Bali & Indonesia Visa on Arrival 2026: What You Actually Need

If you're flying into Bali this year — whether that's two adults on a long weekend or my kind of trip, three kids and a grandparent in tow — the visa itself is the easy part. What trips families up in 2026 isn't the visa; it's the three other things Indonesia now wants before you land, and the fact that nobody tells you a six-month-old baby needs their own visa and their own tourist levy with no discount. This is the calm, in-order checklist: what to pay, when to pay it, what to do at the airport, and exactly how it differs when you're travelling with children. I'll flag what I'd verify the week you fly, because entry rules here genuinely do shift.

Is this trip right for your family?

This isn't a "should we go to Bali" piece — Bali is one of the easiest places in Southeast Asia to land with kids, and I'll happily defend that. This is the entry-admin piece. The honest read: the paperwork in 2026 is more involved than it was a few years ago, but every single step is doable from your sofa before you fly, and doing it in advance is the difference between walking off the plane and through an e-gate in fifteen seconds versus standing in a 90-minute queue with a melting toddler.

Who'll find this straightforward: anyone comfortable filling in an online form and paying with a Visa or Mastercard. Who'll want to budget extra patience: families with kids under 14 (they can't use the fast e-gates — more on that below), and anyone on a passport that's close to its expiry date. Get those two things sorted early and the rest is genuinely a non-event.

Getting there with kids

Most Western nationalities — Australians, Brits, Americans, New Zealanders, Canadians, and Indian passport holders among them — get the visa on arrival (VoA) for Indonesia. A quick word for the specific question a lot of readers arrive with: no, Bali is not visa-free for Indian citizens. Indian passport holders are eligible for the same visa on arrival as everyone else, but it must be paid for — it is not free, and there's no separate Indian-only free entry. The same goes for Australians and Brits: eligible, not free.

Here's the thing most guides bury: the visa on arrival is not available at every airport in Indonesia. Per the official immigration portal, the standard visitor VoA is issued at a defined list of entry points — Bali's Ngurah Rai (DPS) and Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta (CGK) are the two that matter for almost every family, and they're fully equipped for it. If you're flying into a smaller or regional Indonesian airport on a connecting leg, check that your specific entry point issues the VoA before you assume it does; some don't, and you'd need a visa arranged in advance instead. For a Bali holiday landing at DPS, you're completely fine.

The visa itself:

• Cost: IDR 500,000 per person — roughly USD 35 / AUD 50, depending on the day's rate.

• Stay: 30 days from the day you arrive.

• Type: single entry. If you leave Indonesia and want to come back, you buy a new one.

• Extension: can be extended once, for another 30 days (60 days total maximum).

You have two ways to get it, and for a family I strongly recommend the first.

Option 1 — the e-VoA (apply online before you fly). Go to the official portal, evisa.imigrasi.go.id, create an account, upload each traveller's passport photo page and a passport-style photo, pay the IDR 500,000, and you'll get an electronic visa by email. You can apply up to a few days before arrival (the portal currently allows it within three days of your arrival date, so don't do it weeks ahead). The e-VoA is valid for 90 days from issue, meaning the visa is good to use for entry within that window — the 30-day clock only starts when you actually land.

The reason I push families toward the e-VoA: it lets the adults use the automated e-gates at Ngurah Rai. Scan passport, face check, gate opens — about fifteen seconds, versus an immigration hall that routinely runs 60–90 minutes on afternoon wide-body arrivals. After a long flight with kids, that queue is the worst part of the whole trip, and the e-VoA is how you skip it.

Option 2 — the VoA counter on arrival. Still available. You land, queue at the VoA payment counter, pay IDR 500,000 (card or cash), then queue again at immigration. It works, and if you forgot to do the e-VoA it's your fallback, but you're doing two queues instead of zero. The only reason to choose this deliberately is if your card payments are failing on the online portal (it happens).

One more booking-stage detail: keep a copy of an onward or return flight handy. The portal asks about it, and immigration can ask to see proof you're leaving.

Where to stay

I'm not going to send you to a specific resort in a visa article — that's a whole separate piece — but there are two location facts that intersect with the paperwork and are worth knowing before you book.

First, your accommodation address goes on the arrival card (below), so have your first night's booking confirmed before you fill it in. Second, if there's any chance you'll want to extend past 30 days, your base matters: the extension is now done in person at a local immigration office, and Bali's are in Denpasar and Jimbaran. A family parked up in Canggu or Ubud for a month should factor in that you'll lose the better part of a day on the extension run — or pay a visa agent to shepherd it, which most long-stay families do. If your trip is two weeks, ignore all of this; you're nowhere near the limit.

What to actually do

Here's the part that catches people out in 2026. The visa is one of four entry items, and three of them are free but mandatory. Do them in this order in the week before you fly.

1. The visa (e-VoA). Covered above. IDR 500,000 per person, including every child and infant — yes, the baby pays full price (more in the family section).

2. The All Indonesia arrival card. This is the big 2026 change. Indonesia has merged what used to be three separate forms — the customs declaration (e-CD), the health declaration, and the arrival card — into one unified digital form called All Indonesia, submitted at the official immigration portal. It's mandatory, free, and required for every traveller, including children and infants, even if you already have your visa. Submit it within 72 hours of arrival; you'll get a QR code by email that you show at the airport. It asks for your accommodation address, recent travel, anything you're declaring, and — a detail that surprises people — the IMEI number of phones you're bringing in, as part of Indonesia's device-registration system. Screenshot the QR code and take a printout as backup; airport wifi and a flat phone battery are a bad combination at the one moment you need to scan it.

