Vietnam Has No Arrival Card: Thailand and Vietnam Entry Rules 2026

Vietnam has no arrival card. Thailand does, and it is compulsory.

That single asymmetry causes most of the entry-rule questions we field from partners. Travellers who filed Thailand's Digital Arrival Card go looking for the Vietnamese version. There isn't one. What Vietnam has instead is a health-declaration decree that took effect on 1 July 2026 and is not currently switched on, which is a very different thing and has been widely reported as a Thai rule. It is not.

Below is what actually applies, verified against official sources on 27 July 2026. It is guidance, not legal or immigration advice, so confirm each traveller's nationality against the sources we link before booking. For the evergreen version without the dated specifics, see our entry and visa requirements overview.

Thailand: the Digital Arrival Card is mandatory

Every non-Thai arrival must file the Thailand Digital Arrival Card, the TDAC, before reaching the country. Air, land or sea. Visa holder or visa-exempt, it makes no difference.

It has been mandatory since 1 May 2025. It is free. It replaced the paper TM6 outright.

The exemptions are narrow and worth knowing precisely: transit passengers who never clear Thai immigration, airline and vessel crew on duty, and Border Pass holders crossing under bilateral agreements. Diplomatic passport holders are not exempt, which surprises people.

The window is three days before arrival, counting the arrival date itself, which is shorter than the 72 hours people often assume. That makes it one of the last steps before a trip, not something to do at booking. The form is filed at tdac.immigration.go.th and includes a mandatory health-status section. Extra fields, such as proof of yellow fever vaccination, appear automatically only when a traveller's departure country, travel history or nationality matches a list set by Thailand's Ministry of Public Health.

A separate submission app, THIM, was announced with a full launch for August 2026, and a second phase covering 90-day reporting, queue booking and visa extensions announced for around October 2026. When we last checked it was still a voluntary pilot, with both dates awaiting Immigration Bureau confirmation. Check where the rollout stands before you brief a client. THIM is not a health declaration. The TDAC was still the requirement when we last checked.

One thing not to conflate: a proposed Thailand tourism fee, raised to a flat 450 baht in the draft a national committee approved in August 2026, has been discussed for years and is still not being collected. It has nothing to do with the TDAC, which is free.

The "new Thailand health app" story, cleared up

Partners keep asking about a mandatory Thailand health application said to have gone live on 1 July 2026. There is no such thing.

We checked the Thai government sources. The only Thai development in this space is THIM, which is a submission app, not a health declaration, and is not tied to 1 July.

The decree the story describes is Vietnam's. Decree 165/2026/ND-CP did take effect on 1 July 2026. But it is conditional, so "mandatory for all travellers" was overstated as well as pointed at the wrong country. A real framework, attributed to the wrong government, and inflated on the way.

Operationally this matters. A client flying into Bangkok needs the TDAC. A client entering Vietnam meets an actual health declaration only if the Ministry of Health has activated one.

Thailand visas: 60 days now, 30 days coming

For our core markets, Thailand is a visa-free arrival. Nationals of the EU and Schengen area, the United Kingdom, the United States and all six Gulf Cooperation Council states enter for tourism without a visa. Sixty days, extendable once by a further 30 at an immigration office.

That is the rule in force today.

The Cabinet has approved cutting the standard exemption to 30 days. It takes effect 15 days after publication in the Royal Gazette, and that publication had not happened when we last checked. So the 60-day allowance was the position on our verification date, not a promise about today. The older that date looks to you, the more this needs confirming before you quote it.

Two things follow. The change could publish with no advance public notice, and the countdown is short. Treat the allowance as a live value and confirm it at booking, especially on any quote a client will hold for months.

The Destination Thailand Visa is a separate route, and the post below is where most summaries go wrong. It is a five-year, multiple-entry visa allowing up to 180 days per stay, applied for through the official e-Visa portal. Eligibility runs on three tracks, not one: remote workers and freelancers employed outside Thailand; participants in Thai soft-power activities such as Muay Thai training, culinary courses, sports training or medical treatment, with a letter of acceptance; and dependents of either. All applicants must show evidence of 500,000 baht or equivalent in funds. That financial test is the part clients are most often not told about.

