Singapore Turned Away 45,700 Visitors Last Year: Refusals Up 38%

If you have read that Singapore's approval rates are running high, it is worth knowing that no such statistic exists. What does exist points the other way.

The number
Singapore's Immigration and Checkpoints Authority publishes an Annual Statistics Report. The 2025 edition records that the number of foreign visitors refused entry at Singapore's checkpoints rose 38.3% year on year, from 33,100 in 2024 to 45,700 in 2025.

ICA attributes the refusals to assessed immigration and security risk.

Why you will not find an approval rate
ICA's statistics page publishes three series: the Singapore Demographic Bulletins, the Report on Registration of Births and Deaths, and the Annual Statistics Report. The Annual Statistics Report covers clearance volumes, enforcement efforts and transformation plans.

None of them is an approval-rate metric. The term does not appear in the 2025 report.

That is worth stating plainly, because "Singapore approval rates are high" circulates widely on travel and visa-agency sites. It is not sourced to anything ICA publishes, because ICA does not publish it.

What this means for travellers
Singapore is a straightforward destination for most visitors, and the great majority arrive without difficulty. But refusal at the checkpoint is a live and rising risk, and it is a decision made at the border rather than in advance.

The refusals are not the result of a paperwork technicality in most cases. They follow an officer's assessment. What a traveller can control is the evidence they are able to produce on request: confirmed onward travel, accommodation, a coherent account of the purpose and length of the visit, and sufficient funds.

Travellers who arrive with a one-way ticket and no accommodation booked are the ones most likely to be asked questions they cannot answer.

A note on the arrival card
Singapore requires visitors to submit an SG Arrival Card before entry. It is free, and it is available only through ICA's official service or the official ICA mobile application.

ICA maintains a standing public advisory warning that fraudulent websites impersonate the service and charge travellers for what costs nothing. If you are being asked to pay for an SG Arrival Card, you are not on an official channel.

We do not charge for arrival cards either. They are a government form, not a service, and any operator adding a fee to one is charging you for nothing.

The takeaway
Do not plan around an approval rate that no authority publishes. Plan around the fact that entry is assessed at the border, that refusals rose by more than a third last year, and that the documents you can produce on request are what the assessment turns on.

Verified against the ICA Annual Statistics Report 2025 and ICA public advisories.