Overstaying in Bangkok: the fine is capped, the ban is not

Almost everything written in English about overstaying Thailand runs the money and the bar together, as though one grows into the other. They are two different instruments, written eighteen years apart, and they behave in opposite ways. The money is a compounding tariff that stops growing on the fortieth day. The bar is a Minister’s order with two separate ladders, and which ladder you are on is settled by whether you walked up to the counter or were stopped.

Compiled by the Town Wire News desk · Last verified October 2026 · How we made this

The offence, in one sentence

Section 81 of the Immigration Act B.E. 2522 reads, in full: “Any alien who stays in the Kingdom without permission, or whose permission has come to an end or has been revoked, shall be liable to imprisonment not exceeding two years, or a fine not exceeding twenty thousand baht, or both.”

Three things in that sentence do more work than people expect.

It covers three quite different situations at once. Never having had permission; having had it and run past the end of it; and having had it taken away. The ordinary overstay — the stamped date passing while you are still here — is the middle one. But the same section, with the same penalty, is what a revocation drops you into on the day it takes effect, which is why the revocation machinery further down this page matters.

It is written as a maximum, not a tariff. Twenty thousand baht is a ceiling that a court could not exceed. It is not a price list, and nothing in the Act says what a given number of days is worth.

It carries imprisonment. That single fact decides a lot: it is the reason this offence could not have been swept into Thailand’s 2022 administrative-fine reform even if the government had wanted to, and it is the reason the compounding mechanism in section 84 exists at all.

Where the 500 baht a day actually comes from

Every Thai immigration office that publishes an English page about overstay gives the same figure: a fine at the rate of 500 baht per day, not exceeding 20,000 baht, paid at an immigration checkpoint — a land border, a seaport or an airport — before you are allowed to travel out of the Kingdom. The wording is identical from office to office because it is not each office’s wording. It is the Immigration Bureau’s circular from early 2016, reproduced.

That figure is not a statutory rate, and the mechanism that produces it is worth understanding, because it explains why the number can move and the ceiling cannot.

Section 84 establishes a compounding committee for offences under the Act — the Director-General of the Police or a representative, the Director-General of Public Prosecution or a representative, and the Commander of the Immigration Division or a representative. The committee may compound every offence under the Act except a short list of serious ones: section 62 paragraph one, section 63, section 64, section 71 and section 82 paragraph two. Section 81 is not on that list. The committee may delegate the compounding to inquiry officials or competent officials and may set its own criteria, and when the compounded fine has been paid the case is treated as terminated.

So the counter at the airport is not fining you in the way a court would. It is settling a criminal case at a price fixed by a departmental body, within a ceiling fixed by Parliament. Which is why the arithmetic works out the way it does: 20,000 divided by 500 is exactly 40. The daily rate was chosen so that it runs into the statutory maximum on the fortieth day and then stops. Everything past day 40 is free, in money.

The bar is a separate instrument, and it is not a punishment

The re-entry bans that people call the blacklist are not in the Immigration Act at all. They come from a one-page order: the Order of the Minister of Interior No. 1/2558, on the non-permission of certain classes of aliens to enter the Kingdom, dated 27 November 2015 and published in the Royal Gazette on 21 December 2015, at page 42 of volume 132, special part 335 Ngor. It was signed by the Prime Minister and by the Minister of Interior, and it came into force ninety days after publication — that is, on 20 March 2016.

Its preamble is short and tells you exactly what it is for. It recites that certain classes of aliens permitted to enter temporarily have stayed beyond the permitted period, that this affects public order and safety and the security of the Kingdom, and that the Minister therefore exercises the power in section 16 of the Immigration Act to direct that they not be permitted to enter, on the conditions and for the periods set out.

Section 16 is the power. It provides that where the Minister is of the view, on the circumstances, that it would not be proper for the benefit of the country or for public order, culture or good morals or the well-being of the people to permit any alien or class of aliens to enter, the Minister may direct that they not be permitted to enter. Section 12(10) then does the biting: an alien whom the Minister has not permitted to enter under section 16 is in the list of classes prohibited from entering the Kingdom, alongside people with no valid passport, no means of support, or certain convictions.

Two consequences follow from that structure, and both matter more than the numbers.

It is not a sentence. Nothing about the bar is imposed by a court, and paying the fine does not discharge it, because the fine settles a prosecution while the bar operates on a later and separate question — whether you may enter. The two instruments do not talk to each other.

It can be lifted by the Minister, not by an appeal. Section 12’s closing words on the neighbouring limb, and the shape of section 16 itself, put the discretion where the order came from. This page has not read any published criteria for that, and does not know of a routine route.

