Thailand Digital Arrival Card (TDAC)

Every foreign national entering Thailand needs one: tourists on the 30-day exemption, holders of any e-Visa, DTV and LTR holders, retirees on the O-A, work-permit holders on a Non-Immigrant B, and people arriving by land from Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia or Myanmar or by sea on a ferry or cruise. Long-term residents file one on every return from abroad. Children and infants file one each on their own passport; there is no family card.

Four groups are exempt, per the official TDAC FAQ. Thai nationals. Airline crew, who have their own process. Passengers who transit or transfer without passing through immigration, which at Suvarnabhumi means staying airside for a connection under 12 hours. And holders of a border pass, the local document used by residents of the Malaysian, Lao, Cambodian and Myanmar border provinces.

The transit exemption has a catch. If your connection requires you to clear immigration, because you're changing between Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang, your bags aren't checked through, or your onward flight is on a low-cost carrier that makes you check in again landside, then you are entering Thailand and need both a TDAC and the right to enter. Most people connecting on a single ticket through Bangkok do not.

The submission window opens 72 hours before your arrival date and the official TDAC FAQ is explicit that the three days include the date of arrival. In practice: flying on the 10th and landing on the 11th, you can file from the 8th. Try earlier and the form rejects the date. There is no minimum lead time, so filing at the departure gate, or even in the arrivals hall on airport wifi, is accepted, though the queue for the wifi is the queue you were trying to avoid.

The day before you fly is the sweet spot. You have your flight number, your first hotel is booked, and there is time to fix a typo or chase a confirmation email that went to spam. Airlines increasingly ask to see the QR code at check-in for Thailand-bound flights. A missing card is rarely a hard denial of boarding, but expect to be sent away from the desk to file it on your phone before they'll take your bag, which is a bad time to discover the portal is slow.

One card covers one arrival on the date you gave. If your flight is delayed past midnight you do not need to refile; the card is matched to the passport. If you change your travel date, use the Update Arrival Card function rather than filing a second card, which the system will treat as the latest valid submission anyway.

THIM is the Thai Immigration Management application, run by the Immigration Bureau under the Royal Thai Police, which is the publisher name to check before you install: THIM on the App Store, THIM on Google Play, and the Huawei AppGallery, all since 1 August 2026. went through a pilot from June, and was officially launched on 25 September 2026 with over 600,000 downloads reported. Its two live features are the TDAC and an Explore Thailand section; queue booking for immigration offices, certificates of residence, visa extensions, 90-day reporting and Visa on Arrival at checkpoints are planned but not yet live.

For the arrival card it is the same form with one convenience: you photograph your passport and the app reads the details, so the personal-information step takes seconds and your profile is saved for the next trip, when you only update the flight and hotel. It supports group registration for up to 10 travelers, has a Tourist Police hotline built in, and runs in English, Russian, Japanese and Chinese with more languages promised.

Two things it is not. It is not a new requirement on top of the TDAC: you file the card through the website or the app, not both. And it does not replace the website, which remains the official channel for anyone who doesn't want another app. If your name has non-Latin characters or a long compound surname, check what the passport scan produced before you submit; the machine-readable line is what immigration matches against.

Choose Group on the first screen and you can add up to 10 travelers to one submission. Each person needs their own passport details and gets their own QR code; the trip and accommodation details are entered once and copied to everyone. A family of four takes about seven minutes rather than twenty.

Infants and children need a card each, on the passport they travel on. A baby added to a parent's passport still needs their own entry. If the family is arriving on different flights or dates, file separate submissions, because one card is matched to one arrival date.

For groups larger than 10, tour operators and schools file in batches. Everyone should have their own QR code on their own phone, or a printout from the group leader, before reaching the desk. Immigration processes the cards individually, so a group leader holding all ten codes on one phone slows the whole line.

The official step-by-step manual shows every screen with the fields labeled, if you want to see the form before you start. At the desk the officer scans your passport, which pulls up the TDAC linked to it, glances at or scans the QR code on your phone, and stamps you in with the 'admit until' date written or printed beside the stamp. Automated gates at Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang and Phuket do the same match without the officer, which is where a name typed differently from the passport's machine-readable line fails and sends you to a manned lane. Total time is queue-dependent, 15 to 40 minutes at peak.

The TDAC replaced the TM6 arrival card, but it is not the other immigration forms people confuse it with. The TM30 is the notification your hotel or landlord files within 24 hours of your arrival at their address, not you. The TM47 is the 90-day report for long-stay visa holders. The TM7 is the extension form you fill in at an immigration office. A tourist on the exemption touches only the TDAC.

Keep the QR code for the length of your stay. You don't need it after entry in normal circumstances, but an immigration office may ask for it if you extend, and it is the quickest proof of your entry date if the stamp is smudged.

Most fields can be corrected after submission with the Update Arrival Card function at tdac.immigration.go.th, using your passport number and the reference from the confirmation email: flight number, arrival date, accommodation, phone, email and the health answers. Four fields are locked because they identify you: full name, passport number, nationality and date of birth. Get one of those wrong and you file a fresh card. The FAQ's rule is that the latest valid submission is the one used, so a duplicate does no harm.

A wrong flight number is the commonest slip and it doesn't matter much; the card is matched to your passport, not your seat. A wrong arrival date matters more if it is earlier than the real one, because the card is valid for the date given. Update it. A hotel address that changes after you filed is fine; give the officer the new one if asked.

Border runs and second trips need a new card every time, and the three-day window applies each time. Filing for the return leg of a Laos day trip from the Thai side of the bridge before you cross is allowed, and sensible, because the Lao side's wifi is worse.

Within weeks of the TDAC launching, sites appeared charging US$20 to US$60 to 'process' the free form, and a few still rank in search results and even in AI answers. The tell is the domain: the government portal is tdac.immigration.go.th, a .go.th address, and THIM in the app stores is published by the Immigration Bureau. A .com, .us.com or .org address with 'TDAC' in the name is a reseller of a free service, and one that asks for your passport scan and card details is a risk beyond the fee.

Thai Immigration ran awareness campaigns in May and June 2025 and says it plainly at tdac.immigration.go.th: no fee, no agent needed. Use the links on this page rather than a search result, and you can't land on a clone. If you've already paid one of these sites, the card they filed may still be valid, since they submit it through the real portal on your behalf, but check that a confirmation email came from the immigration.go.th domain before you fly.