Everything You Need to Know Before Flying to Bali

Bali is one of the easier places in Southeast Asia to enter. It’s also one of the easier places to get tripped up at the airport if you arrive without the right paperwork sorted.

Most of the chaos in the Ngurah Rai arrivals hall comes from travelers who didn’t know about the digital arrival form, forgot the tourism levy, or assumed they could figure it out in the queue. You can. It just costs you an extra hour or two of standing around after a long flight.

This guide walks through everything you need to handle before you fly, in the order you’ll actually need to handle it. Skip nothing, screenshot everything, and you’ll be out of the airport in 30 minutes.

Why Bali Entry Trips People Up

On paper, the requirements are simple. Passport, visa, arrival form, tourism levy. Done.

In practice, three things make it messier than people expect.

The rules change often. Indonesia has updated its arrival process at least three times in the last two years. Old blog posts and forum threads are full of outdated advice that no longer applies.

The forms aren’t optional. The All Indonesia digital arrival form replaced the old paper customs and health cards in 2025. It’s mandatory for every international traveler, including infants. You’d be surprised how many people show up not knowing it exists.

The queues compound. Skip the e-VOA online and you queue for the visa counter. Skip the pre-paid tourism levy and you queue for the payment desk. Skip the arrival form and you queue to fill it out at a kiosk. None of these queues are short during peak hours.

The fix is to handle everything from your couch before you fly. Here’s how.

Step 1: Check Your Passport

Before you book anything, pull out your passport and check three things.

Validity. It needs to be valid for at least six months from the date you arrive in Bali. Not the date you booked, not the date you bought it. The date you land.

Blank pages. At least one fully blank page for the entry stamp. Two is safer.

Condition. Indonesian immigration is genuinely strict about damaged passports. Water damage, torn pages, a bent cover, even minor tears can get you turned away at boarding or denied entry on arrival. If yours looks rough, replace it before you book the flight.

Rule of thumb

If your passport expires within 7 months of your trip, renew it. The 6-month rule is the minimum, and immigration officers have discretion.

Step 2: Sort Your Visa

Most travelers visiting Bali for a holiday use the Visa on Arrival (VOA) or its online version, the e-VOA.

The basics:

• Cost: IDR 500,000 (around USD 35)
• Duration: 30 days, extendable once for another 30 days
• Eligible: 97 nationalities, including the US, UK, EU, Australia, Canada, and most of Asia

You have two real options.

Apply for the e-VOA online (recommended)

Apply through the official portal at evisa.imigrasi.go.id, ideally at least 48 hours before your flight. The e-VOA gives you access to the automated e-gates at Ngurah Rai International Airport, allowing you to skip the visa counter and most of the immigration queue.

On a busy day this saves you well over an hour. On a quiet day it still saves you 20 minutes.

Get your VOA on arrival

You can pay at the visa counter when you land. It works fine, but you’ll queue twice (visa counter, then immigration), and Ngurah Rai queues during peak arrival windows are genuinely long.

A handful of nationalities, mostly ASEAN passport holders, get visa-free entry for short stays. Check your status on the official portal before assuming you need a VOA.

Worth knowing

The e-VOA requires an electronic passport (the one with the chip symbol on the front cover) to use the e-gates. Most passports issued in the last decade have this. If yours doesn’t, you can still get the e-VOA, you just won’t be able to use the automated gates.

Step 3: Fill Out the All Indonesia Arrival Form

This is the step most travelers miss, and it’s the one most likely to slow you down on arrival.

Since September 2025, Indonesia has consolidated all of its old arrival paperwork (the customs declaration, the SATUSEHAT health pass, the immigration card) into a single digital form called the All Indonesia Arrival Card.

The basics:

• When: Within 72 hours before your flight
• Where: allindonesia.imigrasi.go.id
• What you need: Passport details, flight number, arrival date, address of your first night’s accommodation

Once you submit it, you’ll get a QR code by email. Save it as both a screenshot and a PDF on your phone. You’ll need to scan it at immigration and again at customs.

