Permis de travail à Bangkok

Révisé par ThaiLawOnline, un cabinet d'avocats thaïlandais agréé exerçant en Thaïlande depuis 2006. Avocate thaïlandaise en charge du dossier : Wichuda Atthamethakon, LL.M., licence du barreau thaïlandais 3149/2556.

Dernière mise à jour : 6 septembre 2026

Tout étranger qui se produit sur scène est légalement tenu de posséder un permis de travail à Bangkok. C'est un document gouvernemental. Il permet à un étranger de travailler, de toucher un salaire et de s'inscrire pour bénéficier d'avantages sociaux. Il existe des exemptions, mais elles proviennent de l'article 4 du décret d'urgence sur la gestion du travail des étrangers de 2017 (B.E. 2560) and not from the Alien Working Act, which was repealed. Section 4 disapplies the Decree entirely for a foreigner acting in one of eight capacities: a member of a diplomatic mission; a member of a consular mission; a representative of a member state or an official of the United Nations and its specialised agencies; a personal servant who has travelled from abroad to work for one of those people; a person carrying out duties under an agreement between the Thai government and a foreign government or an international organisation; an occasional entrant organising or joining a meeting, giving an opinion, lecture or demonstration at a conference, training, study visit or seminar, or performing in arts, culture or a sporting competition, as the Cabinet prescribes; an entrant who operates a business, invests, or has high knowledge, ability or skill benefiting national development, as the Cabinet prescribes; and the representative of a foreign personne morale licensed under the law on foreign business. The embassy case people usually have in mind is the first two of those. This permis de travail in Bangkok is needed above and beyond a visa should you wish to work. A work permit in Bangkok is essential for those seeking employment in the city.

No matter what job you have, even if you volunteer, you need a work permit in Bangkok. This is required to work legally in Thailand. People might think it is easy. It is not. It is more difficult to get a work permit in Bangkok than a visa. Work permits are issued by the Department of Employment, which is part of the Ministry of Labour. Let’s explore how to obtain a work permit in Bangkok.

The document photographed above is a WP 11 book, the form the Thai work permit took before 2018. It is not what a new applicant is issued today. Section 7 below sets out the four forms the law now provides, one of which is fully electronic.

1. Obtenir un permis de travail à Bangkok

Comprendre le permis de travail à Bangkok

Il est essentiel pour tout travailleur étranger de bien comprendre son permis de travail à Bangkok. Ce document précise les droits et les obligations de l'employé dans la ville.

De nombreux étrangers ignorent qu'obtenir un permis de travail à Bangkok peut considérablement améliorer leurs perspectives d'emploi en Thaïlande.

To obtain a work permit in Thailand, you normally must first hold the correct visa. Tourist visas don’t cut the mustard, if you want a work permit, you’ll need a Non-Immigrant visa in your passport. This can be a Type B visa for work. It can also be an O visa for volunteering or family reasons, like if you are married to a Thai person. In general, if you’re coming to Thailand to work, your employer will send you supporting documents to help you apply for this visa. This is important because it means that you already have an employer to act as garant for your work permit.

Vous aurez besoin d'un employeur pour obtenir votre permis de travail en Thaïlande.

Pour que vous puissiez demander un permis de travail, votre employeur doit être une entreprise, une organisation ou un établissement enregistré. La plupart des employeurs qui ont déjà embauché des étrangers vous aideront à remplir les formulaires. Cependant, si vous êtes leur premier employé étranger, ils n'auront peut-être pas l'habitude de cette procédure.

La plupart des employeurs vous aideront avec les formalités administratives s'ils ont déjà embauché des étrangers. Cependant, si vous êtes leur premier employé étranger, ils n'auront peut-être pas d'expérience en la matière.

In fact they may not even realize that you must hold a work permit to work for them. Some may try to delay the application or try to convince you that you don’t need a permit to work there, but do not be put off. Do note that with covid, the number of digital nomads has been going up all around the world. People want to be able to work remotely. Some special visa like “Visa DTV Destination Thaïlande” does not need a work permit.

Métiers interdits

Veuillez noter qu'il y a quelques emplois interdits aux étrangers en Thaïlande.