The two ladders

The order divides overstayers into two cases and gives each its own scale. The word in the first heading is surrender; the word in the second is arrested and prosecuted.

Read the first row again, because it is the whole point of the document. On the terms of the order, an overstay of ninety days or less that ends with the person walking up to a counter and leaving attracts no entry bar at all. The same overstay, ended by an officer rather than by the person, sits on a rung marked five years — and that rung has no floor written under it. Clause 2.1 says “an alien who has stayed in the Kingdom from the date the permission ended for not more than one year”. One day is not more than one year.

That is a cliff, not a slope, and it is placed at the door rather than on the calendar. It is also the single fact that most of the internet gets wrong, because summaries tend to present one merged ladder in which short overstays are always cheap.

Note as well what the ladders are counted from. Not the date the overstay started, not the date it was discovered, and not the date of any decision: from the date the alien departs the Kingdom. Someone detained for months before removal begins their ban on the day the plane leaves.

The two exemptions, and what they are not

Clause 3 of the order carves out two cases, and they are narrow and precise.

Clause 3(1): an alien who departs the Kingdom before reaching eighteen complete years of age. A minor who leaves before their eighteenth birthday is outside the order. Note the test is the age at departure, not the age when the overstay began.

Clause 3(2): an alien who departed before the order came into force. That is the transitional provision from March 2016, and it is the reason the Bureau’s 2016 circular is phrased around a deadline that has long since passed. Ten years later, immigration offices still publish that circular verbatim, which is why the English text you find on official sites reads oddly, as though it were addressed to people making a decision in early 2016. It was.

Neither exemption touches the fine. The order is an entry-control instrument; it says nothing about section 81, and a person exempt from the bar is not thereby exempt from the money.

The other blacklist limb, and who paid for the ticket

There is a second and older bar in the Act itself, and it is worth knowing because it turns on something people do not think to control.

Section 12(11) prohibits the entry of an alien who has been deported by the Thai government or by a foreign government, or whose right of residence in the Kingdom or abroad has been revoked, or who has been sent out of the Kingdom by a competent official at the expense of the Thai government — unless the Minister has considered an exemption in the particular case.

The operative words are the last ones in the middle limb. What triggers that limb is not being removed; it is being removed at the state’s cost. And section 55 makes the cost question a live one: the expense of sending an alien back falls on the owner or master of the conveyance that brought them in, or on the person who committed the offence of bringing them in — but the section adds that where the alien asks to leave by another conveyance or another route at their own expense, the competent official may permit it.

We are not going to pretend that reads as a tidy piece of advice in a real situation. But it is the Act’s own logic, and it is the reason the phrase “at the expense of the Thai government” appears in a list of people who may never come back.

What the Act says about detention

Section 54 is the removal power. Where an alien has entered or remains in the Kingdom without permission, or the permission has ended or been revoked, a competent official may send them out of the Kingdom. If an inquiry is needed for that purpose, sections 19 and 20 apply. And once a removal order has been made, the official may — while removal is pending — either permit the person to stay at a place, reporting at fixed times and with a surety or a surety and security, or detain them at any place for as long as is necessary. The section then adds seven words that carry a great deal: the cost of that detention is borne by the alien.

Section 20 sets the clock on detention during an inquiry. A competent official may detain a person only as long as the circumstances require, and not beyond forty-eight hours from the time the detained person arrived at the official’s office. Where there is necessity, the period may be extended, but not beyond seven days, and the official must record the necessity. Beyond that, the official must apply to a court, which may authorise further detention as necessary for not more than twelve days at a time, and which may instead release the person on bail or on bail with security.

Two presumptions sit behind all of this and are worth knowing exist. Section 57 provides that a person claiming Thai nationality is presumed to be an alien until they prove otherwise, with a route to the court if the official’s decision is unsatisfactory. Section 58 provides that an alien with no evidence of lawful entry under section 12(1), no residence certificate and no alien registration certificate is presumed to have entered in breach of the Act. In both, the burden runs the way that is least convenient for a person without documents.

Revocation: a different route into the same section, with a 48-hour appeal

Not every unlawful stay begins with a date passing. Section 36 gives the Director-General or the Commission power to revoke a temporary permission where the circumstances warrant it, whoever granted it. From the moment a revocation takes effect, the person is inside section 81 — “permission has been revoked” is one of the three limbs of the offence.

The appeal against a Director-General’s revocation goes to the Commission, and the Commission’s decision is final. The deadline is the part to notice: the appeal must be lodged with a competent official within forty-eight hours from the time the person learns of the order, on the prescribed form and with the prescribed fee. Where the Commission itself revoked, there is no appeal.

