Thailand Visa Extension

The Immigration Bureau's online system, e-Extension, is run by VFS Global at thaiextension.vfsevisa.com, and its tourism category takes both the 30-day exemption stamp and the 60-day tourist visa. It works in eight provinces, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Chonburi (Pattaya only), Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani, Phuket (the Blue Tree office only), Samut Prakan and Surat Thani (Koh Samui and Koh Phangan only). VFS still lists Phuket's Blue Tree office, which closed on 19 October 2026, so in Phuket plan on extending in person until Phuket Immigration names a new counter for online applications. Anywhere else, Krabi and Hua Hin included, you extend in person.

You register, upload a scan of your passport bio page and cover, your entry stamp, a 4×6 cm photo and a completed TM.7, and book a date to collect the stamp. Then you pay ฿1,900 plus VFS's service fee by card, WeChat or Alipay. The service fee is ฿500 for a decision within seven business days, and VFS lists ฿1,500 and ฿5,000 tiers for three days and the next business day, though its own information page also says every tier is currently ฿500. None of it is refunded if you're turned down.

Online doesn't mean you stay home. The approval arrives as a PDF by email, and you still take your passport to the office's e-Extension counter, where the officer checks your documents and puts the stamp in your passport. The application isn't complete until that happens. For a tourist extension the office you collect from can differ from the one you named when you applied.

The timing is tighter than it looks. You can only apply when your stamp has less than 45 days left, and the regular decision can take seven working days, so on a 30-day stamp I'd apply in the first week or two. If you're already inside the last week, walk in instead.

Arrive for the 08:30 opening. Most offices hand out queue numbers, and visa services in Bangkok and Chiang Mai report that numbers for extensions can stop around 15:00 on busy days. Visitors to Bangkok's IT Square describe three stages, a form check at the first counter, a numbered wait, then a call to pay the fee and have a photo taken, and about an hour on a quiet morning or three to four hours if you're caught by the lunch break.

Offices close for lunch, roughly 12:00 to 13:00, and on weekends and public holidays. When the counter hands your passport back, the new stamp shows the date you must leave by. Check it before you walk away.

Apply before the date on your entry stamp. The 30 days are added to the end of your current permission, not to the day you apply, so going a week early costs you nothing. Visa services say walk-in offices take applications up to 30 days ahead, and the online system opens when you have less than 45 days left.

If you apply after the date, the e-Extension FAQ says you still get 30 days counted from when your stamp ran out, so the days you overstayed come out of the extension, and the officer fines you ฿500 for each of them. Don't plan around that. The overstay fine is ฿500 a day up to ฿20,000, paid at the immigration counter when you leave, and an overstay of more than 90 days means deportation and a ban that grows with the overstay. Our visa requirements guide has the ban lengths.

Your stamp ending on a weekend or a public holiday doesn't move the date. Go on the last working day before it.

The extension is a permission, not a right. The Royal Thai Embassy in Washington puts it plainly, extension of stay is solely at the officer's discretion, and VFS adds that an officer may grant fewer than the full 30 days. Paying the fee doesn't decide it, and the fee isn't refunded if you're turned down.

The clearest official reason for a refusal is a visa-run pattern. On 12 November 2025 the Immigration Bureau told provincial offices to refuse extensions, or cancel ones already granted, where a passport shows someone living in Thailand on back-to-back tourist entries. Incomplete documents, an address the officer can't match to a hotel report, and a passport with too few blank pages are the everyday reasons, and the e-Extension site asks for at least two blank pages.

Some visa-run guides say a stamp from a land border can't be extended. The embassy pages in Washington, London and Doha say the 30 days can be extended without separating land and air entries, and I found no official text that does. Land entries are capped at two a calendar year, and that's covered in the visa-run guide.

There is no second tourist extension. Once you've used it, the e-Extension FAQ says the most an office will give is 7 more days to prepare to leave. So 60 days is the ceiling on the exemption, and about 90 days on the 60-day tourist visa.

Past that you either leave and come back, which has its own limits, or move to a visa built for longer stays. The visa-run guide covers the first, and the visa requirements guide covers the DTV for remote workers and long-stay visitors, the education visa, and the retirement visas for over-50s.