India has completed its six-month transition away from the decades-old paper disembarkation form. From 00:01 IST on 1 April 2026 every foreign national—including Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card-holders—must lodge an electronic “e-Arrival Card” within 72 hours of landing. The switch-off was confirmed in a 2 April dispatch from JETRO’s New Delhi office. Introduced on 1 October 2025 as part of the Ministry of Home Affairs’ Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration & Tracking (IVFRT) 2.0 programme, the digital card mirrors the information previously collected on the blue paper form: personal data, recent travel history, local contact details and address in India. Travellers upload the data via the dedicated portal or the Su-Swagatam mobile app and receive a PDF/QR code that must be shown—either on a device or as a print-out—during primary inspection.
![India scraps paper arrival cards, makes e-Arrival Card compulsory for all foreigners]()
Should travellers or corporate mobility teams need help navigating these new digital requirements, VisaHQ’s India portal (https://www.visahq.com/india/) offers step-by-step guidance, automated reminders and document-check services for the e-Arrival Card as well as all categories of Indian visas, streamlining compliance in one place.
Unlike the paper form, the e-Arrival Card is timestamped against the traveller’s visa record, giving immigration officers real-time visibility of overstays and previous compliance issues. Industry stakeholders say this will shorten queues and reduce manual data entry, but warn that assignees arriving on short notice must build the 72-hour filing window into ticketing workflows. Employers are being advised to add the e-Arrival Card link to welcome packs and keep screenshots with offer letters in case of system outages. The change dovetails with wider border-technology upgrades announced in the FY 2026 Budget, including biometric e-gates at Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru and an Application Programming Interface (API) feed from airlines that pre-validates passport and visa data before departure. Travel managers should review corporate travel policies to ensure compliance and avoid INR 5,000 on-arrival fines for non-submission. With India pushing to treble inbound tourist numbers to 30 million by 2030, the fully digital arrival card is viewed as a milestone in creating a “paper-less, contact-less” entry experience that aligns India with Singapore’s SG Arrival Card and Australia’s incoming Digital Passenger Declaration.
Should travellers or corporate mobility teams need help navigating these new digital requirements, VisaHQ’s India portal (https://www.visahq.com/india/) offers step-by-step guidance, automated reminders and document-check services for the e-Arrival Card as well as all categories of Indian visas, streamlining compliance in one place.
Unlike the paper form, the e-Arrival Card is timestamped against the traveller’s visa record, giving immigration officers real-time visibility of overstays and previous compliance issues. Industry stakeholders say this will shorten queues and reduce manual data entry, but warn that assignees arriving on short notice must build the 72-hour filing window into ticketing workflows. Employers are being advised to add the e-Arrival Card link to welcome packs and keep screenshots with offer letters in case of system outages. The change dovetails with wider border-technology upgrades announced in the FY 2026 Budget, including biometric e-gates at Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru and an Application Programming Interface (API) feed from airlines that pre-validates passport and visa data before departure. Travel managers should review corporate travel policies to ensure compliance and avoid INR 5,000 on-arrival fines for non-submission. With India pushing to treble inbound tourist numbers to 30 million by 2030, the fully digital arrival card is viewed as a milestone in creating a “paper-less, contact-less” entry experience that aligns India with Singapore’s SG Arrival Card and Australia’s incoming Digital Passenger Declaration.
