Thailand Digital Arrival Card (TDAC): How and When to Fill It Out

Yes — as of 2026, every non-Thai citizen needs a Thailand Digital Arrival Card (TDAC) before entering the country, and you can submit it online for free anywhere from 72 hours before you land up to the moment you touch down. It replaced the old paper TM6 card in May 2025, and immigration checks it electronically at the border, not on paper.

What the TDAC Actually Is

The TDAC is a short online form — personal details, travel details, and a basic health declaration — that Thai immigration uses to screen and track foreign arrivals. It is not a visa. It doesn't grant you entry or change your visa-exempt or visa-on-arrival status; it's a separate, mandatory registration step that sits alongside whatever visa or exemption you're already entering under. Every traveler needs their own TDAC, including children, so a family of four submits four separate forms.

If you haven't looked at Thailand's visa rules recently, it's worth a check before you fly — see our guide to visa exemption vs. visa-on-arrival vs. e-visa, since the TDAC is a separate step on top of whichever of those applies to you.

When to Actually Fill It Out

The official window is 72 hours (3 days) before arrival, through the day you land. That window trips up two different types of travelers in opposite directions: people who try to submit it a week early and get rejected or told to wait, and people who forget entirely and end up filling it out on a phone in the immigration queue (it works, but it's a stressful way to do it).

• Booking a short trip with a fixed itinerary? Submit it 2-3 days out, once your accommodation and flight details are locked in.
• Traveling with an uncertain departure date, or hopping between destinations before deciding when you'll leave Thailand? You'll need to put down a real date — pick your best estimate; a few forum threads mention travelers successfully amending this after submission, but Thailand's own FAQ doesn't spell out exactly how reliable that process is, so don't count on being able to fix it easily.
• Connecting through a Thai airport without leaving the international transit area? You generally don't need a TDAC if you're not clearing immigration. If you're leaving the airport or clearing immigration for any reason during a layover, you do.

What Information You'll Need Before You Start

The form asks for more than the old paper TM6 card did, and having it ready before you start saves you from abandoning the form halfway through:

• Passport number and basic personal details (name, date of birth, occupation, gender, country of residence, phone number)
• Visa number, if applicable
• Flight or vehicle number, arrival and departure dates, and which country you're flying in from
• Your accommodation address in Thailand — and it wants it broken down by province, district, sub-district, and postal code, not just a hotel name. Have a confirmed booking before you sit down to do this.
• Countries you've visited in the past 14 days, any symptoms, and proof of Yellow Fever vaccination if you're arriving from a country where that's required

If you don't have accommodation booked yet, it's worth locking that in first — you can compare options through our hotel search before you start the form, since a real, complete address is one of the fields people most often get stuck on.

Watch Out for Fake TDAC Websites

This is the single most important practical warning for 2026: Thai immigration has publicly confirmed that roughly 10% of foreign arrivals have registered through fraudulent, look-alike TDAC websites — some of which charge a fee for a form that's supposed to be completely free, and some of which appear to be harvesting personal data under the guise of e-visa applications. Data submitted to these fake sites doesn't connect to the real immigration system, so it doesn't actually satisfy the requirement.

The only official TDAC site is tdac.immigration.go.th, reachable through the official immigration bureau site at immigration.go.th. The form is always free — if a site asks you to pay, close the tab. Bookmark the real URL directly rather than searching for it each time; a chunk of the fake-site traffic comes from people clicking the wrong search result.

Land Borders, Vehicle Numbers, and Other Edge Cases

The TDAC applies to land border crossings too, not just flights — and this is where the form gets genuinely awkward. It asks for a specific vehicle number for your arrival transport, which is easy enough if you're being picked up by a pre-booked driver, but doesn't make much sense if you're planning to grab a taxi or a shared van at the border once you get there. Same problem in reverse for your listed departure transport.

A few other quirks worth knowing about going in: some travelers have reported the country-of-residence field not accepting "Thailand" even when they hold a long-stay visa and genuinely live there, and the date fields mix calendar pickers with dropdown menus in a way that's easy to fumble on a small screen. None of these are dealbreakers — they're just the kind of thing that's less annoying if you're not doing it for the first time five minutes before boarding.

What Happens at Immigration When You Land

Once you submit the form, you get an email with a QR code confirmation. That's what you show the immigration officer at the arrival booth — on your phone, no printing required. Don't delete it after you clear immigration; a few guides note it can still be relevant for departure or for certain administrative steps during your stay, so keep it saved (a screenshot works fine) until you've left the country.

Can You Edit It After You Submit?

The TDAC system does include some ability to amend a submitted declaration, but exactly how reliable or how far that extends isn't clearly documented in the official FAQ, and forum reports on this are thin. The safer approach is to treat your first submission as close to final as you can — double-check flight numbers, dates, and your accommodation address before you hit submit, rather than assuming you can cleanly fix mistakes afterward.

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