Do You Need a New Cambodia e-Arrival Card Each Trip? US Visitor Guide

Why the e-Arrival Card never carries over

The reason comes down to what the card actually is. The e-Arrival Card bundles three things Cambodian Immigration needs for a specific landing: an arrival declaration (who is entering and on what passport), a flight and accommodation declaration (which aircraft, which day, where you will be), and a customs declaration (what you are bringing in this time). Every one of those is trip-specific. Your flight number changes, your arrival date changes, what you are carrying changes — so the document built around them has to change too.

When you submit, the system returns a QR code that encodes that one declaration and ties it to that one arrival date. At the kiosk, the officer scans the code to pull up your record for that entry. Once you have been admitted, the code has done its job. It is not a membership card or a pass you keep in your wallet — it is a single-use receipt for a single crossing. There is nothing for the next trip to reuse, because the data inside it only ever described the last one.

No account, no saved profile, no "remember me"

It is worth being blunt about this, because returning travelers keep looking for the shortcut: there is no account to log into and no stored profile that pre-fills your details. The system does not connect this trip to your last one even though the passport number is identical. That is partly by design — a fresh declaration each time means a fresh customs answer each time, which is the point of a customs declaration. So every trip you re-enter the same handful of personal fields plus the new trip details. It is not a lot, but it is from scratch each time.

The 7-day window resets for every arrival

Because every trip needs its own card, every trip also gets its own 7-day filing window. The card for an entry opens 7 days before that arrival date and not before — and that floor applies independently to each visit. So if you have a trip next month and another one three months later, you cannot knock out both cards in one sitting today. The first card files inside the week before the first landing; the second card files inside the week before the second landing. There is no batching them in advance.

This is the part returning visitors most want to streamline and cannot. The instinct, once you know the routine, is to do all your admin at once — but the system will reject a card filed outside its window as too early. For a planner with two or three Cambodia trips on the calendar, that means setting a reminder for each arrival rather than treating the e-Arrival Card as a one-and-done task. The good news is that the second and third filings are faster than the first, because you already know exactly what each field wants.

The timezone math matters on every one of these filings, not just the first. Cambodia runs 11 to 14 hours ahead of the US mainland, so a card you think is exactly 7 days out from a US clock can read as too early to the Cambodian system. The simplest fix on every trip is to file on day 3 or day 4 rather than racing the window open. If you are juggling several trips in a year, our guide to planning multiple Cambodia trips in one year and the visa timeline lays out how the eVisa and e-Arrival schedules stack up across a calendar.

How this differs from your eVisa renewal

Returning visitors often blur the e-Arrival Card and the eVisa together, but they repeat on different logic, and keeping them straight saves a lot of confusion. The eVisa is your permission to enter the country. The e-Arrival Card is the arrival and customs declaration you make as you cross. They are two separate steps, filed at different times, and they renew for different reasons.

The Cambodia eVisa is single entry. That means it covers one trip — once you leave the country, it is used up, and a return visit needs a fresh eVisa. So in practice the eVisa is also new per trip for most returning visitors, but the reason is the single-entry rule, not the per-arrival mechanic. The eVisa is valid for 3 months from issue and allows a 30-day stay, and you apply for it weeks ahead. The e-Arrival Card, by contrast, is new per arrival no matter what, and you file it in the final week. Both repeat, but the eVisa repeats because you used your single entry, and the e-Arrival Card repeats because it is built for exactly one crossing.

The order of operations on a repeat trip

• First, well ahead of the trip: apply for a fresh single-entry eVisa — Tourist $80 USD or Business $90 USD, approved in 3 business days and delivered as a printable PDF by email.
• Then, inside the 7 days before that arrival: file a fresh e-Arrival Card for $5 USD with the new flight and accommodation details for this specific trip.
• At the kiosk: present the eVisa PDF and the e-Arrival QR code for this entry — both are mandatory for every air arrival, every time.

The repeat rhythm is the same on each trip: eVisa first, weeks out; e-Arrival Card last, inside the window. The Cambodia visa for US citizens hub keeps the current fees and rules in one place if you want to confirm them before each application. The mistake returning visitors make is assuming one or both steps carry over from last time — neither does, and treating each trip as a clean slate is what keeps the kiosk smooth.

Making the repeat filing painless

The card being new every trip does not have to mean it is a chore every trip. After the first one, the form holds no surprises — you know which fields read day-month-year, you know the accommodation field only wants a name and city rather than a booking reference, and you know to save the QR code offline before you fly. The second filing takes a few minutes, and the third is faster still. The only thing that genuinely repeats as a risk is the small handful of slips that catch US travelers regardless of how many times they have done it.

The date format is the recurring one. The form reads day-month-year in places, and US travelers default to month-day-year out of habit — enter your arrival as 06/07 thinking July 6th when the system reads June 7th, and your date is a month off from the manifest. That trap does not go away because you are a repeat visitor; if anything, familiarity makes it easier to rush and slip. The second recurring risk is entering last trip’s flight or address by muscle memory instead of this trip’s actual details. A clean habit is to read each field off the current confirmation rather than from memory.

Keep a short personal note with the details that never change — your passport number, full name as it appears on the bio page, date of birth, and nationality — so the static fields take seconds and you focus your attention on the trip-specific ones that actually move. That is the closest thing to a "saved profile" the process allows: your own note, not a stored account. With that in hand, each new card is genuinely quick, and the per-arrival rule stops feeling like a tax on returning.

Putting it together for returning US visitors

The rule is simple once it clicks: one card per landing, no carry-over, no account, no exceptions. Every trip into Cambodia by air gets its own e-Arrival Card, filed inside its own 7-day window, with this trip’s flight, this trip’s accommodation, and this trip’s customs declaration. Your last card did its job and is spent. The next one is a fresh, quick build — faster each time you do it, but always new.

Keep the two steps in the right order on every repeat trip. The fresh single-entry eVisa comes first — Tourist $80 USD or Business $90 USD, approved in 3 business days and delivered as a printable PDF by email. The e-Arrival Card comes last, a new one inside the 7-day window before each arrival. If you would rather see the form field by field before your next filing, our breakdown of the e-Arrival app vs the website shows both ways to complete it.

When you file a verified e-Arrival Card through us, we handle the per-trip repetition for you — $5 USD per entry, submitted inside the window and checked end-to-end before it reaches Cambodian Immigration. We confirm the name against your passport, the flight number against your final leg, and the date format that flags so many Americans, every trip, not just the first. If a field is off we catch it before it becomes a kiosk problem, and if Immigration flags a correction there is no extra charge to fix it.

Next steps and related reading for returning US visitors: file your verified e-Arrival Card once you are inside the 7-day window for your next trip, confirm whether you need a new Cambodia eVisa every trip, check the exact 7-day submission window timing, and apply for your Cambodia eVisa when you are ready for the next visit.