Indonesia visa on arrival fee increase 2026: announced, not yet in force, and your Komodo trip

On Wednesday 12 August 2026, at a briefing in Jakarta, Indonesia's Director General of Immigration, Hendarsam Marantoko, set out a two-tier price for the visa on arrival. Two outlets reported it the same day: RRI, the state broadcaster, and The Star in Malaysia, which carried the account of Antara, the Indonesian news agency.

The numbers, as both reports give them, are these. The fee today is 500,000 rupiah, about 29 to 30 US dollars by RRI's conversion. Under the new scheme an e-visa completed before departure would cost 750,000 rupiah, about 43 dollars, and a visa bought on arrival 1,000,000 rupiah, about 57.

For a big party the gap earns a line in the budget. Our own arithmetic, should the tiers come in: 24 guests paying at the airport rather than online would hand over 6,000,000 rupiah more between them, 24 times the 250,000 rupiah difference. It is a small sum beside a charter, and an entirely avoidable one.

The reasons given were the slide of the rupiah, a fee the Director General considered too low for state revenue, and a wish to move applications online and thin the queues in the arrival hall.

Here the reporting thins, and we would rather say so than paper over it.

No report we read gives a start date, and none names the regulation that would set the new fee. Techloy wrote on 13 August that Indonesia could soon raise it. VisaVerge, on 14 August and again in an update of 18 October, called it a proposal rather than a confirmed tariff, and Executive Traveller, on 18 August, a proposal the government had not yet approved. RRI's headline says Indonesia implements the tiers, yet its own text carries no date either.

The official side confirms this by saying nothing new. Immigration's Yogyakarta office, on a page last updated on 4 November 2025, still lists the visa on arrival at 500,000 rupiah, and we found no immigration notice of a new fee. VisaVerge also reports that the Tourism Minister said on 19 July 2026 that she knew of no plan, at that point, to raise visa fees.

So the honest position on 4 November 2026 is this: announced on 12 August, and not in force as far as any source we could find shows. We cannot tell you which fee your flight will meet. We can tell you how to sidestep the dearer one, should it arrive, and that is to apply before you fly.

On the e-visa itself, Immigration's release of 20 February 2023 says it can be used to enter within 90 days of issue, gives a stay of 30 days from the entry stamp, and can be extended once, for another 30 days.

The visa is one cost. The All Indonesia arrival card is another document, and it costs nothing. Immigration made it compulsory on 1 October 2025 for every passenger arriving from abroad, and it folds the immigration, customs, health and quarantine declarations into one online form, according to the directorate's press release announcing it.

The same release says the form opens three days before arrival, at allindonesia.imigrasi.go.id or in the app of the same name. Wego's guide, updated on 8 June 2026, and Executive Traveller both say the official card is free, so a site that asks you to pay for it is not the official one. Neither says what happens if you skip it, and we will not guess.

A night in Bali before the short hop to Labuan Bajo changes none of this. The card belongs to the flight that brings you into Indonesia; submit it once the window has opened and it is done.

Most of our guests reach Komodo through Bali, so the Bali levy comes up at most tables. The provincial government sets it at 150,000 rupiah per foreign tourist, paid once during a stay in Bali, through lovebali.baliprov.go.id. Wego's guide, updated on 4 July 2026, gives the same figure and calls it a charge once per trip. It is a Bali levy, and Labuan Bajo has no part in it.

Whether it applies to someone who only changes planes in Bali is where the sources part company. The province's own page does not mention transit, and nor does Wego. One dive operator's visa page, read on 4 November 2026, says the levy applies if you transit Bali in both directions. We found nothing official either way, and we are not going to settle the point by guessing. If your route only passes through Bali, read the Love Bali FAQ before you fly.

If you sleep in Bali before the flight on, treat the levy as payable, and pay it.

Immigration has warned about this before. In a press release of 6 December 2022 it described a lookalike e-visa site that sat at the top of Google's results and took payments through a payment gateway, just as the genuine one does, and it called the matter cybercrime. The warning is old; the trick is not.

The practical rule is that the genuine addresses end in go.id. Immigration's Yogyakarta office points visa holders to evisa.imigrasi.go.id, the arrival card lives at allindonesia.imigrasi.go.id, and the Bali levy at lovebali.baliprov.go.id. A page ending in .com or .org that asks for a card number is none of these.

We cannot apply for your visa. We can tell you where to look.

One habit is worth acquiring. Type the address yourself instead of following an advertisement, and keep the confirmation email and the QR code on your phone before you leave home, since an arrival hall is a poor place to hunt for a signal.

For the coming departures: the Vhale open trip starts on Monday & Friday, and the next one listed is Friday, 6 November 2026. A private charter sails on any day the boat is free.

• Apply for the e-visa before you fly, and keep the receipt. Today it costs the same as the visa at the airport; if the announced tiers come in, the advance application is the one with the lower figure.
• Leave a margin in the budget. If you cannot apply in advance, the announced airport figure is 1,000,000 rupiah a head. Visa costs are never part of our fare.
• Fill in the arrival card once its window opens, three days before you land, and not before.
• Ask us about Bali. If you stay there, treat the levy as payable; if you only change planes, check the Love Bali portal.
• Keep the Komodo park package in its own column. It is priced per trip type, and nothing on this page touches it.

We will update this page when a start date is published, or when the plan is dropped.