3. The Bali tourist levy. Bali (and only Bali — this is a provincial charge, not a national one) requires a IDR 150,000 levy per foreign visitor, roughly USD 10 / AUD 14. Pay it before you travel via the official Love Bali platform (lovebali.baliprov.go.id) and you'll get a QR voucher. Crucially for families: there is no child or infant exemption. Every person pays IDR 150,000, newborn included. You pay it once per trip, not per day.

4. Your passport. Indonesia requires at least six months' validity from your date of arrival, plus at least one blank page for the stamp. Check every passport in the family now, not the night before — kids' passports especially, because they're issued for shorter terms and quietly expire between trips. A passport with five months left is a denied-boarding situation at your home airport, before Indonesia even enters into it.

That's the full set. Two paid items (visa + levy), two free items (arrival card + a valid passport). Everything except the on-the-day passport check can be done online in advance.

Eating with kids

The one piece of "eating" advice that belongs in a visa article: budget realistically for the arrival-day costs so you're not caught short before you've even found dinner.

Tally it per person, because that's how Indonesia charges — not per family:

• Visa on arrival: IDR 500,000 (~AUD 50)

• Bali tourist levy: IDR 150,000 (~AUD 14)

• Total per head: IDR 650,000, roughly AUD 65 / USD 45

For my family of five that's about AUD 325 in entry costs before we've left the airport, and the figure that genuinely catches parents off guard is that the toddler and the baby each cost exactly the same as the adults. Pre-pay all of it online and the only cash you need on landing is for a taxi or a SIM card — don't let an airport currency desk talk you into a terrible rate because you assumed you'd be paying for visas at the counter.

Health, safety, and the unglamorous stuff

No vaccination certificate is required for entry from Australia, the UK, the US, or most Western countries in 2026 — there's no yellow-fever requirement unless you're arriving from a country where it's endemic. The All Indonesia form does include a brief health declaration; answer it honestly and it's a non-event.

A few practical safety notes that sit alongside the paperwork:

• The official portals only. Use evisa.imigrasi.go.id for the visa, the official immigration site for the All Indonesia card, and lovebali.baliprov.go.id for the levy. There is a thriving industry of lookalike sites that charge a fat "service fee" to fill in the same free or IDR 500,000 government forms on your behalf. They're not scams exactly — they do submit your application — but you're paying a premium for something you can do yourself in ten minutes. A legitimate visa agent is worth it for a complicated long-stay extension; it is not worth it to click "submit" on an arrival card.

• Keep the QR codes accessible. I put the visa PDF, the All Indonesia QR, and the Love Bali QR in one folder on my phone and print a copy for each adult. If one phone dies, the trip doesn't stall at immigration.

• Overstaying is expensive. Indonesia fines overstays at IDR 1,000,000 per person per day. With kids it's easy to lose track of the date — set a phone reminder for day 25 so you've got time to either leave or start an extension before the clock runs out.

A sample itinerary

Here's the timeline I actually run, mapped to the trip. Adjust the dates to your departure.

3–4 weeks before: Check every passport for six months' validity and a blank page. Renew anything marginal now — this is the only step with a long lead time. Book at least your first night's accommodation so you have an address.

1 week before (but no earlier than 3 days out for the visa):

• Apply for the e-VoA at evisa.imigrasi.go.id — one application per person, kids included. Pay IDR 500,000 each. Save the PDFs.

• Pay the Bali tourist levy at lovebali.baliprov.go.id — IDR 150,000 per person. Save the QR vouchers.

Within 72 hours of your flight:

• Submit the All Indonesia arrival card for every traveller. Have your accommodation address and your phones' IMEI numbers ready. Screenshot and print every QR code.

Departure day: Confirm onward/return flight details are accessible. One folder, one printout per adult.

On arrival at Ngurah Rai (DPS):

• Adults (14+) with an e-VoA and a biometric passport: head to the automated e-gates. Scan, face check, through.

• Children under 14, and anyone without an e-VoA: go to the manual immigration counter — note that the whole family will need to use the manual lane together if you have under-14s, since the kids can't use the e-gates regardless of having a visa. It's slower, but having your QR codes ready keeps it moving.

• Show the All Indonesia QR at customs on the way out. Collect bags, find your driver, and you're on holiday.

The bottom line

Would I do this with my own three, plus my parents, again? Without hesitation — I have, and I will. The 2026 entry process looks busier than it used to because of the All Indonesia card and the levy, but it's all front-loaded admin you can knock out from home in one sitting the week before you fly. The genuine traps are the boring ones: an expiring kid's passport, forgetting that infants pay full freight on both the visa and the levy, and assuming the e-gates will save you when half your travellers are too young to use them. Sort those three, pre-pay everything, keep your QR codes in your pocket, and Bali's border becomes the fifteen-second formality it should be — leaving you to get on with the actual holiday.

Verify before you fly: entry rules in Indonesia change with little notice. In the week before departure, reconfirm the IDR 500,000 visa fee, the IDR 150,000 levy, and the All Indonesia card requirement against the three official portals named above — not a blog, not this article. This guide was last checked in May 2026.