2. Venir en Thaïlande

If you’re coming to Thailand specifically to work then your employer can apply for the work permit on your behalf before you enter Thailand. Processing can take from a few days up to a month or more, so doing this in advance can help you save time. However, your work permit is only officially issued when you present yourself to the labour office and sign for it.

If you are the first foreign employee or starting your own company, you may need help. You might need assistance with preparing documents for your work permit. It’s important to note here that a company hiring foreigners must have a certain amount of capital social per foreigner. It is normally 2 million Baht, half if the employee is married to a Thai. But it is 3 million under the traité d'amitié pour les Américains. The company must employ 4 Thais for every foreign employee. It is half if the foreigner is married to a Thai. BOI companies have special rules.

Pour ceux qui recherchent un emploi à long terme, l'obtention d'un permis de travail à Bangkok est une étape essentielle de leur parcours professionnel.

The paperwork required will vary depending on the type of organization you’ll be working for and the type of work that you’ll do. It may also take several tries to get the paperwork approved in case subtle details are incorrect or omitted. In most cases, it is a good idea to hire a law office to prepare and submit your application. This is especially true if the employer does not have experience with work permits.

3. Un rapport médical est nécessaire pour obtenir un permis de travail.

One more thing that you’ll need is a health check. You can visit any public hospital in Thailand to check your general health. This includes your heart, blood pressure, and chronic diseases. You will receive a report that you need for your work permit application. This generally takes less than an hour varies a lot from a place to another, from 100 baht to maybe 800 baht. Here’s a copy of the Rapport médical de 2024 : cliquez ici. Il y a quelques années, ce même formulaire comportait 5 maladies. Assurez-vous que votre formulaire est à jour.

Applying for a work permit in Bangkok typically involves several important documents that must be submitted to the Department of Employment office.

When your application is ready, take it to the Department of Employment in your province or region. This department is part of the Ministry of Labour. Once submitted, in can take up to 6 weeks to process your application. Once your permit is ready you go to the office to pay and sign for it. What you are handed depends on which of the four statutory forms that office issues: the paper forms บต.๓ and บต.๔, which the Department itself writes as WP.3 and WP.4 in English, are still among them, and so is the fully electronic permit บต.๗. Keep the permit, or the means of producing it, with you or at your workplace while you are working.

If your visa is only valid for few weeks, you may not be granted a long period, probably only until your sorties de territoire pour visa out. Work permits used to run for a maximum of one year. Section 59 paragraph 3 of the Emergency Decree now allows a permit to be issued for as long as the applicant asks for, up to a maximum of two years from the date of issue, and requires the ministerial regulation to fix a decision deadline of no more than fifteen working days.

4. Liste des documents nécessaires

**Veuillez vérifier car les documents sont constamment mis à jour. Ceci n'est qu'un guide pour vous aider.

a) Passport with valid Non-Immigrant visa

b) Copy of passport with all pages signed by applicant (including your TDAC confirmation, which replaced the paper TM.6 departure card on 1 May 2025)

c) 3 photos of the applicant, bigger than passport but same style, 5 cm X 6 cm

d) certificat médical Il y a un formulaire spécial à remplir avec 6 maladies mentionnées, voir ce lien)

e) Curriculum vitae faisant état de l'expérience et/ou de la formation pertinentes. Ce document doit être traduit en thaï.

f) Copy of degree and transcripts or professional certificates for jobs that require these (ex. TEFL or TESOL certificate for teaching English). They must be translated into Thai.

g) Certificat de mariage si vous êtes marié(e) à un(e) ressortissant(e) thaïlandais(e). (cela réduit de moitié l'obligation de l'entreprise employeuse d'immatriculer son capital)

h) When applying for a company, they company will have to submit tax documents, TVA registration, registration documents, audit reports, list of foreigners working for the company, etc. The list is quite long.

5. Permis de travail et visas : une danse complexe

As a foreigner working in Thailand, you need to have a visa and a work permit. Issued by two different ministries, these two documents are related in a frustrating and inefficient way:

Avec les documents adéquats, l'obtention d'un permis de travail à Bangkok peut être un processus simple.

1. Obtenez votre visa. To apply for a work permit in Thailand, you need to have a visa first. Initially, your Non-Immigrant visa will be issued for only 90 days. You can get your visa from the Thai government at a Thai embassy or consulate.

