China Digital Arrival Card: Complete Guide for Foreign Travelers (2026)

Your plane taxis to the gate at Pudong. The seatbelt sign dings off. And somewhere between grabbing your bag and joining the shuffle toward immigration, you remember a form you never filled out. The China digital arrival card. Phones come out in the aisle. People are hunting for a website. A few are already paying a stranger at a kiosk to do it for them.

None of that is necessary. The form is free, it takes a handful of minutes, and you can finish it from your hotel before you ever leave for the airport. This guide explains what the card is, who needs one, exactly where to fill it out, and how to handle the confirmation when you land.

First, clear up the confusion: this is not the old health code

A lot of older guides still describe a different form, and that is the single biggest source of bad information on this topic. During and after the pandemic, every inbound traveler had to complete a China Customs health declaration and show a black QR code at customs. That requirement is gone. As of November 1, 2023, travelers entering or leaving China are no longer required to fill out the Entry/Exit Health Declaration Form, as the Beijing Municipal Government announced and China Briefing reported. If a guide tells you to screenshot a customs health QR code, it is describing a system that no longer exists.

The digital arrival card is something else. It is an immigration form, run by the National Immigration Administration (NIA), and it digitizes the paper arrival card that foreigners have always filled out on the plane or at the counter. Per the Chinese Embassy in the United States, effective November 20, 2025, foreign nationals may fill in the relevant entry information online before coming to China through the official platform. Two things to keep straight: the health code was customs, and it is dead. The arrival card is immigration, and it is now online.

Who needs to fill one out

The online arrival card applies to foreign nationals entering China by air, land, or sea, according to the embassy notice. If you are a passport-holding visitor arriving as a tourist, on business, or under a visa-free transit scheme, assume you need one.

There are exemptions. The NIA lists seven categories of foreigners who do not have to fill in an arrival card, reported by outlets including the Israeli Consulate in Shanghai’s summary of the NIA notice. These include holders of a Foreign Permanent Resident ID Card of China, certain holders of residence permits and diplomatic-type visas, international transport crew, young children, travelers transiting under the visa-free transit policies who stay within the permitted area, and designated border residents of neighboring countries. If you hold a Chinese permanent resident ID card or are crew on the flight, you are almost certainly covered. Everyone else should plan to file.

One point that trips people up: the arrival card is not a visa, and it does not replace one. You still need a valid visa, or to qualify for a visa-free entry, before the card matters at all. Filing the card does not grant you the right to enter. It just speeds up the paperwork once you are already eligible.

When to fill it out: the 72-hour window

File the card within three days (72 hours) before you arrive in China. That window is what the NIA portal and the embassy notices specify, and it is repeated across guides such as Koryo Group’s 2026 writeup. Submit it the week before your trip and it will be stale by the time you land.

The practical sweet spot is the day before departure, or the morning of a long-haul flight. On a 13-hour flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai, fill it out at the gate or over breakfast before you leave for the airport. On a short hop from Tokyo or Seoul, the evening before works fine. The goal is a fresh submission that is still valid when you actually reach the immigration counter, not one you knocked out a week early.

Where to fill it out — and where to avoid

Use only official channels. The NIA has warned that fraudulent websites are imitating the arrival-card service and charging travelers for something that is supposed to be free. The administration’s message is blunt: the online arrival-card filling service is free of charge, so use official channels only. That warning was picked up widely, including by China Daily and The Straits Times.

The official options, all free:

• Web portal (desktop or mobile browser): s.nia.gov.cn/ArrivalCardFillingPC — the cleanest option if you just want a browser and no app.
• WeChat mini-program: the official 移民局12367 (NIA 12367) mini-program.
• Alipay mini-program: the same official NIA 12367 service.
• The 移民局12367 app, and the official arrival-card QR code posted at checkpoints for anyone who needs to file on arrival.

Here is the test for a fake: if the page asks for payment, it is a scam. The genuine service never charges. Anything not on the nia.gov.cn domain that wants your card details for an arrival card is one to close immediately.

What you actually fill in

The fields are the standard arrival-card set, listed in guides including Koryo Group’s walkthrough and Wego’s 2026 explainer:

• Full name, exactly as printed on your passport.
• Passport number and nationality.
• Arrival carrier number — your flight, train, or vessel number into China.
• Address in China, normally your first hotel or your host’s address.
• Purpose of visit, such as tourism, business, or transit.
• Visa information — your visa number if you hold one, or the matching visa-free purpose if you do not.

Nothing here is hard, but two fields cause almost all the trouble. The name must mirror the passport, and the carrier number must be the flight you actually arrive on, not the one you booked before a schedule change. The passport photo upload step exists to reduce typo errors, so let it prefill and then verify.

Landing: how the QR code is used

Once you have submitted, you hold a confirmation QR code. That code is what you present during the immigration check on arrival, in place of the paper slip that used to be collected in the cabin, as Wego describes. Have it on your screen before you reach the front of the line — a screenshot is the most reliable form, since airport Wi-Fi can be slow and your roaming data may not be active yet.

If your submission is in order, the officer scans or views the code and you move on to the usual steps: photo, fingerprints, passport stamp. The card itself does not change how long immigration takes; it removes one piece of paper-fumbling from the front of the process. The whole point of filing early is that you walk up with the code ready instead of hunching over a phone while the queue grows behind you.

What if you could not fill it in advance

You are not stuck. The Chinese Embassy in Malaysia’s notice is explicit that travelers who cannot complete the form online in advance may do so on arrival at the immigration checkpoint by scanning the posted QR code. In other words, the online card is the fast lane, not the only lane.

So if your phone dies over the Pacific, or the portal will not load, do not panic. There are self-service options and the official checkpoint QR code at the port of entry, and paper forms have not vanished for travelers without a working smartphone. You will simply be slower than the person who filed from the hotel. The advice is still to do it early — but the worst case is a few extra minutes in the arrivals hall, not a denied entry.

Common mistakes, and how to dodge them

Filing too early. Submit eight days out and your entry is past the 72-hour window by the time you land. Do it within three days of arrival, ideally the day before you fly.

Using a paid third-party site. The service is free on nia.gov.cn, per the NIA fraud warning. A site that wants money for the arrival card is either a scam or an unnecessary middleman. Bookmark the official portal and ignore the ads.

A name that does not match the passport. Skip the middle name, swap the order, or rely on a nickname and the system flags you. Copy the name exactly as the passport prints it.

The wrong flight number. Enter the flight you actually arrive on. Rebookings and codeshares make this easy to get wrong, so check your boarding pass, not your original confirmation email.

No offline copy of the QR code. Generating the code and then closing the tab is the classic error. Screenshot it the second it appears. Better yet, also email it to yourself.

Thinking the card replaces a visa. It does not. Sort the visa or confirm your visa-free eligibility first; the arrival card only handles the entry paperwork on top of that.

FAQ

Bottom line

The China digital arrival card is the paper arrival form moved onto your phone. It is free, it takes a handful of minutes, and it is run by the National Immigration Administration at s.nia.gov.cn — not by any of the paid lookalikes that have sprung up around it. Fill it within 72 hours of landing, screenshot the confirmation QR code, and you will clear the front of the immigration line without breaking stride. Forget it and you will still get through, just a little more slowly at a checkpoint kiosk.

The digital arrival-card system and its URL evolve; confirm the current official entry on the embassy/NIA pages above (last verified 2026-07-24).