Thailand Digital Arrival Card — your TDAC, read and filed

This is the detail that catches people out, and it is worth being exact about. Your TDAC can only be filed in the 72 hours before you arrive in Thailand. Not a month ahead, not a week ahead. Three days, and not one more.

That window is narrow and it opens exactly when you are busiest. If you are flying long-haul with a connection, it may open while you are already in the air. If you are crossing by land from Malaysia or Laos, it opens while you are still on the road.

Send us your passport and travel details whenever suits you, today if you like. We prepare your TDAC Thailand application now, hold it ready, and file it the moment your window opens. Your confirmation reaches your inbox the same day.

Four names, three of them about permission to enter and one about the arrival form. Most travellers only need to think about two.

Many nationalities enter Thailand without applying for anything in advance. Others arrange a Thailand tourist visa before they travel, through a Thai embassy or by applying for a Thailand visa online. Citizens of a further group of countries take a visa on arrival at the airport, paid at the counter after landing, which covers a short stay. Some of those can now use the Thailand eVOA, which is the same visa on arrival applied for electronically before the flight.

Whichever of those describes you, the Thailand arrival card is the same requirement on top. A Thailand tourist visa does not replace it. A Thai visa on arrival does not replace it. The eVOA does not replace it. Entering visa-exempt does not replace it. The TDAC is the entry form, and everyone entering Thailand files one.

This is where travellers most often come unstuck. Someone who has already sorted out a Thailand tourist visa online assumes the paperwork is finished, lands in Bangkok, and finds there is still a Thailand entry form to complete. Someone planning a Bangkok visa on arrival at the airport assumes the same. Both still need the TDAC, and both are far better off arriving with it already filed.

Your visa, if one applies to you, is the part to sort out weeks ahead. Your Thailand arrival card is the part that waits until the final 72 hours, and it is the part we handle.

Entry rules for Thailand changed during 2026, so check your nationality against the current requirements before you book. What has not changed is the arrival card.

Most travellers enter Thailand through Bangkok, at Suvarnabhumi or Don Mueang, and that is where the queues run longest. A Thailand arrival card that is already filed and matches your passport moves you through the desk faster than one being sorted out on the spot.

The same form covers every other point of entry: Phuket, Chiang Mai, Krabi, Koh Samui, Hat Yai, U-Tapao, and the land crossings from Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. There is no separate Bangkok arrival card and no separate form for arriving by road. One TDAC covers your entry to Thailand wherever you land.

Complete your Thailand arrival card online before you fly and the only document left to hand over at the border is your passport.

If your trip includes leaving Thailand and coming back, for example a few days in Vientiane or Siem Reap, each entry needs its own TDAC. Travellers doing a visa run are often surprised by that, and it is worth planning for before you book.

If you stay airside at Suvarnabhumi and connect straight to your onward flight without passing immigration, you do not need a TDAC. You never formally enter Thailand.

If you clear immigration for any reason, you do. That includes changing airports between Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang, collecting and rechecking bags on a separate ticket, or leaving the terminal for a hotel on a long layover.

Bangkok layovers are long and the city is close. Plenty of travellers plan to make use of the time, and the moment they pass through the counter they are entering Thailand and the arrival card applies.

Every foreign traveller entering Thailand submits a TDAC. That means every person on the booking, not one form per family.

Children need one. Infants need one, completed by a parent or guardian. A family of four is four separate Thailand arrival cards.

Everyone files a fresh Thailand entry form for every entry. There is no card that carries over from your last trip, and returning visitors submit again each time they come back.

Add everyone travelling with you to a single application and the shared details, your flight and your address in Thailand, are typed once and applied to each traveller.

Thailand immigration checks your arrival card when you reach the inspection desk, and the officer sees it linked to the passport you hand over. When the form and the passport agree, that is the whole interaction.

Travellers whose Thailand immigration form does not match their passport are the ones who end up standing aside while it is sorted out, at the end of a long flight, with the queue moving past them.

Almost every problem with a TDAC comes down to that mismatch, and that is exactly what we look for before yours goes in.