Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Permanent Residence. I thought of making this video after reading a recent announcement from the Immigration Bureau over at immigration.go.th. The announcement is titled: Applications for Permanent Residence in the Kingdom of Thailand for the year 2025 are now open. 

Now this might cause some confusion. The window did not actually open in 2025. We've been kind of waiting around for this. I was a little bit slow on the uptake making this video because we actually have already started assisting our clients that are prepared and ready to start processing through and I just didn't think to make the video yet. But that said, quoting directly: "The Prime Minister and the Interior Minister with the approval of the Cabinet, issued a Prime Minister's Office and Ministry of Interior announcement dated February 26, 2026, regarding the determination of the number of foreigners who may have permanent residency in the Kingdom of Thailand for the year 2025. The regulations are as follows: 1. One hundred people will be accepted for foreigners with nationality from each country and fifty people for stateless foreigners." So there are a lot of misnomers out there about PR and people will say, "well they only accept 100 a year." One hundred per nationality, and fifty for stateless persons. So that's the thing to understand there. 

Quoting further: "2. Applications will be accepted from March 9, 2026, to April 3, 2026, during official working hours. 3. In Bangkok, applications can be submitted at the Immigration Bureau 1, Division 1 (Residency Application Section), Government Complex Commemorating the 80th Birthday Anniversary of his Majesty the King (December 5, 2007), Building B, 2nd Floor, South Wing, 120 Moo 3, Chaeng Wattana 7 Road, Thung Song Hong Subdistrict, Lak Si District, Bangkok. In other provinces, applications can be submitted at the Immigration Office in the applicant's area of residence. If there is no Immigration Office in your area, submit application to the nearest Immigration Office."

So, what's going on here? Yeah, the window if you will only opens once a year, and only for a fairly limited period of time to be able to get these type of cases on file. So being able to do so, it's kind of one of these things, it's like hurry up and wait. You have to sort of pre-prepare the application, then wait for the window to open and then get it submitted. Again, this is also an interesting year because these are going to be applicants that were eligible in 2025, are going to actually be filing in 2026. Usually we see the window open in the fourth quarter of the year; we didn't see that this year. There was one year at the beginning, I think it was, if I'm not mistaken, I think it was 2015, coming off of 2014 - that was after the military government took over - and if I'm not mistaken, they did something similar. It was like in late January the window opened for the prior year. So that is basically what is happening here. The 2025 year, the window is now open for that. It will be open for a relatively short period of time as we are dealing with, basically that's the eligibility window if you will. I don't know how that was set but that is the time frame. 

That being said, yes, for those out there who think upon hearing this that an application can just be prepared and filed sort of from scratch, generally speaking that's not the way things work; you need to have this stuff prepared up before the window opens. That being said, the window is open, it is possible to start applying for that. For those who are unaware of whether or not they are eligible for Permanent Residence, it may not be a terrible idea to contact a legal professional, gain some insight and guidance into how best to proceed.