Background: COVID-19 is pandemic disease, so the worldwide governments switched to distance education to limit its spread. The abrupt transition from the classical classroom to the virtual one is upsetting the students and nursing instructors. Aim: To assess nursing students' perception of distance education and its relation with perceived academic stress and emotional intelligence during COVID-19. Design: Descriptive correlational design was utilized in this research. Sample: Simple random sample from all the four years nursing students, the total student's number was (845) students. Setting: This research was performed in the Faculty of Nursing at Minia University. Tools: Four tools were used in this research involved. Demographic data questionnaire, distance education perception scale, perceived academic stress scale and emotional intelligence scale. Results: The research result reveals that mean age of the students was19.4±2.7 years old, 76.5% of students are females. 52.3% had negative perception and 47.7% of students had positive perception toward distance education.  While 57% of students suffer from high academic stress and 66.5% of students showed moderate emotional intelligence. Conclusion: more than fifty percent of the students suffer from high academic stress. Also, there was statistically significant relation between student's demographic characteristics and their perception towards distance education, perceived academic stress and emotional intelligence scale Recommendations:  Introducing novel developments to distance learning methodologies in the learning programs as well as during students training on the utilization of the electronic library to get the best outcomes.