2. Obtenez votre permis de travail. When you apply for your work permit, it will be issued only for the time that your visa is valid. So you will get your permit issued until the date that your visa is set to expire.

Assurez-vous que votre permis de travail à Bangkok soit toujours valide afin d'éviter toute complication liée à votre emploi.

Lorsque vous prolongez votre contrat, n'oubliez pas de prolonger également votre permis de travail à Bangkok pour pouvoir continuer à travailler.

3. Prolongez votre visa. Roughly one month before your visa’s expiry date, you can apply to extend your visa up to a year. So if you have 90 days first, they will grant you another 275 days to add up to 365). You need to hold a valid work permit in order to extend your visa based on working extension. Veuillez noter que les permis de travail du BOI sont différents, plus rapides et plus faciles à obtenir.. They offer a one-stop service for smart visas, Visas LTR, and work permits. These services are under a company approved by the BOI, which stands for the Board of Investment in Thailand.

4. Prolongez votre permis de travail. Once you get your visa extension, you can go back to the work permit office. There, you can extend your work permit for another 275 days or until your visa expires. This also requires an extra fee.

Un permis de travail valide à Bangkok sert de justificatif de votre statut d'emploi légal pendant votre séjour en Thaïlande.

Il est crucial de maintenir votre permis de travail à Bangkok à jour, car cela a une incidence sur vos perspectives d'emploi.

6. Prolongation tous les ans ou tous les deux ans

Ne pas renouveler son permis de travail à Bangkok peut entraîner d'importants problèmes juridiques pendant votre séjour en Thaïlande.

Now you’re set for your first year. Every subsequent year, you can apply to extend your visa for the next full year or two. Once that extension is granted, you can extend your work permit for another year or two. A permit can be issued for one year or for the two year maximum. The fee is not set by the Decree itself: the Decree fixes only a ceiling, 20,000 baht for a work permit in its annexed schedule, and a ministerial regulation sets the amount actually charged, which is far below that and scales with the period covered. It has commonly been 3,000 baht for one year and 6,000 for two, but check the figure with the office handling your file rather than budgeting from a web page. This is very convenient if you are planning to work for longer than 1 year in Thailand. You can get an extensions every 2 years, even though your visa will still need renewal each year.

7. Que contient le permis de travail ?

Each work permit carries a unique number issued by the registrar for the province where you work, an official of the Department of Employment. The permit shows your photograph, name, date of birth, nationality, address and signature.

Is it still a blue book? Not necessarily, and the book has no basis in the Act at all. The word สมุด, book, does not appear once in the Emergency Decree on Managing the Work of Aliens B.E. 2560. The Decree is deliberately silent on physical form: section 59 paragraph 3 leaves application and issuance to a ministerial regulation and says in terms that the regulation may prescribe the use of electronic means, and section 60 lets an applicant outside Thailand apply and pay through the electronic system.

What the form actually is comes from a separate instrument, the Department of Employment announcement prescribing the form of the work permit of 19 September 2017 (Government Gazette vol. 134, special part 232 Ngor, p. 14), as amended by announcement No. 2 of 21 March 2018 (vol. 135, special part 80 Ngor, p. 1, retroactive to 5 February 2018). Its clause 3 provides four kinds of work permit: not computer-issued (บต.๓, บต.๔); computer-issued (บต.๓, บต.๔, บต.๕, บต.๕/๑); a multi-purpose computer-issued permit (บต.๖); and an electronic work permit (บต.๗). Kinds one to three commenced on 1 April 2018.

Two things follow, and they answer the question most people are really asking. First, WP is the Department’s own English for the บต. series: the annex prints its forms bilingually, แบบ บต.๕ FORM WP.5. Second, clause 8 names what the บต. series replaced, the ตท.๑๑ series under the Ministerial Regulation B.E. 2554, so WP 11 is the pre-2018 permit, the classic blue book, and has not been the form of new issuance since 1 April 2018. Clause 9 keeps permits issued earlier valid until they expire or are revoked, which is why blue books are still in circulation and still perfectly good.

What we will not tell you is which of the four you personally will receive at a given office on a given day. All four are lawful, the announcement makes none of them the default, and that is a matter of the office’s practice rather than of law. Anyone who promises you a particular artefact is guessing.

