Who can file here from 31 August 2026
Residents of France, Monaco and Algeria. Paris is the only Thai post for all three countries: the honorary consulates in Marseille, Lyon and Monaco no longer issue visas, and the embassy says so plainly. The post’s condition is that you stay in France, Monaco or Algeria for the whole processing period. “The applicant has left France/Monaco/Algeria” sits on the embassy’s own list of standard grounds for refusal, and the first refusal known under the new rule in this district is exactly that: an Algerian filed as a resident of Algeria while sitting in Malaysia as a tourist.
Paris brought in the 31 August rule three days early and harder than Bangkok. The DTV page was rewritten on 28 August 2026: instead of the electricity, phone or internet bill that used to be accepted from EU citizens, there is now a single line — “proof of permanent residence (latest tax return)”. The separate line about the titre de séjour is gone, and nothing in the text suggests the post will take a residence card from a foreign national.
The embassy’s two pages disagree
The embassy’s general rules still name the carte d’identité, the titre de séjour and a justificatif de domicile. The DTV page names the tax return and nothing else. The post edited those general rules on 1 September, adding the visa-free change from 15 September, and left the contradiction standing. We assemble the package for the DTV page. What a French citizen with no recent avis d’imposition should do — after coming back from abroad, say — is a question for the embassy; as of 4 September nobody has an answer.
How filing works
- Everything runs online through the e-Visa portal. An interview happens “in individual cases”, when the embassy sees fit; if the proof of residence looks thin, the post is entitled to summon the applicant in person. Requests for additional documents come by e-mail, and in our cases by telephone too.
- The fee is €350, non-refundable. File two to three months before departure, and no earlier than three.
- Timeline per the embassy site: about four weeks, longer with an incomplete package. In cases from 2025–2026, from 7 days to 6 weeks, most often around three. We have not yet seen a filing completed after 28 August.
- Finances the Paris way: no less than €15,000 in the account in each of the last three months. At the ECB rate on 3 September 2026 that is about 575,000 THB, 15% above the general threshold of 500,000 THB. A sponsorship letter is for minors and accompanying family only. One account in the main applicant’s name has covered a family of three.
- Employed: a contract or a letter from the company in France, an extract from the trade register and the latest fiche de paie, in one file. Auto-entrepreneur: a letter in French and English, the avis de situation Sirene from INSEE, a link to a website or a platform profile, and a recent client invoice with proof of payment. Soft power: an invitation, a copy of the signatory’s ID, the organisation’s licence, proof of payment.
- Dependants: a spouse and children under 20, with a marriage or birth certificate or the livret de famille. A child going to an international school is assigned an ED visa by the post, not a DTV.
- The name on the form has to match the passport exactly, middle name and maiden name included. The embassy does not correct data after filing; one applicant whose “maiden name created a problem” paid the €350 a second time.
Paris’s standard document request is the photo, in our cases usually because of a photo-booth picture; the second most frequent is company documents.
One account with €15,000 held for three months was enough for the three of us. — ask.in.th forum, October 2025
The criminal record certificate
Paris requires a clean certificate no older than three months for every purpose, spouses and children included: the text carries no age exemption. In France this is the bulletin n° 3, issued by the Casier judiciaire national. It is free and open to anyone regardless of citizenship; through FranceConnect it arrives as a PDF in a few minutes, and without FranceConnect, for people born outside France, in two working days after a manual identity check.
It is issued in French only. Translation and legalisation for the DTV are not mentioned by the post: the requirement says only “clean, less than three months old”. The “automatic English translation” people write about on forums is the EU multilingual standard form, a glossary for European Union countries, not an English-language certificate. If the embassy does ask for a translation, it has to come from a sworn translator.
An apostille does not work for Thailand yet: the Convention only enters into force there on 28 February 2027. Legalisation of French documents was handed to the notarial profession on 1 September 2025, and the Thai embassy in Paris accepts French documents only through that chain — but for the DTV it does not require the certificate to be legalised.
A resident of Monaco obtains the bulletin n° 3 from the Parquet Général: €5 on the spot, five days, requested in person, by post or by e-mail, with no online issue. For Algeria, the Ministry of Justice site would not open on the day we checked: we cannot confirm the price, the timeline or the language of the Algerian certificate.
What else matters
The embassy site is in French only; the visa section has no English version. You can also file through an agency accredited by the embassy and based in France, Monaco or Algeria: about twenty of them, the post says, with no list on the site. Paris has written those same two new lines — the tax return and the certificate — into the O-A retirement visa as well, although Bangkok’s general rules have nothing of the kind there. The embassy’s page about a “criminal record extract for Thais and foreigners” is the Thai police certificate for people who have lived in Thailand and has nothing to do with the DTV. From 15 September 2026 visa-free entry for French citizens drops to 30 days.
What we track here
The first decisions under the new rules: what Paris will take in place of a tax return, whether the certificate needs a translation, whether it will be demanded of a child. For residents of Algeria, the language of the documents and which certificate will count. Monaco has produced no cases at all, and in the e-Visa master data it carries an “online filing unavailable” flag; Algeria carries the same flag, and Algerians do get visas through Paris, so we do not read it literally. We check the post’s page every week.
A package you have assembled yourself we check before filing — the Preflight Check: $300, a written report within two working days. Full support all the way to the visa is the Solo Route and Family Route.
The state of every consulate is on the live board, and the consulate assigned to your country is on the map.