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The Paper Arrival Card Is Dead: Digital Declarations You Need in 2026

2026-09-28

The short answer

If you fly anywhere in 2026, the paper arrival card your parents filled in at the border desk is probably gone. At least three countries now genuinely require a digital arrival declaration — a free online form you submit before you land — and a fourth, South Korea, is scheduled to require one and widely reported as already doing so, when the ministry says otherwise.

And the single most-repeated claim in this category is false. Multiple large travel sites state that Korea’s e-Arrival Card has been mandatory since 1 January 2026 and the paper form withdrawn. Korea’s Ministry of Justice said in March 2026 that both are still accepted in parallel, and the government’s own guide still offers a “select electronic/paper” choice. That correction is the reason to read the rest of this post rather than trust a listicle.

The reason this matters right now is a collision. Over the next 15 months you will be filling in forms for two different reasons that look identical and are not: an arrival declaration (a border form, free, submitted days before you fly) and a travel authorisation (a pre-travel approval, sometimes paid, sometimes mandatory next year). Europe’s ETIAS and South Korea’s K-ETA are both travel authorisations, and both become relevant to US travellers in 2027. South Korea’s K-ETA is already a live example: US and Canadian passport holders are exempt through 31 December 2026, and the requirement returns on 1 January 2027.

None of these forms is the visa, and none of them is the thing that decides whether you get in. That confusion is the whole problem, so this post starts by separating them.

Three different things, routinely confused

What it isApproval step?Usually costs?Example
VisaPermission to ask for entry. Can be refused.Yes — an application and a decisionYes, oftenIndia e-Visa, Thailand visa-on-arrival
Travel authorisationPre-travel permission to board a plane. Doesn’t guarantee entry.Yes — you apply, someone approvesSometimes. UK ETA £20, ETIAS €20ETIAS, K-ETA, UK ETA, ESTA
Arrival declarationA border form. You tell them who you are and what you’re bringing.No — nothing is approved, you just submitFreeKorea EAC, Thailand TDAC, Singapore SGAC, NZ NZTD

The test is simple: a travel authorisation has an approval step and a fee; an arrival declaration has neither. If a website is charging you money to fill in a form that the government says is free, you are on a scam site — both Korea and the UK now publish explicit warnings about exactly this.

What you actually have to do (and the one that isn’t mandatory yet)

South Korea — e-Arrival Card (free, and officially not yet the only option)

  • What: an online entry declaration, filed starting 3 days before arrival (Korean Standard Time).

  • Cost: free. The official site says “No fee required.”

  • Official site: e-arrivalcard.go.kr — and the site itself carries a warning that fake lookalike sites have been found, and that any site asking for payment details is not the real one. That warning is why it is worth using the government’s own domain rather than a search result.

  • The mandatory claim is wrong, and this is the part most sites get backwards. Travel sites (including several large booking platforms) state flatly that Korea’s e-Arrival Card became mandatory on 1 January 2026 and that the paper form is gone. It is not. The e-Arrival Card Service at Korea’s Ministry of Justice told VisasNews in March 2026 that both formats remain in use:

    “Arrival reporting for South Korea can be completed using either a paper arrival card or an electronic arrival card. Until an official announcement regarding the complete abolition of the paper arrival card is made, we will continue to use both the paper arrival card and the e-Arrival Card in parallel.” — e-Arrival Card Service, Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Korea

    The government’s own step-by-step guide corroborates it: step 2 is literally titled “Select electronic/paper arrival card,” and it says an e-Arrival Card filer “does not need to fill out a paper arrival card” — which only makes sense while paper remains an option.

  • What is actually true: the system launched 24 February 2025 with a transition period during which you could choose paper or electronic; that period ran to the end of 2025; and from 1 January 2026 the e-card was scheduled to become the only accepted route. As of March 2026 that abolition has not been announced. So: treat it as strongly encouraged, not yet mandatory.

  • Validity: the card is valid for 72 hours from submission, and it is void once you pass immigration — so re-entry to Korea needs a new one.

  • K-ETA holders are exempt from any arrival card, paper or electronic.

Thailand — TDAC (free, mandatory)

  • What: the Thailand Digital Arrival Card, required for all foreign nationals entering by air, land or sea, submitted 3 days in advance.
  • Cost: free. It is run by the Immigration Bureau, and the agency charges nothing.
  • Official site: tdac.immigration.go.th — run by Thai immigration, no fee.

Singapore — SG Arrival Card (free, mandatory, and it has teeth)

  • What: the SG Arrival Card, submitted within 3 days (including the day of arrival).
  • Cost: free.
  • This one actually has a stated consequence: Singapore’s ICA has said it will issue no-boarding directives from 30 January 2026 to arriving travellers who do not have a valid SGAC. That is the difference between “you’ll queue longer” and “you don’t fly.”

