PNG Digital Arrival Card (PNGDAC): The Complete Guide (2026)

The short answer for 2026

Yes. If you are not a PNG national and you enter Papua New Guinea by air, land, or sea, you must submit the PNG Digital Arrival Card (PNGDAC) before you arrive. The official form is free at https://ica.gov.pg, and it takes about three to five minutes per person. If you'd rather not deal with it yourself, we are an independent filing service: we submit the card for you for $19 and email your confirmation within 24 hours.

This guide covers the whole system for 2026: who needs the card, the exact submission window, what the form asks for, how group applications work, how to fix mistakes, and what happens at immigration without one.

Maybe you have read a 2024 forum post saying Papua New Guinea scrapped the paper arrival card, so nothing replaced it. That was true for a while. Since 1 May 2025, the paper TM6 form is back in digital form, and it is called the PNGDAC. Every foreign visitor needs it, including babies, and including travelers who enter visa-free.

What is the PNG Digital Arrival Card?

The PNG Digital Arrival Card is an online form you submit before entering Papua New Guinea. PNG immigration uses it to know who is arriving, on which flight, staying where, and whether there is a health concern. It replaced the paper TM6 card that used to be handed out on the plane.

Three facts define it

• It's **digital only**. There is no paper form to fill in at the gate anymore.
• It's **separate from visas**. The card is a record of your arrival, not permission to enter. See our PNGDAC requirements guide for how it sits alongside your visa or visa exemption.
• It's **single use**. One card covers one entry. Fly out to Laos and back, and you submit a new one.

Do you need a Papua New Guinea arrival card?

Almost certainly yes. The rule covers all non-PNG nationals, at every entry point: airport, land border, and seaport. Your visa status does not matter. US, UK, Australian, and Canadian visitors enter visa-free and still need the card, as our US citizens guide explains.

The short exemption list:

Who does not need a PNGDAC

• PNG nationals
• Travelers transiting without passing immigration (staying airside, same plane or onward connecting flight)
• Passengers on technical landings
• Crew members on duty

Children and transit: the two cases that trip people up

Two cases trip people up. First, children: every foreign passport holder needs a card, including infants. Second, transit: if you land at Suvarnabhumi to catch another flight and never pass immigration, you do not need one. Walk out of the airport for a few hours, and you do. The full breakdown is in do I need a Papua New Guinea arrival card.

When to submit the PNGDAC

Submit within 3 days before your arrival date in Papua New Guinea. The window is counted from your arrival date, not your departure date from home, and it stays open until you land.

A worked example makes it concrete:

PNGDAC timing tips

Don't submit early. The portal will not accept a card outside the window, and there's no way to save a half-finished form for later. The official FAQ estimates three to five minutes per person when your details are ready.

Two timing tips from experience. First, wait until your flights and hotel are final, because the form asks for both. Second, submitting one or two days before departure is the sweet spot: you know your details, and the confirmation email arrives well before check-in, where airline staff sometimes ask to see it. Our how to apply for the PNGDAC walkthrough covers the timing traps in detail.

PNGDAC requirements: what to prepare before you start

Nothing needs to be applied for or bought in advance. You just need the raw information the five form blocks ask for:

The five blocks of the PNGDAC form

• **Passport information.** Passport number, full name as printed in the passport, nationality, and date of birth. The portal can scan the machine-readable zone (MRZ) of your passport with your phone camera, or you can upload a passport photo. Typing manually also works.
• **Personal information.** Contact details and the email address where your confirmation and QR code will be sent.
• **Travel information.** Flight number of the leg that physically lands in Papua New Guinea, arrival date, port of entry, and purpose of travel. Connecting through another airport first? Use the flight number of the final leg into Papua New Guinea.
• **Accommodation in Papua New Guinea.** Hotel name and address, or the address where you will stay. Have the booking confirmation open in another tab.
• **Health declaration.** Countries you visited or stayed in during the previous two weeks, plus health questions if triggered.

What the PNGDAC requirements do not include

That list is the whole requirement. No photo upload is mandatory beyond the optional passport scan, no printing, and no payment. If a site demands more, stop and check you're on the official portal.

**Want someone to handle the whole thing?** We prepare, verify, and file the card for you: $19 flat, confirmation emailed within 24 hours, full refund if we fail to deliver. Start my application.

How the PNGDAC health declaration works

The health block is where most travelers worry, and where most guides go vague. Here is exactly how it behaves.

The form first asks you to list the countries you visited or stayed in during the two weeks before arrival. The system then checks three things against the Ministry of Public Health watchlist:

What the system checks against the MOPH watchlist

• the countries you visited in the last two weeks,
• your boarding country, nationality, and flight details,
• whether any of these match a listed country.

What happens if your travel matches the watchlist

If nothing matches, the health section stays short and you move on. If something matches, typically travel connected with yellow-fever-risk countries in Africa and South America, the portal prompts extra health questions. Answer honestly; the questions exist to protect public health, not to screen out tourists.

The watchlist is maintained by the Ministry of Public Health and can change, so we don't publish a country list here that could be outdated by the time you fly. The portal itself decides: if you are not prompted, there is nothing extra to answer.

