If you’ve searched anything like “Thailand visa,” “Thailand visa exemption,” or “Thailand visa allowance” recently, you’ve probably landed on a dozen different articles giving you a dozen slightly different answers. So let’s clear it up properly.
The short version
Thailand’s Cabinet has approved scrapping the 60-day visa exemption most travellers have been enjoying, reverting it back down to 30 days. But as of right now, that change has not come into effect. If you fly into Thailand today on a passport that currently qualifies for the 60-day exemption, you’re still getting 60 days stamped at the airport.
This is the bit that trips people up, so it’s worth saying twice: approved is not the same as active.
Why there’s a delay
Thai law doesn’t work like flicking a switch the moment a Cabinet meeting ends. For a change like this to actually take legal effect, it has to be published in the Royal Gazette, the government’s official publication for new laws and regulations. It’s not a newspaper announcement, and it’s not the Bangkok Post reporting on it (plenty of people, myself included at one point, assume the Bangkok Post is somehow the trigger, it isn’t, it’s just the paper most people read the news in). It’s a specific formal government publication.
Once that Gazette publication happens, the new rules kick in 15 days later. So there are two dates that matter here, not one: the Gazette publication date, and then whatever date is 15 days after it.
As of now, the Cabinet approved the change back in May 2026, and the Royal Gazette publication still hasn’t happened. Which means the 15 day countdown hasn’t even started yet. Until it does, the old 60-day rule stays in force at the border, no matter how many headlines you’ve seen saying it’s already 30 days.
What actually changes once it does kick in
This isn’t a simple across-the-board 60-to-30 cut. It’s a bit messier than that:
Most nationalities currently on the 60-day exemption (54 countries and territories) will drop to a 30-day exemption. You can extend that once, for another 30 days, at a Thai immigration office, for a fee of around 1,900 THB. So 60 days is still achievable, it just stops being automatic and free.
A smaller group (Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles) gets a 15-day exemption instead.
Visa on Arrival is being cut down hard, from 31 eligible countries to just 4: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Serbia, and India.
India’s situation is actually the most dramatic of the lot. Indian passport holders only got upgraded onto the 60-day exemption scheme in February 2026, and under the new rules they’re not just dropping back to 30 days like everyone else, they’re dropping all the way to a 15-day Visa on Arrival, with a fee attached (around 2,000 THB). That’s a genuinely big swing in a short space of time if you’re travelling on an Indian passport.
What this means if you’re planning a trip
Don’t panic and don’t rebook anything based on a headline alone. Check the actual current status before you fly, not what a blog (including this one, eventually) said a few weeks ago, since the one variable that matters is whether the Royal Gazette has published yet.
If you’re already in Thailand on a 60-day stamp, that stamp stays valid for its full 60 days regardless of what happens with new arrivals after the rule changes. This only affects the exemption granted at the point of entry going forward, not retroactively.
If your passport falls under the countries losing Visa on Arrival access entirely (all but four), keep an eye on this closely, since that’s a bigger practical change than the exemption length shift.
The bottom line
Thailand is tightening up its short-stay entry rules after a couple of years of the more generous 60-day window, partly in response to it being used by people quietly living there long-term or running informal business under tourist status rather than actually just visiting. The change is coming. It just isn’t here yet, and the exact date depends entirely on when the Royal Gazette publishes, which at the time of writing still hasn’t happened.