New Zealand — NZTD (free, mandatory)

  • What: the New Zealand Traveller Declaration, which replaced the paper Passenger Arrival Card in August 2023 — this is the oldest of the wave, and the one most people have quietly absorbed.
  • Cost: free. Submit within 24 hours of your flight, per NZ Customs.

The two that are optional (and why the “must do everything online” advice is wrong)

Australia — the paper card is still the rule

Australia Border Force still requires an Incoming Passenger Card, and the digital Australia Travel Declaration is explicitly a limited pilot — currently Qantas passengers into Brisbane and select Sydney/Melbourne flights, and “anyone not invited to apply will continue using the IPC as normal.” If you are not on an invited flight, the paper form in your seat-back pocket is not outdated. It is current.

Canada — ArriveCAN is a speed-up, not a requirement

Canada’s Advance Declaration in the ArriveCAN app is framed by CBSA as something to “save time at the border.” It is optional. Nobody is being denied boarding for skipping it.

The one that actually costs money — and the 2027 collision

This is the part that costs you, and it’s the part people mix up with the free forms above.

The UK ETA is a travel authorisation, not an arrival card. It costs £20, and as of the April 2026 Home Office factsheet it covers multiple journeys for stays up to six months at a time, over two years or until your passport expires. Home Office’s own figures: 24.8 million ETAs issued between the scheme’s October 2023 launch and the end of 2025.

What changed in 2026 was enforcement, not the form. While the scheme rolled out, the ETA was not strictly enforced. From 25 February 2026, carriers have been required to apply permission-to-travel checks consistently, and visitors from 85 nationalities without an ETA “will not be able to legally travel to the UK” — the practical effect is that you cannot board. Before that date, the ETA was real but porous; since then it is checked. The fee has also moved twice: £10, then £16 from April 2025, now £20, and Home Office notes it keeps the fee “under review.”

South Korea’s K-ETA is the same species of thing, and it has a hard 2027 deadline. The exemption for US and Canadian passport holders runs through 31 December 2026; from 1 January 2027 those travellers need a K-ETA before boarding. The e-Arrival Card is a different form for the same trip — a frequent and expensive source of confusion, because a K-ETA and an e-Arrival Card are both “Korean digital forms” and only one of them you may have to pay for.

Europe’s ETIAS remains not in operation with no published launch date, so nothing to do for 2026 — but it is the same category, and when it lands it will be €20 for the ~30 countries it covers.

What to actually do before you fly

  1. Check the arrival card first — it’s free. Thailand, Singapore and New Zealand genuinely require one. Korea strongly encourages it but has not made it mandatory; do it anyway, because it saves the queue and the paper version may not last. In every case the official site is the only one that counts.
  2. Separate “declaration” from “authorisation” in your head. Declaration = free, no approval. Authorisation = you apply, it can be refused, it may cost money.
  3. Look at the destination list, not the continent. The UK, Korea, Thailand, Singapore and New Zealand are the ones in this wave. The UK and Korea are the paid authorisation cases; Korea, Thailand, Singapore and NZ are the free declaration cases. The same trip to Korea can need both.
  4. Book the year ahead mindfully. If you are flying to Korea in 2027 with a US passport, the K-ETA requirement arrives on 1 January 2027 — so a January 2027 ticket carries a form that a December 2026 ticket did not.
  5. Never pay for a form the government says is free. Both Korea and the UK publish active fake-site warnings. Use the official domain.

The bottom line

The paper arrival card really is on its way out, and for Thailand, Singapore and New Zealand it is already gone. Korea is mid-transition and officially still accepting both. But “digital arrival” is not one thing — it’s a free border form in most of these countries, and a paid pre-travel authorisation in the UK and Korea, and the two get confused constantly. The practical rule for 2026–2027: the arrival declarations are free; the authorisations are the ones that cost money and that arrive in 2027 — and the one country most sites insist is mandatory but officially isn’t is Korea.

See also

  • Entry Requirements Checker — the same three-way split as a per-destination lookup: visa, paid authorisation, or free arrival card, each with the date a government source confirmed it
  • Busan guide — Korea’s second city, with the 2026 K-ETA exemption and the separate e-Arrival Card explained in the visa section
  • Seoul guide — the main Korean entry point for most itineraries
  • Thailand guide — TDAC applies alongside the 30-day visa exemption
  • Japan guide — Visit Japan Web, and why paper is still fine there
  • New Zealand guide — NZTD has been mandatory since 2023, one of the longest-running ones
  • US passport visa-free 2026 post — the European ETIAS half of this story
  • EES border delay post — the other big European border change in 2026
  • Thailand visa 2026 post — visa vs arrival card, for Thailand specifically

Sources

Every figure and date in this post is from a government or official operator source, retrieved 28 September 2026. Where official sources disagree, the disagreement is shown rather than averaged.

Sources

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