Status: PROPOSED — not law, not collected. As of 21 August 2026 there is no tourist fee to pay when entering Thailand. This page tracks the ฿450 plan and will be updated when its legal status changes.
Update log — 19 Aug 2026: page created after the National Tourism Policy Committee revived the fee at ฿450 (was ฿300). · 21 Aug 2026: the 30-day public consultation is underway; officials now target collection from Q1 2027, air arrivals first.
Thailand’s tourist entry fee — the famous “kha yeap pan din”, the fee for stepping on Thai soil — is back on the agenda, and it has gone up before ever being collected. At the National Tourism Policy Committee meeting on 15 August 2026, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister Suphajee Suthumpun, Tourism and Sports Minister Surasak Panjaroenvorakul confirmed the revived plan: ฿450 per foreign visitor arriving by air, with land and sea crossings following about a year later.
If that number sounds familiar but wrong, your memory is fine. The fee was approved by the Cabinet in February 2023 at ฿300 for air arrivals and ฿150 by land or sea. It was due to start on 1 June 2023. It never did — and the new version costs fifty per cent more.
What it means for you: nothing, yet
There is nothing to pay today. No booth at Suvarnabhumi, no line on your airline ticket, no official website selling “Thailand entry fee” — and that last part matters, because every time this fee makes headlines, sites appear charging travellers for things Thailand gives away free. The arrival paperwork that actually exists — the TDAC digital arrival card — costs ฿0, and our Thailand Price Index keeps the full list of what officialdom really charges. If anyone asks you for a tourism fee in 2026, you are not paying a fee, you are being scammed.
When the fee does arrive, it is designed to be painless and bundled: the plan includes automatic accident insurance for your stay (claim limits still to be specified) and feeds a tourism development fund — partly to cover the hospital bills unpaid by uninsured tourists, which Thai public hospitals currently absorb.
What has to happen before it is real
This is the part the headlines skip. An announcement at a policy committee is step one of four, and each step is public:
- Public consultation — around 30 days of hearings on the proposal.
- Cabinet approval — the revived ฿450 version has not yet been approved by Cabinet.
- Royal Gazette publication — nothing in Thailand is law until it is gazetted.
- A 180-day grace period after publication before collection begins — air arrivals first, land and sea roughly a year after that.
Do the arithmetic and the official line of “late 2026 or early 2027” looks optimistic against the plan’s own mechanics: even if every step ran back-to-back from today, a 30-day consultation plus Cabinet, Gazette and the 180-day wait lands collection around March 2027 at the earliest. There is also an unsolved practical problem — nobody has decided how to collect it. Embedding it in airline tickets is the preferred route and the airlines are resisting it; airport kiosks and an online payment system are the fallbacks. This exact question is one of the things that killed the 2023 attempt.
Four years of almost
For anyone keeping score: the fee was first approved in principle in early 2022, Cabinet-approved at ฿300 in February 2023, scheduled for June 2023, postponed to September 2023, shelved indefinitely when the government changed, declared scrapped in mid-2025, revived later that year with a mid-2026 target — and has now returned at ฿450. Thailand has been about six months away from a tourist fee for four years. That history is why this page reports legal status, not headlines: we will call it real when it is published in the Royal Gazette, and not before.
Budgeting a trip in the meantime? The fee — if and when it lands — would add ฿450 to arrival costs that currently total exactly zero beyond your visa situation. Our money guide covers what a day in Thailand really costs, and the first-timer’s guide walks through the entry process as it stands today.
The ฿450 fee: your questions, answered
Do I have to pay a tourist fee to enter Thailand right now?
No. As of August 2026 no entry fee exists and none is being collected. The TDAC digital arrival card is required — and free. Any website or agent charging an “entry fee” or “tourism tax” today is scamming you.
How much will Thailand’s tourist fee be?
The current plan is ฿450 per foreign visitor arriving by air, with land and sea arrivals added about a year after air collection starts. Earlier versions set ฿300 by air and ฿150 by land and sea; those numbers are obsolete.
When does the fee start?
Officials say late 2026 or early 2027, but the plan’s own process — consultation, Cabinet, Royal Gazette publication, then a 180-day grace period — makes early-to-mid 2027 the realistic floor for air arrivals. This page will state the date once one legally exists.
Will the fee include travel insurance?
The plan bundles basic accident cover for your stay, with claim limits still to be announced. Treat it as a floor, not a substitute for proper travel insurance — a bundled accident policy will not cover cancellations, belongings or serious medical evacuation.
Is this the same as the ฿300 fee I read about?
Same idea, new price. The ฿300 version was Cabinet-approved in 2023 but never collected, and the revived plan replaces it at ฿450. If an article quotes ฿300, it predates August 2026.
This is a DT News Desk page: one URL per question, updated when the answer changes. We read the Royal Gazette and the Thai-language announcements so you don’t have to — the status box above always reflects the current legal position.