Vietnam: the health declaration exists on paper, not at the border

This was the headline change of the year, and the practical impact is far smaller than the first reports suggested.

Decree 165/2026/ND-CP took effect on 1 July 2026 alongside Vietnam's new Law on Disease Prevention. It establishes a health-declaration mechanism for travellers crossing the border by air, land or sea.

Then, on 30 June 2026, the Ministry of Health clarified what that actually means. The declaration does not apply automatically or routinely. It switches on only when the Minister of Health activates it for a specific infectious-disease outbreak or public-health emergency, naming the disease and the travellers covered.

The Ministry had not activated it when we last checked, so on that date there was nothing general to complete and border health-quarantine monitoring ran as normal. Activation can happen in any week, so read this as our last reading and not as today's, and confirm on the official channels for your client's own dates.

If it is activated, the standardised template sits in Appendix V of the decree, in Vietnamese and English, and travellers complete it within seven days before entry, exit or transit, on paper or electronically. For now, brief clients on standard entry documents and watch the official channels.

Vietnam visas: two exemption lists, and they are not the same

This is where a nationality check earns its keep, because the European Union is not one rule and neither are Vietnam's own exemptions.

Two resolutions currently grant 45 days visa-free. They cover different countries and different purposes, and that second difference is the one that catches people out.

Resolution 44/NQ-CP, effective 15 March 2025 to 14 March 2028, covers Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. It applies to all entry purposes.

Resolution 229/NQ-CP, effective 15 August 2025 to 14 August 2028, covers Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland. It applies to tourism only.

Read that again if you book business travel. A Dutch or Polish client entering Vietnam for meetings is not covered by the 45-day exemption. They need an e-visa. A French client doing exactly the same trip is covered, because Resolution 44 carries no purpose restriction. Same 45 days, different conditions attached.

Neither resolution expires soon, which is the good news. Both run to 2028.

Plenty of nationalities sit on neither list and need an e-visa, including Portugal, Austria, Ireland and Greece among EU states, along with the United States and all six GCC countries. The e-visa is valid for up to 90 days, single or multiple entry, and is applied for at evisa.gov.vn. The government fee is 25 US dollars for single entry and 50 for multiple entry, set by Circular 28/2026/TT-BTC and in force since 1 April 2026. That fee is per visa, per applicant, charged in dollars, and it is not refunded if the application is refused.

Official processing is three working days from a complete application with the fee paid. Allow more in peak season, or if the authorities come back asking for corrections.

Two details cause avoidable rejections. Enter the applicant's name exactly as it appears on the passport, in the same order and spelling: Vietnamese law treats false or inconsistent information as grounds to void an application. And confirm the accepted ports of entry on the portal, because Vietnam keeps adding checkpoints and the e-visa is tied to the gates declared on it.

Passport validity and the details that trip people up

Two requirements cause more refusals than visas do.

The first is passport validity. Both countries want at least six months. The blank-page rule differs though: Thailand expects at least one blank page, Vietnam at least two. On a combined trip that asymmetry is easy to miss.

The second is proof of onward or return travel. For Vietnam this is not a statutory entry condition; the only onward-ticket clause in Vietnamese entry law applies to transit passengers. For Thailand it is written down, as a condition of the visa-exemption regulation, even though it does not appear in the Immigration Act itself. Either way airline staff and border officers check it, so treat it as a booking requirement.

Beyond those: build a buffer for e-visa processing, check each traveller's nationality individually instead of assuming a group is uniform, and note the declared ports of entry. If a document goes missing mid-trip, our lost passport guide sets out the steps.

How we keep partners current

Keeping these rules straight per booking is part of what a destination management company in both countries does. We check each traveller's nationality against the right list, including the purpose restriction on Resolution 229. We flag the TDAC, watch the Vietnam decree for any activation, build e-visa lead time into the schedule, and track the Thailand allowance so nobody is briefed on a stale number.

Partners stay the client-facing brand throughout. We hold the documentation logic underneath.

Send us a group's nationalities and routing through our experiences page. Our how many days and seasonal risk guides help shape the trip around the rules.