Thailand Just Halved the Holiday It Was Famous For

Thailand’s new visa framework takes effect on 15 September 2026, and it undoes the single most generous entry policy in Southeast Asia. The 60-day visa exemption that Thailand introduced in 2024 — covering 93 nationalities, no application, no fee — is being replaced by a 30-day exemption covering 60 countries and territories, a 15-day exemption for Seychelles and Mauritius, and visa-on-arrival eligibility for Azerbaijan, Belarus and Serbia. The arithmetic is stark: the eligible list shrinks by roughly a third, and the stay for everyone still on it is cut in half.

The 30-day group is broad and includes most of the countries that send Thailand its long-stay visitors: all 27 EU member states, plus the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India and Switzerland. Nationals of China, Hong Kong, Macao, Kazakhstan, Laos, Mongolia, Russia and Vietnam continue to enter under separate bilateral agreements that the new framework does not touch. The 21 nationalities dropped from the exemption list altogether now need to apply through the Thai e-Visa system before travelling — a free online process for tourism, but a process nonetheless, with lead time and documentation attached.

The workaround for the 30-day group is real but costs money and an afternoon. Most nationalities can extend once at an immigration office for about 1,900 baht, taking the total stay to roughly 60 days per entry — the same ceiling as before, now behind a queue and a fee. That is a meaningful change for the specific group Thailand’s 60-day rule was designed to attract: remote workers, long-season snowbirds and people doing two-month island stretches, all of whom now have to plan an immigration visit into the middle of a trip that previously required nothing.

There is a transition rule that saves anyone already en route. Travellers who enter Thailand on or before 14 September and are granted the 60-day exemption under the old scheme keep the full 60 days, even after the new rules take effect. So a trip that begins on 13 September and runs into November is unaffected; a trip beginning on 16 September is a 30-day trip unless you extend. If you are flying in around that date and planning a long stay, moving your arrival earlier by a couple of days is worth more than any fare saving you would get by moving it later.

Sources: TAT Newsroom, Human Resources Online