Don’t forget that to maintain your legal status, you must have a valid work permit in Bangkok at all times.

Votre permis de travail peut servir de justificatif de domicile officiel en Thaïlande. Cela s'avère utile pour de nombreuses démarches, comme l'achat d'une voiture ou l'obtention d'un permis de conduire.

Whatever the form, the permit records what you gave in the application, including your position and job description, and it carries a field reading ‘Locality permitted to work (Province)’. That is the province where you may legally work.

Comprendre les exigences relatives au permis de travail à Bangkok vous aidera à préparer efficacement votre demande.

The book form of the permit closes with six warnings setting out the rules and the punishment for breaking each. They are reproduced on pages 18 and 19 of the Department of Employment’s own handbook, available here when the Department’s server is up.

8. Modifier votre permis de travail en Thaïlande

What do you do with your work permit if you want to change jobs or employers? Changes to details in the work permit (position, job description, working locations, address, etc.) are possible. You must do them in person at the Department of Employment office. It cost about 1000 THB per change.

Changing employers is more involved, but still relatively simple process. If you have a one-year contract, you can sign with a new employer next year. Your new employer can prepare the necessary documents. These documents will help guarantee your work permit, just like the initial ones. This will include a new contract for your new job and we suggest to make a 2 years contract. You can take the documents to the Department of Employment and request to extend your work permit. There is a fee of 3000THB per year. We suggest you to extend for 2 years as it avoids the same work but double the lenght.

Il est possible d'avoir plusieurs descriptions de poste sur un permis de travail. On peut même avoir deux descriptions de poste différentes dans deux provinces différentes de Thaïlande. (Je le sais, ça m'est arrivé !)

Your work permit is your official proof of address and evidence of your status as a worker in Thailand. Working without one breaches section 8 of the Emergency Decree. Section 101, as replaced by the No. 2 Emergency Decree B.E. 2561, penalises the foreigner with a fine of 5,000 to 50,000 baht and removal from the Kingdom once the fine is paid; it carries no prison sentence, and the five year term still quoted on many websites is the original 2017 wording, replaced in 2018. Your employer is exposed more heavily: section 102 puts 10,000 to 100,000 baht on whoever takes on a foreigner without a permit, for each foreigner, rising on a repeat offence to a year in prison or 50,000 to 200,000 baht per head, with a three year bar on employing foreigners at all.

9. Permis de travail pour les Birmans, les Laotiens et les Cambodgiens

Do note that there are agreements for people of Burma (Myanmar), Laos and Cambodia in Thailand. They have special rules and their salaries can be lower. Here’s an example of a work permit from a Laotian girl. We protected her identify.

• Emplois interdits aux étrangers en Thaïlande

Foire aux questions

Dernière révision : 6 septembre 2026. Le juridique statements on this page were read against the primary instruments in Thai. Specifically: the Décret d'urgence sur la gestion du travail des étrangers, B.E. 2560 (2017) as consolidated, sections 4, 5, 8, 9, 59, 60, 101 and 102 and its annexed schedule of fee ceilings; and the Department of Employment announcement prescribing the form of the work permit of 19 September 2017 as amended in 2018, clauses 1, 3, 8 and 9, which is the instrument that actually decides what the document is. The section headed What’s In The Work Permit? was rewritten: the page had said the permit is a blue book, and the word for book does not appear anywhere in the Decree, while the announcement provides four lawful forms of which one is fully electronic. The page had also given the same document two different form numbers, WP 11 in an image caption and WP4 in the process section; WP 11 is the pre-2018 form and has not been issued to new applicants since 1 April 2018. A penalty statement was corrected because acting on it would have misled a reader about their own exposure: working without a permit carries a fine of 5,000 to 50,000 baht and removal from the Kingdom under section 101 as replaced in 2018, not a prison term, and the heavier 10,000 to 100,000 baht per head falls on the employer under section 102. What was not checked, so that this line does not claim more than it should: the work permit fee figures and the registered capital and Thai employee ratios are Department of Employment requirements set below the Decree, and the current fee regulation was not available to us at the time of review, so those numbers are left as found and are not certified here.