And then the delivery rule, which is why the address you have given immigration is not an administrative detail. A revocation is made in writing and notified to the alien. Where the notice cannot be delivered, the section provides that the competent official may post it at the accommodation the alien notified to the officials, and once forty-eight hours have passed the alien is deemed to have been informed. A notice pinned to a door you no longer live behind starts a forty-eight-hour appeal clock you will never hear about. That is a direct, practical reason to keep the address on file current — the same address that the reporting duties under sections 37 and 38 are built around.

Leaving does not undo it, and a pending application is not an overstay

Two provisions clear up the two commonest misconceptions.

Section 39. A temporary permission ends when the alien leaves the Kingdom. If they obtained permission to re-enter before going and return without falling into a prohibited class under section 12, the remaining balance of the original period runs on. This is why a border run does not launder an overstay: the departure is the moment the fine is assessed and the moment the ban starts counting. It is the end of the episode, not a reset of it.

Section 35. Where an alien has cause to remain beyond the periods the section allows, the Director-General may permit extensions of not more than one year at a time, reporting each to the Commission with reasons within seven days. The closing paragraph is the useful one: each application is made on the prescribed form with the prescribed fee, and while awaiting the decision, the alien may stay in the Kingdom in the meantime. A properly filed, undecided application is therefore a lawful basis for being here after the stamped date — which is why the receipt, and the date on it, is the document to photograph. The mechanics of filing one, and the ninety-day report that runs alongside it, are in our guide to extensions and the 90-day report.

The fine bends. The bar does not.

Two dated episodes in the past year show how differently the two instruments behave under pressure, and they are the best available evidence that the daily rate is administrative rather than statutory.

In November 2025, after severe flooding in eight southern provinces — Songkhla, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Phatthalung, Trang, Satun, Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat — the Immigration Bureau instructed offices to waive the overstay fine for foreigners who had intended to leave within their permitted period but could not get out because of the floods, for the period from 20 November to 31 December 2025. Immigration offices published the instruction, citing section 54 of the Act and an internal order dated 27 November 2025.

In March 2026, after airspace closures and flight cancellations arising from the conflict that began on 28 February, the Bureau announced that foreign nationals whose permission to stay had expired from that date and who wished to depart would have the overstay fine waived, with an alternative route of applying for a temporary stay of up to thirty days on documents including a letter from their embassy — but with the fine settled first in that case. The measure was stated to run until the situation returned to normal or a further order was issued.

Notice what neither announcement did. Neither purported to touch the Minister’s order or the bans in it. They did not need to: in both episodes the overstays were short ones ending in departure, which on the surrender ladder carry no bar anyway. But the shape is instructive. The money is something an agency can decide not to collect this month. The bar is a Gazette-published direction from the Minister, and nothing short of the Minister moves it.

Why this did not stop being a crime in 2023

In October 2022 Thailand published the Act on Administrative Fines B.E. 2565, which created a class of penalty that is expressly not criminal, cannot be recorded as criminal history, is set with regard to the offender’s circumstances and economic position, and carries no imprisonment in default. Its section 39 converted the fine-only offences under every law in the first schedule automatically, 365 days after publication. The Land Traffic Act is in that schedule, which is why an ordinary Thai traffic ticket is no longer a criminal matter.

The Immigration Act B.E. 2522 is in the second schedule, where section 40 allows conversion only by royal decree, and only after the draft has sat before both Houses for at least sixty days. We found no such decree.

But for section 81 the schedules are almost beside the point, because of a provision that settles the question outright. Section 41(1) says that the fine-only offences under the laws in either schedule do not include an offence carrying imprisonment or a heavier penalty where a natural person commits it. Section 81 carries up to two years’ imprisonment. It is not a fine-only offence, so no decree under this Act could convert it. Overstaying remains a criminal offence in Thailand, and the 500 baht a day is the price of not having it treated as one.

What actually goes wrong

Counting from the wrong date. The date that matters is the one stamped or printed as the last day of permission, not the visa’s expiry and not ninety days from arrival. A visa is permission to travel to the border; the permission to stay is what the officer wrote at it.

Assuming the money is the punishment. For a short overstay the money is nearly the whole of it. Past ninety days the money is fixed and everything that varies is the bar — which is the opposite of how people budget for it.

Waiting. Every day of waiting adds nothing to the fine after day 40 and moves you along the surrender ladder in steps of ninety days, one year, three years and five years. The instrument rewards ending it early and punishes drift, precisely.

