Nepal visa on arrival online form opens 15 days out — 12 nationalities excluded

Quick summary

Nepal’s e-Visa/ETA portal went live on August 17, 2026, adding an online pre-submission step for arrivals at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport. It is not a fast pass: filing early does not clear the immigration line, the portal caps how many applications it processes per day, and 12 nationalities can’t use the on-arrival route at all.

Eligibility rules are nationality-specific and can change without notice, so verify yours before booking. Below: how early to file, who must arrange a visa before flying, and how the extension pathway actually ends.

Air Traveler Club’s airport tracking flags the afternoon arrival bank, when Middle East and India flights land within minutes of each other, as Kathmandu’s longest immigration queue. Queues at Tribhuvan International Airport (KTM) can reach two hours during that window — before a single bag is claimed. It is long enough to cost you a same-day domestic connection or a pre-booked transfer, and it eats a first evening. Most travelers never plan for it.

For US and Canadian travelers, the fix is procedural. Nepal’s visa on arrival online form can be filed up to 14 days before departure; skip the online payment step (the payment page is the glitchy part), print the barcode, and carry exact USD cash to the payment counter at KTM, in small notes if you have them. It is a small task with a large payoff.

As of October 2026, visa on arrival still operates at KTM, and the process has not moved fully online. One set of travelers can pre-solve almost everything before boarding. For a smaller set, the work starts before they book. Nepal’s guidance points travelers toward online pre-arrival submission; the form is the easy part, and the rules around it are where trips get complicated.

How Nepal’s visa on arrival online form works

The form’s job is narrower than its name suggests. It moves your data entry off the airport floor: instead of queuing at self-service kiosks to key in passport details and itinerary, you land with that work already done. Nepal’s online visa application portal runs this pre-submission alongside the older kiosk process, so both paths exist at KTM. For pre-filers, arrival skips a stage: walk past the kiosk bank and go straight to the payment counter.

The payment step is best handled in person. Nepal’s portal has a reputation for glitching at the payment stage, and card terminals at KTM are a gamble of their own: they fail, and card processing carries a 15% surcharge. Exact USD notes keep the counter transaction quick. Our guide to what the visa-on-arrival counter accepts covers the cash side in more detail, including why small bills help.

One artifact matters at the counter: the printed barcode.

Who can use visa on arrival

Nepal’s entry rules split travelers into three rough groups. Indian nationals skip the tourist visa requirement altogether, per the Nepal Tourism Board. Almost every other foreign traveler needs a tourist visa. The question is where it gets issued: at a Nepali mission before you fly, or at KTM’s on-arrival counter.

Most nationalities can use the on-arrival route. The Embassy of Nepal in Canberra names Australia and New Zealand among the eligible, and the practice extends well beyond them. The exceptions are narrow, but they are absolute.

Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Iraq, Iran, Liberia, Nigeria, Palestine, Somalia, Syria and Zimbabwe must secure a visa before travel, per the Nepal Tourism Board’s list, and that list may not be exhaustive. For everyone else, the practical question is only about timing.

Where travelers still get it wrong

Two failure modes survive every online improvement, and both start before the flight. The first is eligibility. A traveler whose nationality requires a pre-approved visa shows up counting on the airport form to resolve it. It cannot, and the queue they join leads nowhere.

The second is timing. Nepal’s portal limits how many submissions it takes per day, so a late filing can slip past your departure date. The final week before a flight is the worst possible window for a paperwork problem.

Neither mistake is fixable at the counter, and both are avoidable at home.

The rules for extending your visa

Nepal handles arrival paperwork and extension paperwork on separate tracks, each with its own timing rules. The form you filed before flying has no bearing on how long you can stay, and the extension process starts only when you decide to use it.

The extension ceiling is 150 days in total: 120 days within a visa year, plus another 30. Per Embassy of Nepal guidance, the final 30 days are handled in Kathmandu, so the endgame of a long stay runs through the capital.

If your itinerary runs anywhere near that ceiling, start the process while you still have slack. Extension timelines do not bend for trekking schedules or missed flights home, and the travelers who get squeezed are the ones who count days at the end instead of the start.

What to file before you fly

Two weeks before departure is when the window opens, and these moves take about ten minutes in total.

• Check eligibility first: run your passport against Nepal’s pre-approval list before you book anything.
• File inside the window: submit through Nepal’s official portal up to 14 days out, and skip the online payment step.
• Print the barcode: keep the paper copy in your hand luggage.
• Carry exact USD cash: small notes if you have them, for the payment counter.
• Extending later? File the extension while you still have slack in your itinerary.

None of this takes long before you fly, and the difference it makes at KTM is measured in hours. Travelers who do the prep reach their hotel while everyone else is still shuffling toward a kiosk.

Do the ten minutes, and the airport becomes the easy part.

Questions? Answers.