Arrival day in Azerbaijan: what to have ready, in order

Arrival day has five moving parts. Your entry permission, the passport you carry, some cash, a telephone that works, and a way to the address you are staying at.

Two of those have to be settled at home, and the other three are straightforward on the day, provided you made the decision before you flew. The rest of this page is simply the order they come in.

If your flight is already booked, send us the number and your address on WhatsApp. We will confirm the car, and leave the rest of the day to you.

How to use this list

This is a list for the day you land rather than a guide to the country.

It assumes you are flying into Heydar Aliyev Airport and going on to a hotel or an apartment in Baku. If you are driving straight out to the regions instead, the same list holds, but the road is considerably longer and the shops close sooner.

Each item says what to do and when. At home means before you leave. On the day means it can safely wait until you are here. Nothing on this list requires an agency, and most of it takes about ten minutes.

The day, in order

1. Entry permission, at home

Deal with this first, because nothing else on the list can rescue it afterwards.

The Azerbaijan e-visa guide sets out the fees and the timing, with the official government portal cited beside them. A standard e-visa carries a state fee of USD 20 and is issued within three working days. The urgent option costs USD 60 and is issued within three hours.

Do not read “three working days” as three calendar days. An application made on Thursday can sit across a weekend, and the urgent option exists for precisely that situation. It is worth knowing about before you actually need it.

2. The passport you will actually carry, at home

If you hold more than one passport, apply on the one you intend to travel on.

A visa issued against a different document is not valid at the border, and the mismatch is discovered at the worst possible moment. Compare the number on the approved visa with the number in the passport in your bag, at home rather than at check-in.

3. Copies of everything, at home

Photograph the identity page of your passport, your entry permission, your insurance certificate and your flight booking.

Keep them somewhere you can open without the bag they might be lost with. Our page on documents to carry in Azerbaijan explains what belongs on you and what belongs in the hotel safe.

4. Money for the first day, on the day

Central Baku runs comfortably on cards, because hotels, restaurants and supermarkets all take them. You do not need to land holding a stack of notes.

Carry a small amount of cash anyway, for a kiosk or a tip. Our page on money in Azerbaijan covers the part that genuinely catches visitors out, which is that the regions work the other way round entirely.

5. A telephone that works, on the day

There are three sensible options and none of them is wrong. You can roam on your existing plan, buy a travel eSIM before you fly, or collect a local number once you are here.

Decide which one at home and act on it here. Our page on SIM cards and data compares the three properly. Download your offline map before you board, because that is the one part of this you cannot fix in an arrivals hall.

6. The drive into the city, booked before you fly

The airport sits east of Baku and our route data records about thirty minutes for the drive in normal conditions.

Booking it in advance means the first hour goes on the road rather than on an argument about price at a kerb. Our airport to city centre transfer page lists what we need in order to quote it. If you land after midnight, read arriving in Baku at night before you finish planning.

The checklist in one table

Item	When	Where it goes wrong
Entry permission	At home	Counted in calendar days, not working days
Passport choice	At home	Applied on one passport, travelling on another
Copies of documents	At home	Saved only in an email nobody can open
Hotel address in writing	At home	Only the brand name, never the street
Cash for day one	On the day	Landed with nothing, everything already shut
Telephone and data	On the day	Map downloaded after the signal disappeared
Car to the address	Booked before	Arranged at the kerb while exhausted
First morning plan	At home	Tour booked for eight after a four o’clock check-in

What goes wrong on arrival day

Almost every difficult first day here comes from one of four decisions.

The first is counting the visa in calendar days. Three working days across a weekend becomes five, and people generally discover this on the Friday afternoon.

The second is an address that is a hotel brand rather than a street. Drivers here work from a street name, a building and a district, so write the full address out and take a telephone number for the property.

The third is arranging the car after landing. You are tired, the signage may be in a script you do not read, and your sense of a reasonable price is at its lowest. That is a poor moment to negotiate anything at all.

The fourth is booking a tour for eight the following morning. Give the first morning away and begin after lunch instead, because you will see more of the city and enjoy considerably more of it.

What to send us

Send the flight number, the date, the number of passengers and the address you are going to.

We will confirm the vehicle and the current price for that particular run. If the flight moves, tell us immediately, because a delay is an ordinary night here and it is exactly why the car is arranged beforehand.