Overnight from 30 to 31 August the DTV e-visa form grew by three lines. Three lines — and the routes that carried the main flow of applicants closed to visitors: Ho Chi Minh City, Vientiane, Ankara. Retold often enough, this already sounds like “the DTV is closed.” It isn’t: the visa is the same — five years, the same grounds. What changed is where you file and with which documents. Below: what the form actually says, who files now and where, what happens to applications made before 31 August, and which document to start with today.
What exactly appeared in the e-visa form
Two new documents and one new wording about money — in the lists for all three DTV purposes: remote work, soft power (courses, medical treatment) and dependants. This is not one consulate’s decision: what changed is the master data of the central form at thaievisa.go.th, the form everyone in the world files through. On the morning of 29 August the new items were not there yet; on the 30th the portal was down for maintenance; around midnight on the 30th they appeared under all three purposes — with no exceptions by consulate.
| As written in the form | What it means |
|---|---|
| Proof of permanent residence in the country where the application is submitted | Not simply being in the country where you file — holding a permanent status in it |
| Certificate of criminal record clearance from the country of nationality or the country where the application is submitted | Proof of no criminal record (a police clearance certificate) — from your country of citizenship or from the country of filing |
| Last-3-month bank statement(s) from any bank(s) with a minimum balance of 500,000 THB… or sponsorship letter(s) | Any bank, three months, and the lowest balance — not the average — at 500,000 baht; or a sponsorship letter instead |
Three details that get lost in the retelling. The central text sets no expiry for the criminal record certificate — “no older than six months” comes from individual consulates (London, for one). The form makes no exception by age: what happens with children each consulate decides for itself, more on that below. Minimum balance means the lowest balance, not the average: if the account was below 500,000 baht for even a single day across those three months, the requirement is formally not met. Our chronicle holds no refusals for a dip yet — the rule is two days old — but that is how the text reads.
None of this wording is new to the Thai e-visa: the same documents have sat for years in the lists for the O-A retirement visa — the DTV has essentially been moved onto its model. And one item disappeared: “document indicating current location.” It used to check that you were physically in the country of filing; that job now belongs to the proof of permanent residence.
Who can file for the DTV now, and where
One rule: you file where you are a citizen or a permanent resident. Flying to a third country “to file” no longer makes sense — and no longer helps.
By citizenship — the consulate of your country or of your consular district. Russian citizens — Moscow; its district, per the form’s master data, is Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Moldova and Uzbekistan. Ukrainian citizens — Warsaw. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan — Astana. Türkiye — Ankara.
By permanent residence — the country where that status is held. Two European cases from late August were filed before the rule but already followed its logic, with permanent residence in the country of filing: Stockholm — an applicant with Swedish permanent residence got her visa in two days with no requests; Madrid — Spanish permanent residence, one request (rental contract, utility bills in the applicant’s name, Spain–Thailand tickets), approval within a week. One case each: a direction, not statistics. Warsaw, for anyone who is not a Ukrainian citizen, accepts only with a karta stałego pobytu — Polish permanent residence.
The open question — residence permit or permanent residence. The form says permanent resident; how to read that, consulates are for now deciding for themselves, and direct questions get no clear answer — in Moscow, asked about dependants, they said “we don’t know ourselves yet.” What is known: Astana, by phone as early as 29 August — “from 31 August a temporary residence permit (RVP) is not enough, only the full residence permit”; Turkish and Georgian residence permits are temporary statuses, and there is not a single decision on them; Dubai — Emirates ID holders have started planning filings, no cases yet. The map of who reads it how will be drawn by the first decisions of September.
Who is left without a clean route. Sole traders, the self-employed and people on service contracts from Russia: Moscow accepts only salaried employees with the 2-NDFL tax certificate (the Russian income-tax statement, form 2-NDFL) — confirmed by phone at the consulate on 31 August, the third independent confirmation in two days — and people on service contracts are warned at the desk that a refusal is likely. Anyone who lived in Georgia, Türkiye or Vietnam without a local residence permit. Holders of a Kazakh RVP. The market has already turned them toward the ED student visa — but that is a separate conversation, not about the DTV. What is left for sole traders and the self-employed — we cover separately.
What about applications filed before 31 August
Officially — under the old rules: that is what the foreign ministry’s site says, and the consulates’ announcements make it precise — submitted and paid prior to 31 August. Both halves matter: an application left unpaid before the portal went down does not, by the letter of the announcement, fall under the old rules. Such cases already exist — three dependants of one family were left hanging without payment at the moment of the shutdown — and the outcome is still unknown.
In practice there is already an exception. On the night of 31 August (the emails arrived at 00:14) Ankara refused applications filed on 26 and 28 August from Georgia without a Georgian residence permit — and that same night, for the first time in its history, refused dependants: in one family two children were approved, the wife and the third child refused. The emails give no reasons. A consulate where refusals used to be a rarity issued a run of them in one night — that is no longer a rumour.
Ho Chi Minh City, meanwhile, is finishing off the old applications. On the morning of 1 September approvals came in for filings of 13 and 14 August (18–19 days, a sole trader among them); requests for additional documents have reached filings of 23 August, and for mid-August filings the requests are of the old kind — no residence permit is asked for. Two refusals on 31 August among the pending ones — both through middlemen; a link to the new rule has not been proven. Moscow: by one verbal account from the consulate, the criminal record certificate may be requested even from those who filed before the 31st.