Being stopped on the way out. The two ladders are separated by who ended the overstay, and an overstayer who is checked at a roadside or a hotel on the day before their flight has moved between them. This page cannot tell you how often that happens, and does not.

Letting the address go stale. Notices are served at the address on file, and a revocation notice served that way starts a forty-eight-hour appeal clock whether or not anyone reads it.

Questions people actually ask

How much is the overstay fine in Thailand?

The rate the Immigration Bureau publishes is 500 baht for each day of overstay, up to a maximum of 20,000 baht, paid at an immigration checkpoint — a land border, a seaport or an airport — before you are allowed to leave. Because 20,000 divided by 500 is 40, the money stops growing on the fortieth day: a person 41 days over and a person five years over owe the state the same 20,000 baht. The figure is not in the Immigration Act. Section 81 sets a maximum of 20,000 baht, or two years’ imprisonment, or both; the daily rate is the tariff at which the offence is compounded under section 84, which lets a compounding committee settle cases on criteria it sets itself.

Is there a re-entry ban for a short overstay?

It depends entirely on how the overstay ends. The Order of the Minister of Interior No. 1/2558 has two lists. If you surrender — present yourself at a checkpoint and leave — the first rung of the ban ladder is an overstay of more than 90 days, which carries a one-year bar. Below that the order says nothing, so on its own terms a short overstay that you walk out on carries no bar at all. If you are arrested and prosecuted, the first rung is an overstay of not more than one year, which carries a five-year bar. That rung has no floor: on the face of the order it reaches an overstay of a single day.

What is the legal basis for the Thai overstay blacklist?

Not the Immigration Act’s penalty sections. It is the Order of the Minister of Interior No. 1/2558, dated 27 November 2015 and published in the Royal Gazette on 21 December 2015, which came into force ninety days later on 20 March 2016. The order is made under section 16 of the Act, which lets the Minister direct that a named alien or a class of aliens not be permitted to enter the Kingdom. Section 12(10) then makes anyone covered by such a direction a prohibited class at the border. So the bar is an administrative direction that bites through the entry-control provisions, not a punishment handed down by a court.

Does the ban order apply to children?

The order carries two express exemptions and one of them is age. Clause 3(1) says the order does not apply to an alien who departs the Kingdom before reaching eighteen complete years of age. Clause 3(2) exempts an alien who departed before the order came into force, which was the transitional provision for March 2016. Note what the age exemption is and is not: it exempts the person from the entry bar. It says nothing about the fine, which is a separate instrument working on a separate basis.

Can I be detained for overstaying?

The Act provides for it. Section 54 lets a competent official send an alien out of the Kingdom where they entered or remain without permission or where the permission has ended or been revoked, applies the detention provisions to any inquiry needed for that, and says that while removal is pending the official may permit the alien to stay at a place subject to reporting and a surety, or may detain them at any place for as long as is necessary — with the cost of that detention borne by the alien. Section 20 caps ordinary detention at 48 hours from arrival at the official’s office, extendable for necessity to no more than seven days with the reasons recorded, after which the official must apply to a court, which may authorise detention as necessary for not more than twelve days at a time and may release the person on bail.

Does leaving and coming back fix an overstay?

It ends it, and it does not undo it. Section 39 provides that a temporary permission to stay comes to an end when the alien leaves the Kingdom, unless they obtained a re-entry permit first and return without falling into a prohibited class — in which case the remaining balance of the original permission runs on. That is the point: leaving is the moment the fine is assessed and the moment the ban starts running, because every rung of the ban ladder is counted from the date of departure. It is not a reset.

Am I overstaying while my extension application is being decided?

Section 35 says not. Its closing paragraph provides that each application for a further temporary stay is filed on the prescribed form with the prescribed fee, and that while awaiting the decision the alien may stay in the Kingdom in the meantime. So a pending, properly filed application is a lawful basis for being here past the stamped date, which is exactly why the receipt matters and why the date on it is the thing to photograph.

Traffic fines stopped being criminal in 2023. Did overstay?

No, and this one could not have. The Act on Administrative Fines B.E. 2565 converted the fine-only offences under the laws in its first schedule automatically; the Land Traffic Act is in that schedule and the Immigration Act is in the second, where conversion needs a royal decree. But there is a second and more decisive reason. Section 41(1) provides that the fine-only offences in either schedule do not include an offence carrying imprisonment or a heavier penalty where a natural person commits it. Section 81 carries up to two years’ imprisonment. It is therefore outside the reform by definition, and remains a criminal offence settled by compounding.

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