The Thailand Digital Arrival Card (TDAC)
One free online form, filed in the three days before you land, mandatory for every non-Thai arrival by air, land or sea. It takes five minutes and it is not a visa. The only hard part is that a dozen paid websites have bought the ads for it.
What it is, and what it replaced
The TDAC replaced the paper TM6 arrival card, which airlines used to hand out on the plane and which nobody ever had a pen for. It became mandatory on 1 May 2025. The information is the same — who you are, where you are staying, which flight — but it is filed online before you travel and produces a QR code instead of a folded piece of card.
It is not a visa. It does not grant you entry and it does not change how long you can stay. A visa-exempt traveller with a TDAC still gets 30 days; a visa holder with a TDAC still gets whatever the visa allows. The TDAC is a border-security and public-health record, nothing more.
Who has to file one
Every non-Thai national, on every mode of transport, on every visa type. That includes visa-exempt arrivals, visa-on-arrival arrivals, tourist visa holders, non-immigrant visa holders, DTV holders, Thailand Privilege members, long-stay residents, and children — including infants, with no age exemption. Diplomatic passport holders file it too.
You do not file one if you are a Thai citizen travelling on a Thai passport, if you are a transit passenger who never clears immigration, or if you are airline crew on duty. If you leave the airport, you need one — a minibus across the Cambodian border counts, and so does a cruise stop where you go ashore.
The window is three days, and it opens late
This is where most people get it wrong, and usually in the same direction. The form can be submitted within three days of your arrival date, and not before. If you land on Friday the 10th, you can file from Tuesday the 7th. Try on Monday and the portal rejects you.
It is not a deadline you meet after landing — it is a window that opens shortly before you travel and closes when you arrive. The official wording is both "72 hours" and "three days including the date of arrival", which differ by a day at the edge; if you want to be certain, treat the later of the two as your opening day. The system sends no reminder, so put it in your own calendar.
There is no minimum lead time, so you can technically file from the departure gate. Do not. Every field has to match your passport exactly, and checking a passport number on a phone in a boarding queue is how people end up explaining a typo to an immigration officer at midnight.
How to file it
Go to tdac.immigration.go.th — the government site, no fee. There is an individual form and a group form for families and tours. You can scan the passport's MRZ strip with your phone camera to fill the document fields automatically, which is faster and less error-prone than typing.
Have these ready: passport number, issue and expiry dates, nationality, date of birth; flight number, arrival date and port of entry; the address of your first night in Thailand (hotel name and district is enough); and a health declaration, which the system only asks for in detail if you have been in a listed country in the previous two weeks. Submit, receive the QR code by email, save it to your phone. Printing it is optional but sensible if your phone might die.
You can update a submitted TDAC any time before arrival — for a changed hotel or a corrected passport number — and only the most recent submission counts. What you cannot do is save a half-finished form and come back to it.
The paid lookalikes, and how to spot them
Search for "Thailand arrival card" and the official site is not always the first result. Several commercial services charge $14 to $80 to submit the same free form, with names that include "Thailand", "arrival" and "official" in various orders. They are not fraudulent in the sense of stealing your data — most do actually file the form — but you are paying for something that is free and handing your passport details to a company that does not need them.
The test is simple: if a site asks for payment, it is not the government. The official portal has no card fields anywhere in the flow.
At the airport
Show the QR code at the immigration counter with your passport. In practice officers scan it or glance at it; the record is already in their system. If your phone is dead or you have no smartphone at all, there are self-service kiosks and free Wi-Fi in the arrivals hall at the main airports, and staff will help — but this queue is slower than the one you would have joined with a QR code.
If you arrive by land at a busy crossing, the same applies and the same kiosks exist at the major ones. Do not assume a land crossing will be relaxed about it; the rule covers all ports.
TDAC, answered
Is the TDAC the same as a visa?
No, and the difference matters. A visa is permission to enter and determines how long you may stay; the TDAC is an arrival record that every non-Thai must file regardless of visa status. Filing a TDAC does not give you a right to enter, and holding a visa does not remove the need to file one. In practice you need both: whatever entry scheme your nationality allows, plus a TDAC. The official site says this explicitly, and it is the single most common misunderstanding — people assume "I have a visa, so I am covered" and arrive without the QR code.
Can I file it more than three days before I fly?
No. The portal will reject a submission made outside the window, which opens roughly 72 hours before your arrival date. This catches out organised travellers who try to file the moment they book flights months ahead, and it is unavoidable — no agent can file early either, whatever a service claims. Set a reminder for three days before departure, file at a desk with your passport in hand, and keep the QR code email. If your flight is delayed past midnight into a different arrival date, the record still stands; the date on the form is what immigration matches against.
Does my child or baby need their own TDAC?
Yes. There is no age exemption — infants need one, and each traveller needs an individual record. You file them yourself through the group submission option, which lets you enter one adult's travel and accommodation details and apply them to the rest of the party ("same as previous traveller"), so a family of four takes about ten minutes rather than twenty. Each person still gets their own QR code. This is the single most common reason families get held up at the desk: two adults filed, two children not.
What if I do not have a smartphone?
You can still enter. The main airports have self-service kiosks and free Wi-Fi in the arrivals hall, and staff will help you file on arrival — the QR code is displayed on screen and you can photograph it. Do not rely on this at a small land crossing or a regional airport, where the kiosk may be broken or absent. If you are travelling without a phone, file from a hotel computer or a friend's device before you leave and print the confirmation. Printing is never required but it is the only version that cannot run out of battery.
I am staying in several places. Which address do I give?
The first night's accommodation — the address you will actually go to from the airport. You do not need to list every hotel on the trip, and you cannot: the form has room for one address. Hotel name plus district is enough; the full postal address is not required. If you are staying with friends or in an Airbnb, use that address. If you genuinely have not booked anything yet, use the first hotel you intend to book, and update the TDAC before you fly if it changes — updates are free and unlimited until you arrive, and only the most recent submission is used.
Do I need a new TDAC if I leave and come back?
Yes. Each entry is a separate arrival, so a trip that goes Bangkok, then Vietnam for a week, then back into Thailand needs two TDACs, filed in two separate windows. This is the one case where the three-day rule is genuinely awkward, because the second window opens while you are in another country. Put both dates in your calendar before you leave home. The same applies to land-border hops and to a cruise that calls at a Thai port mid-itinerary.
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Written and checked by the Travel Thailand Tour team, Bangkok · Last updated · Prices are per person and were correct at the time of writing.