What to do while an application is hanging:
- Order the criminal record certificate now, without waiting for a request. It takes up to a month; getting a request with no certificate in hand means losing that month.
- Stay in the country of filing until the decision. Consulates ask for proof of location and fresh documents, and Moscow asks for scans of every page of the passport — the stamps show where you have been.
- Don’t withdraw the application to “file somewhere else.” There is no somewhere else now: re-filing is possible only at the same consulate.
- Silence is not a signal. Ho Chi Minh City works through roughly two days’ worth of filings per day; at that pace the August tail reaches decisions around 4–5 September. That is arithmetic, not a promise.
The criminal record certificate: formats and timing
Order it first: it is the only document in the package whose production time is measured in a month. What is known as of 1 September:
- For Russian citizens the certificate is issued by the Interior Ministry through Gosuslugi (the Russian state services portal); the official term is up to 30 days. There are two formats: electronic (arrives within a few days) and paper with stamps (about a month). Moscow, by phone on 31 August: it accepts only the paper one with blue stamps, translated into English and notarised; the electronic version is not taken. Other consulates have not named a format yet. So order both forms at once: the electronic one covers a request wherever it is accepted, the paper one covers Moscow.
- Apostille does not work yet: the convention enters into force for Thailand on 28 February 2027. For documents from other countries Moscow asks for legalisation through the foreign ministry of the issuing country; there are no completed cases yet.
- Children. The form makes no exceptions. Moscow by phone: in Russia no certificate is issued for children under 14 — an explanation in English goes in its place. That is one clarification; we are tracking the practice. London writes “under 16” in its own requirements.
- The timing trap. An employer’s letter, the 2-NDFL and bank statements live for a month. While you wait for the criminal record certificate, the rest of the package goes stale. The order is the reverse of the usual one: the certificate first, everything else timed to the date it is ready.
Money: three months of a minimum balance
Before 31 August consulates looked at money in different ways: Manila — end-of-month balances, Moscow — balances over three months, Ho Chi Minh City since August — a balance that never dipped, over six months. Now the requirement is uniform and written into the form: statements for the last three months with a minimum balance of 500,000 baht, from any bank. The sum applies to every participant, dependants included: on 31 August Moscow confirmed “500,000 for each.” The sponsorship letter is now a formal alternative right there in the form, for the main applicant too. The first visible case — a wife sponsoring her husband, the two filing together on 24 and 28 August, both applications in progress. How consulates read “minimum balance” in practice will be shown by the first decisions of September; for today only one reading is safe — not a single day below 500,000 across the three months.
Families where the main applicant made it and the dependant didn’t
A new class of case: the husband got his DTV in Ho Chi Minh City or Vientiane in August, the wife and children didn’t make it before the 31st. The dependant’s form asks for the “DTV visa of the DTV holder” — with no tie to where it was issued, so a visa from Vietnam can be attached. But the dependant files where they are resident and meets all the new requirements: residence, criminal record certificate, 500,000 baht in their own account or a sponsorship letter. Moscow, on top of that, asks for the main applicant’s set of documents by its own rules, the 2-NDFL included: a package that went through in Ho Chi Minh City has to be assembled again for Moscow. Ho Chi Minh City, replying to one applicant’s email, confirmed it: a dependant may file at any consulate — the one for their place of residence.
The grey market after 31 August
Within days of the rule a price list took shape in the chats: “Moscow turnkey for sole traders” at 150,000–170,000 roubles with an “official 2-NDFL from a company,” a “no-travel filing” at 85,000 baht — and the market is already predicting its own next product, a “fabricated residence permit for the country of filing.” Let’s call things by their name: a 2-NDFL from a company you never worked for is a forged document, and that is a criminal offence in the country of filing, not a visa risk. Consulates are better prepared for this than it looks: at the fee desk Moscow matches the 2-NDFL and social contributions against the applicant’s live Gosuslugi account and asks for scans of every page of the passport, while on 1 September Ho Chi Minh City took three identical applications from one middleman and approved one, rejected one, and sent the third off to be checked for forgery. A clean package survives any request. A fabricated one survives until the first.
Where to start now
- 1.Find your consulate by your passport or your proof of permanent residence — not by where it is more comfortable to live. Who accepts whom is in the September Barometer and on the consulate board.
- 2.Order the criminal record certificate in both formats.
- 3.Count the three months: from which day each participant’s account never went below 500,000 baht. If money was topped up recently, the filing window moves.
- 4.Collect the rest of the documents for the date the certificate is ready, not earlier: most of them live for a month.
If you have put the package together yourself, you can hand it in for the Preflight Check: one package — one written report on what doesn’t match the consulate’s requirements. For those who want the whole route done, there are the Solo Route and Family Route plans; details are in the answers to common questions. And if it isn’t clear which consulate is yours now — message Mira: she’ll match your citizenship and residence status against the consulate map and send the order of collecting documents. The contact stays after the visa too — that’s how we do things.