Any tourist traveling to Curacao by plane will have to present a Digital Immigration Card (DI Card) at customs upon arrival at Hato Airport. How and what with the Digital Immigration Card we explain here.
DI Card Curacao
The Digital Immigration Card (DI Card) is required for every tourist who wants to travel to Curacao. You need this DI Card to pass through customs upon arrival at Hato Airport in Curacao. The DI Card is mandatory for anyone (regardless of age) who wants to travel to Curacao and is not registered as a resident of Curacao. Being born in Curacao or not makes no difference here, it is about being a resident of Curacao or not. The DI Card is also required for residents of Bonaire and Aruba, although they often pass through customs on Curacao without a DI Card.
You will be checked for your DI Card at check-in.
Online applications ED form
The DI Card, also called ED Card after Embarcation and Disembarcation Card as it used to be called, is the modern online replacement for the piece of paper you used to be handed out on the plane to fill out when and why you would be in Curaçao and where you are staying. We don’t do that paper on the plane these days, this only goes online. But everything else is still the same: personal info (from your passport), your flight details and your accommodation.
DI Card is free!
The DI Card (ED card) is completely free. All it costs is about 5 to 10 minutes of your time and a printout. So don’t apply through agencies that charge money for this (US$ 25 or more), because then you are just paying for an extra and unnecessary link and you still have to fill in all the info yourself. They even try to take money out of your pocket by offering a rush procedure, but that is nonsense. You arrange it yourself within 10 minutes via the DI Card website. Don’t fall for it!
DI Card: where & when
Apply for the DI Card online at dicardcuracao.com. You can apply for the DI Card starting 7 days before departure, but since it obviously only makes sense to do this when you’re actually going, our advice is to do it after you’ve checked in online, usually about 24 hours before departure. Then you have all the necessary information together and you can fill everything out fairly easily. If you do this earlier, you have a chance that your flight will still be changed and you will have to go back to adjust the DI Card.
DI Card: not for cruise tourists
The DI Card is intended for tourists who stay at least one night on Curacao.
Tourists who visit Curacao on a cruise are not included. Even if they stay overnight on the ship docked at Curacao (which is not considered Curacao territory).
Arrange excursions before departure
In Curacao, of course, you want to do some fun things. But some excursions are fully booked (well) in advance, such as Klein Curacao, swimming with dolphins and Aquafari. Better arrange this before you leave for Curacao. Most popular excursions:
Avoid seasickness
Klein Curacao | Powerboat
Most popular dolphin tour!
Dolphin Swim
Beachhouse with watchtower
Klein Curacao | Mermaid
Klein Curaçao & Sunset Cruise
Catamaran: Klein Curacao & Sunset Cruise
Fun for kids
Dolphin Encounter
Beachhouse with sunbeds
Klein Curacao | Miss Ann
Stylish & luxurious
Klein Curacao | Catamaran Yacht
Personal data
The DI Card offers a nice little convenience: you can upload a photo of your passport and that will automatically extract and fill in all the necessary data from the photo. Convenient, fast and it prevents typos. But … experience shows that it is far from always possible to upload the photo and thus have the data filled in automatically. No problem, you can always do the entry manually as well.
Use previously supplied info
Have you ever filled out a DI Card for Curacao before? That’s great, now you can retrieve that data and it’s a snap. When you go to fill out the DI Card, the first question you get is whether you have filled out the DI Card before. So click “Yes, I have filled this out before” here. If you then enter your email, date of birth and passport no. enter, your data will be pulled from the database and you won’t have to enter it again. All you need to fill in now are the new flight details and your accommodation. And at the very bottom, to confirm, you have to enter your email again and check that you are not a robot. Nice and simple, nice and fast.
Note: Think of this primarily as a tool to help request the DI Card more quickly on repeat visits. Have you been to Curacao before but can’t recall the DI Card from that trip from the database? No problem, just refill the DI Card. You will not then have a problem because you might end up in the database twice, but that is o.k.
What does the DI Card look like?
What else?
Can you travel to Curacao with just the Digital Immigration Card or do you have more to arrange as a travel document? As a tourist, you need:
1- obviously a valid passport
2- this DI Card
3- a return ticket. Before you can enter Curacao, they want to make sure you can also leave the island again. This rule is o f preventing Curacao from having to take you in if you run out of money.
Plus, the DI Card is purely informational for Curacao Customs about who is coming to the island at what time. It offers no assurance that by granting you this document you will enter Curacao. That decision is made at customs in Curacao.
Frequently asked questions regarding DI Card
Passport control on Curacao
At Curacao’s Hato Airport, you have 3 ways to go through passport control:
1- Personal passport control by customs officer. This is, so to speak, the “old-fashioned” way, where you have to pass by a customs officer who looks at your papers and puts a stamp in your passport. Note: if you have children aged 16 or younger in your travel party, this is the only way to get through passport control.
2- Passport control through eGates. These are the gates you have to go through where you have to have your passport scanned by the machine. Usually this is a much faster flow than the in-person check. This is only allowed for travelers 17 years of age or older, you must have a fairly new passport with a chip in it and you must have arranged the DI Card at least 24 hours in advance.
But it can be even faster!
3- Passport control via Curacao Express Pass. Since July 2024, you can also initiate your passport check in advance at home via an app. This is possible for travelers aged 16 or older from Europe, U.S. or Canada.
Quickly through Schiphol Airport?
Don’t feel like walking from row to row at Schiphol already? Then read these handy tips for getting through check-in and checks at Schiphol quickly.