It’s mandatory for every international traveler, including children and infants. You can fill it out at the airport if you forget, but expect to lose 30 to 60 minutes.

Step 4: Pay the Bali Tourism Levy

Since February 2024, every foreign visitor pays a one-time levy that funds environmental and cultural preservation across the island.

The basics:

• Cost: IDR 150,000 per person (around USD 10)
• Where: lovebali.baliprov.go.id

You can pay before you arrive or at the airport. Pay in advance and you get a QR code that lets you use the scan-and-go lane. Pay at the airport and you queue.

The fee applies once per visit, not per day, and children pay the same as adults.

Rule of thumb

Pay both the e-VOA and the tourism levy from the same browsing session, a few weeks before your trip. Save both QR codes to a single folder on your phone. Now you have everything in one place.

Step 5: Have Proof of Onward Travel

Airlines and Indonesian immigration can ask to see a confirmed flight out of the country within your visa window (30 days for VOA, 60 if you plan to extend). This gets checked more often than people expect, especially by budget airlines at the check-in desk.

A return ticket works. A flight to another country works. A confirmed ferry booking to Singapore or Malaysia works.

What doesn’t work: a screenshot of a flight you “plan to book later.”

Step 6: Know What Actually Happens at Ngurah Rai

Here’s the order of operations when you land.

1. Immigration. If you have an e-VOA and an electronic passport, head to the automated e-gates (you’ll need to pre-register your passport through the immigration portal first). Otherwise, queue for the manual counters and present your passport, e-VOA confirmation, and All Indonesia QR code.
2. Baggage collection. Standard.
3. Customs. Scan your All Indonesia QR code at the gate. If you pre-paid the tourism levy, scan that QR code at the dedicated lane.
4. Exit. You’re in.

With everything pre-filled and the e-gates, most travelers are out of the airport within 30 minutes of stepping off the plane. Without preparation, plan for 1 to 2 hours during peak periods.

Worth knowing

To use the e-gates you need to pre-register your passport through the immigration portal. It’s a one-time thing. Once registered, you can use the gates on every future trip without re-registering.

Step 7: The Day-of-Flight Checklist

Save these to your phone before you leave for the airport.

• Passport (6+ months validity, undamaged, blank pages)
• Boarding pass
• All Indonesia Arrival Form QR code
• e-VOA confirmation (or cash for VOA at the airport)
• Bali Tourism Levy QR code
• Proof of onward travel
• Travel insurance policy number
• Offline copy of your first night’s accommodation booking
• Local SIM or eSIM sorted (or plan to buy one at the airport)

Don’t rely on airport Wi-Fi

It works, but slowly, and you’ll be in a queue with several hundred other people all trying to load the same QR codes. Screenshot everything. Save it offline. You’ll thank yourself.

A Few Things Most Guides Don’t Mention

Use only the official websites. Search “Indonesia visa” or “Bali tourism levy” and you’ll find dozens of third-party sites charging extra to “process” your paperwork. The official government portals (evisa.imigrasi.go.id, allindonesia.imigrasi.go.id, lovebali.baliprov.go.id) are free and handle everything you need.

Skip the taxi touts. The drivers calling out to you in arrivals are almost always overcharging. Use a pre-booked transfer, an official airport taxi from the counter inside the terminal, or a licensed ride-hailing service (Grab, Gojek, or Bluebird) from the designated pickup zones.

Check the rules again the week of your flight. Indonesia has changed its arrival process several times recently. What’s accurate today may be slightly different in six months. The official portals always have the current version.

Get Your Entry Sorted, Then Plan the Rest

Entry paperwork is the boring part of a Bali trip. Once it’s done, the real planning starts.

Bali Rivo is built for the part that comes next. Day-by-day itineraries that account for Bali’s traffic, regions, and pace, ready to share with your driver the moment you land.