Last updated 15 August 2026. We check the Royal Gazette itself, not news reports.
| Announced by | Consular Affairs, 20 May 2026 · TAT, 16 July 2026 |
| Published in Gazette | Not yet — Gazette checked 15 August 2026 |
| In force today | 60-day exemption, unchanged |
| Last checked | 15 August 2026 |
In short
If you are flying to Thailand this week on a visa exemption, you still get 60 days. The 30-day rule you may have read about has been announced, but it is not law yet, and nobody has said when it will be.
Why “announced” does not mean “in force”
A Thai rule of this kind reaches you through three separate steps, and most articles on the subject collapse them into one.
First the Cabinet decides. Second, the responsible ministry publishes the actual notifications in the Royal Gazette — that is the moment the rule exists as law. Third, a waiting period runs before it bites. The Department of Consular Affairs has said these particular notifications will take effect 15 days after the date they are published.
The first step is done. The second has not happened. So the 15-day clock has not started, and the rule an immigration officer applies is the one that was already there.
How we know it has not been published
We searched the Royal Gazette directly on 15 August 2026.
- The most recent issue of any kind was 14 August 2026 — volume 143, special issue 193 Ngor.
- Searching notification titles for การตรวจลงตรา, the Thai term for endorsing a visa, returns 135 results. The newest is dated 4 December 2025. Nothing from 2026.
- Searching Ministry of Interior notifications returns items dated 5 August 2026 and 31 July 2026. The 31 July one is an immigration matter — it concerns Lao, Myanmar and Vietnamese nationals already permitted to stay until 11 December 2026 — but it is not part of the visa exemption set, and neither is anything else published this year.
We check daily, and change the box at the top of this page when it appears.
Why the date of publication matters to you
The Department of Consular Affairs has said that travelers who enter Thailand before the new measures take effect will keep their existing period of stay for its full duration.
That is the only official statement on timing we have found. It points strongly to the date you physically arrive being the date that decides your entitlement — not the date you booked, and not the date you left home. Every practical account of Thai immigration we have seen says the same.
But we have not yet found the provision of the Immigration Act that says so in those words, and until we have, we are not going to state it as law. We would rather tell you where the edge of our knowledge is than round it off for you.
The practical advice does not change either way. If your plan depends on staying longer than 30 days, do not build it on the exemption. Look at whether a visa applied for in advance fits your situation instead — that decision is yours to make, and it is worth making before a publication date you cannot predict makes it for you.
What changes when it does change
The published descriptions of the new structure shifted between May and July, and this is where most of the wrong information online comes from. Sites that wrote about this in June and never revisited it are now quoting figures that have since been replaced.
| Category | May version | July version |
|---|---|---|
| 60-day exemption | Withdrawn from all 93 | Withdrawn |
| 30-day exemption | 57 → 54 | 59 countries and territories |
| 15-day exemption | 3 countries | Mauritius, Seychelles |
| Visa on Arrival | 31 → 4 | Azerbaijan, Belarus, Serbia |
| Notifications needed | 3 | 5 |
The May column, including the figure of 93 countries and territories currently holding the 60-day exemption, comes from the Consular Affairs announcement of 20 May 2026. The July column comes from the Tourism Authority of Thailand and from travel-trade coverage.
Neither column comes from the text of the notifications, because the notifications do not exist yet. And the two columns disagree in ways nobody has explained — including on how many notifications there are, a point on which two Thai government sources say different things.
One widely circulated summary of the July version gives a total of 65 countries and territories, then lists 59 plus two plus three, which adds to 64. We do not know which figure is wrong. We would rather tell you the arithmetic does not work than repeat a number because it looks clean.
What we cannot tell you yet
- The publication date. It has not been announced.
- The country lists, item by item. Those exist only in the unpublished notifications.
- Whether the set contains three notifications or five.
- The date of the Cabinet decision itself. Travel-trade coverage gives 19 May 2026 for the decision in principle. We have not seen the resolution, so we are not putting that date in the box at the top of this page.
- How bilateral agreements, which give some nationals 90, 30 or 14 days under separate treaties, sit alongside the new structure.
On the day the notifications are published we will read them, count the country lists line by line, and rewrite this page from the text rather than from coverage of the text.
Check with the government directly
- ratchakitcha.soc.go.th — the Royal Gazette. The only place a Thai notification becomes law. Everything else, including this page, is reporting about it.
- consular.mfa.go.th — Department of Consular Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Announcements for travelers.
- immigration.go.th — Immigration Bureau.
- thaievisa.go.th — the official Thai e-Visa system. If you are applying for a visa online, this is the only site that issues one.
- tdac.immigration.go.th — the official Thailand Digital Arrival Card. It is free. Any site charging you for it is not the government.
Check the date on anything you read about this, including this page. In a month it may be wrong too. The difference is that we date it, we say where each figure came from, and when we get something wrong we write down what we used to say.
Sources
- Royal Gazette — searched directly, 15 August 2026. No Ministry of Interior notification on visa exemption or Visa on Arrival found. Most recent issue overall: 14 August 2026, volume 143, special issue 193 Ngor.
- Department of Consular Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs — announcement posted 20 May 2026, updated 21 May 2026. Source for the May column, for the figure of 93, for the three-notification count, for the 15-day commencement period, and for the statement about travelers who enter before the change.
- Tourism Authority of Thailand Newsroom — 16 July 2026. Source for the July country detail and for the five-notification count. The figure of 59 and the 65-versus-64 discrepancy come from travel-trade coverage dated 11 August 2026, not from TAT.
Revision history
15 August 2026 — First published.