How to submit: individual and group applications

One person can submit cards for a whole family or tour group. On the traveler information step, the portal offers **“Add Other Travelers”**. Each added traveler gets their own card, tied to their own passport. One submission can cover up to **10 travelers**.

There is also a **“Same as Previous Traveler”** button. It copies shared details, like the flight and accommodation, from the traveler you just entered. For a family of five flying to the same hotel, this turns five separate forms into one sitting of roughly 15 minutes.

Priya used exactly that for her family of five last April: Phuket trip, one booking, five passports on the kitchen table. She entered her own details, hit “Same as Previous Traveler” four times, adjusted each child's passport data, and submitted once. All five confirmations arrived in one email a few minutes later. The alternative, five separate applications with the hotel address retyped every time, is exactly how mismatched-address errors happen.

Rules that matter for group filing:

Group filing rules

• Every traveler still needs their own passport details entered correctly.
• A family member, tour operator, or travel agent may submit on behalf of others.
• The confirmation email with the QR codes goes to the email entered on the form, so the group filer holds everyone's proof.

After submission: your QR code by email

After submission, the portal emails the card with its QR code. You can show that QR on your phone at immigration. Printing is optional, and the card stays downloadable during your stay.

PNGDAC vs visa: what is the difference?

The PNG Digital Arrival Card is not a visa. The Royal PNG Embassy in London states it directly: the PNGDAC cannot be used in place of a visa. The two cover different questions. The visa asks “may this person enter and stay?”. The card asks “who's arriving, and where will they stay?”.

Which combination applies to you

Practical takeaway: you may need the PNGDAC and no visa at all (visa-exempt US visitor), a visa and the PNGDAC (most non-exempt nationals), or no PNGDAC at all (PNG national). Entering visa-free doesn't remove the card requirement. If your form has a visa number field and you enter visa-exempt, leave it empty.

How to update your PNGDAC after submission

Plans change, and the portal has a fix for that. The “Update Arrival Card” function lets you correct details after submitting:

How to update your PNGDAC

• Open the portal and click **“Update Arrival Card”**.
• Enter your PNGDAC card number, date of birth, and nationality, then click **“Search”**.
• Confirm the correction of the information and edit the fields that changed.
• Submit and download the updated card. The new QR code replaces the old one.

What you can change — and what you can't

You can change flight number, arrival date, accommodation, and contact details this way. You **can't** change your full name, passport number, nationality, or date of birth. If one of those is wrong, submit a brand-new card instead; the system treats the most recent submission as the valid one.

Daniel needed exactly this in September. He had filed his card for a Tuesday flight into Suvarnabhumi, then the airline rebooked him to Wednesday on a different flight number. Two minutes in the Update flow, new flight number saved, new QR code downloaded. His original card would not have matched the manifest; the updated one did, and immigration cleared him in seconds.

Keep the confirmation email until you've landed. It holds the card number you need for any update, and it is your proof if the immigration system is slow to find your record.

What happens if you arrive without a PNGDAC

Let us be precise, because this question attracts guesswork. The official FAQ says travelers who fail to submit may face delays and, at immigration's discretion, could be denied entry. In practice, the common outcome at the big airports is that officers direct you to complete the form on the spot before processing you. Self-service kiosks for this exist at five airports: Suvarnabhumi (BKK), Don Mueang (DMK), Phuket (HKT), Chiang Mai (CNX), and Hat Yai (HDY). Our BKK arrival card guide has the airside walkthrough.

Marcus hit this in August. He'd heard “the arrival card was scrapped” from a 2024 article, did a visa run from Penang, and landed at Don Mueang with nothing filed. The officer sent him to a kiosk. Fifteen minutes of typing passport details with a queue behind him, then a fresh QR code and a stamp. He entered; he was just the last one out of the immigration hall.

So: no published fixed fine, no guaranteed denial, but a real risk of delay, extra scrutiny, and a stressed start to your trip. The cheap insurance is submitting on time, which costs nothing. Airlines generally do not block boarding over a missing card, but some check-in staff ask for the confirmation, and having it keeps the desk moving.

Filing it yourself vs using a filing service

The honest comparison, in one table:

Which should you choose?

The official form is always free to submit yourself, and we mean it: if you have your passport, flight, and hotel details ready, most travelers manage fine. We exist for the people who would rather not: the ones fighting a portal that rejects their passport scan at midnight, the group leader filing for nine others, the traveler who wants a human to check every digit. Fees and turnaround details are on our fees and processing time page.

Your Papua New Guinea arrival card checklist for 2026

Papua New Guinea's entry paperwork is simple once it's sequenced. Submit the PNG Digital Arrival Card within three days before arrival, one per traveler, after flights and hotels are final. Fix changes through Update Arrival Card, and refile completely if a locked field is wrong. Show the QR code on your phone at immigration. That is the entire system.

Start my application if you want it filed for you: $19, confirmation within 24 hours, full refund if we fail to deliver. Or submit it yourself, free, at https://ica.gov.pg. Either way, do it before you fly.

Frequently Asked Questions