Entering Thailand on an Indian passport: the rules as they stand.

The sixty-day exemption

As matters stand in August 2026, Indian nationals arriving by air receive a sixty-day visa-exempt entry: no visa application, no visa-on-arrival counter, no fee. The stamp is granted at the immigration desk on the strength of a passport valid for at least six months, a completed TDAC, and answers that add up. Sixty days covers the overwhelming majority of family visits, winter stays and wedding trips without any paperwork beyond the arrival card. The exemption is a policy, not a treaty right; Thailand has adjusted these schemes before and will again, so the standing advice is to verify the current position with the Royal Thai Embassy or the Thai Immigration Bureau in the week before travel, and never to build a long stay on the assumption that today's rule holds next season.

The thirty-day extension

A single thirty-day extension of stay is available inside Thailand, taking the total to roughly ninety days. It is applied for in person at an immigration office, on form TM7, with the passport, photographs, and a fee of 1,900 baht. In Bangkok this means the Chaengwattana government complex; in Phuket and the other provinces, the local immigration office. The process is a morning: queue number, forms, photograph, fee, stamp. Our office prepares the paperwork and accompanies clients, which converts the morning into roughly an hour. Apply in the last week or two of the original sixty days rather than at the eleventh hour, and treat the granted date as fixed. Overstay in Thailand is not a grey area: it is a fine of 500 baht per day, and long overstays carry re-entry bans. No family should ever be within a week of that conversation.

What the counter actually asks

Most travellers are asked nothing at all beyond a look and a stamp. When questions come, they are the sensible ones: how long are you staying, where are you staying, what brings you. The officer is checking that the story is coherent, that a visa-exempt tourist looks like a tourist. Answer briefly and truthfully. The travellers who attract longer conversations are those with many recent visa-exempt entries stacked back to back, because the exemption is for visiting Thailand, not for living in it sixty days at a time. A family doing two or three trips a year will never feel this; someone doing six will eventually meet an officer who counts.

Onward tickets and funds

• An onward or return ticket within the permitted stay is technically required and airlines in India check it more often than Thai officers do; fly with one booked.
• Proof of funds, historically 10,000 baht per person or 20,000 per family in cash or equivalent, is rarely demanded but exists in the rules; cards and a bank app screenshot have satisfied every request we have seen.
• Accommodation for at least the first nights should be bookable and nameable; a confirmed hotel or a residence address is enough.
• Carry the TDAC confirmation; it is the one document the escort staff will certainly ask for.

A change is pending. In May 2026 the Thai Cabinet approved reducing the visa exemption from 60 days to 30 days for the exempt nationalities, to take effect 15 days after publication in the Royal Gazette. At the time of writing that publication had not been confirmed, so the 60 day allowance still stands. Treat the length of your permitted stay as the first thing to verify, not the last: confirm it with the Thai Immigration Bureau (immigration.go.th) or the Royal Thai Embassy in New Delhi before you book, and again before you fly. Entry policy, extension fees and documentation requirements all change with little notice; this page describes the position as of August 2026.

When a proper visa is wiser

The exemption is the right tool for visits. It is the wrong tool for patterns that look like residence. Families wintering in Thailand for three or four months, principals commuting monthly for business, parents joining children who live here, and anyone who dislikes depending on a policy that can change between booking and boarding should look at the visa proper. The tourist visa gives a sixty-day stay with extension and, in its multiple-entry form, suits frequent visitors. The Destination Thailand Visa suits remote-working and longer flexible stays. At the top of the ladder, the Long-Term Resident visa gives qualifying wealthy families ten years of certainty and fast-track lanes at the airport, and is the instrument we recommend most often to principals who have decided Thailand is now part of the annual pattern; our guide to the LTR visa treats it fully. The practical test is simple: if you are counting days or timing trips around the rules, the rules are telling you to upgrade the paperwork.

Frequent visits, side trips and re-entry

Each visa-exempt entry is its own event: leave Thailand, even for a weekend in Singapore or a Phnom Penh meeting, and the sixty-day clock starts fresh on return, with a fresh TDAC filed for the new arrival. There is no re-entry permit to think about on the exemption; that machinery belongs to visas. What frequent visitors should think about instead is the pattern their passport shows. Thai immigration is relaxed about genuine visitors who come often, and pointed about passports that show near-continuous residence assembled from exemptions. The families we serve are almost never near that line, but the principle is worth stating because it decides the advice: the moment Thailand becomes a place you are in more than a place you visit, the paperwork should say so, and the visa ladder exists for exactly that.

Arrivals other than by air deserve a footnote. The overwhelming majority of Indian visitors arrive at Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang or Phuket, where the rules above apply cleanly. Land borders and sea arrivals have historically carried their own quirks, different day allowances in some eras, limits on the number of land entries per year, and cruise passengers clear immigration under arrangements the line coordinates. Anyone planning an overland entry from Malaysia or a cruise call should check that specific mode with the Immigration Bureau rather than assuming the airport rules travel with them.

The clean entry, summarised

Passport with six months' validity, TDAC filed within seventy-two hours, onward ticket booked, first address known, honest answers ready, and the extension diarised if the stay may run past sixty days. Do this and the Thai border is one of the easier ones a frequent traveller will meet. Our office watches the policy so clients do not have to; when the rules move, the families on our list hear about it before their next booking, not at the counter.

One final habit worth borrowing from the households that do this often: photograph the entry stamp at the airport, every trip, and file it with the travel documents. The stamped date, not memory of it, is what the extension, the return booking and any later conversation with immigration all hang on, and a photograph taken in thirty seconds at the belt has settled more than one family debate about when, exactly, the clock started.

This briefing is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Thai rules change frequently and individual cases differ. Verify current requirements with the relevant authorities, including the Immigration Bureau, the Board of Investment, the Land Department, the Department of Business Development and the Revenue Department, and take advice on your own facts before acting.