what officers check on re-entry and when a run is the wrong answer.
Questions about your own dates? Send us the passport details and the flight, and we will tell you what the timeline looks like before you book anything.