International Driving Permit for Thailand

Get one. If you plan to drive or ride in Thailand on a foreign licence, an International Driving Permit turns your national licence into something a Thai police officer, a rental desk and a claims handler can all read and accept. It costs a few pounds, takes minutes to arrange at home, and removes an entire category of argument at the moments you least want to be having one.

The complication — and the reason much published advice on this is now wrong — is that there are two different International Driving Permits, issued under two different United Nations conventions, and Thailand is a party to both. Which booklet you need depends on your own nationality, not on Thailand. A British, German or Nordic driver needs the 1968 permit. An American, Australian, Irish, Canadian, New Zealand or Japanese driver can only obtain the 1949 permit — and that is the correct document for them, not a second-best substitute.

• What it isA standardised translation of your national licence. Never a licence in itself
• Two versions1949 Geneva and 1968 Vienna. Thailand is a party to both
• 1949 permit lastsOne year from the date of issue
• 1968 permit lastsThree years from issue, or until your home licence expires — whichever comes first
• Where to get itIn your own country, before you fly. You cannot buy a valid one in Thailand

What an International Driving Permit actually is

An IDP is a small booklet reproducing the details of your national licence in a fixed international format, with your vehicle categories in a standard layout and the headings printed in several languages. It exists so that an official who cannot read your licence can look at one page and see what you are entitled to drive.

It is not a licence, and this matters more than any other single point on this page. The 1968 Convention says so in terms: an international permit "shall be issued only to the holder of a domestic permit", and "shall not be valid after the expiry of the corresponding domestic permit, the number of which shall be entered in the international permit". It has to be carried with the licence it refers to, and it dies the moment that licence does.

Two consequences follow. An IDP cannot add entitlements you do not already hold: if your home licence covers cars only, your IDP shows category B and nothing else, and no paperwork will make it authorise a scooter — see the Thai motorbike licence and engine sizes. And if you renew your home licence, the old IDP tied to the old licence number is finished.

Thailand is a party to both conventions

This is the fact the internet most often gets wrong, usually because the source was written before 2021 and never updated.

That single article is why the answer to "which IDP do I need for Thailand" depends on your passport, and why two readers can be given opposite answers and both be right.

Which permit you need, by the country that issued your licence

Your own country issues the booklet, so the permit you can obtain is determined by which conventions it has joined.

If your country is not in the table, check the United Nations depositary record linked at the foot of this page rather than a blog. Otherwise start with your own national guide: UK, Ireland, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, India and China.

Why an American cannot simply get the 1968 permit

A common moment of panic goes like this. A US, Australian or Irish reader finds GOV.UK's line that Thailand takes the 1968 permit, goes to their own motoring organisation, and is told only the 1949 booklet is available. Nothing has gone wrong.

Your own country issues the permit, and can only issue permits under conventions it has actually joined. The United States, Australia, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and Japan are 1949 parties and not 1968 parties, so a 1949 booklet is the only thing they can issue — and it is the right document, because Article 48 leaves the 1949 Convention fully in force between Thailand and those states.

How long your permit lasts

The two conventions set different validity periods, and the difference is worth knowing before you book.

• 1949 permit: valid for one year from the date of issue, in every contracting state except the one that issued it. The model permit itself carries that wording.
• 1968 permit: valid for three years after the date of issue, or until the date your domestic licence expires, whichever is earlier. The expiry is printed on the cover.

So a 1949 permit is spent within a year whether you use it or not, and a long-stayer replaces it annually. A 1968 permit usually runs the full three years unless the licence behind it expires first.

Categories, engine size and the moped question

Both conventions use the same lettered categories. The two that matter to a visitor:

• Category A — "motor cycles with or without a sidecar, invalid carriages and three-wheeled motor vehicles with an unladen weight not exceeding 400 kg".
• Category B — passenger vehicles with, besides the driver's seat, at most eight seats; or goods vehicles up to 3,500 kg permissible maximum weight.

Note what is missing: there is no small-engine sub-category. Category A is a single motorcycle category, and engine size creates no lighter tier that a car licence covers. If your home licence carries no motorcycle entitlement, your IDP carries no category A — whether or not the machine is a 110cc automatic, and whether or not the rental shop looked at anything.

Thai domestic licensing works the same way — a private car licence and a private motorcycle licence are separate documents, and one does not imply the other.

The "90 days" claim

You will read almost everywhere that an IDP is "valid in Thailand for 90 days", sometimes stated as though it were Thai law. We went looking for the basis and could not find one.

Neither convention contains such a provision. The 1949 permit is valid for a year from issue and the 1968 permit for three years or the life of the domestic licence, and Thailand entered no reservation creating a shorter one. Even the sources repeating the figure describe it as a "practical threshold". We could find no statutory or Department of Land Transport basis for a 90-day limit, and this site will not state one. The same goes for the variant claim that tourists may drive for 60 days.

What is true, separately, is that a foreign permit is designed for a temporary visitor: the 1968 Convention expressly allows a state to decline to recognise a permit held by someone normally resident there. If Thailand becomes your home, your paperwork changes — see which licence you can use in Thailand and how to get a Thai driving licence.

Getting one before you fly

An IDP is issued by an authority in the country that issued your driving licence, and only to the holder of a valid licence from that country. In the United Kingdom that means the Post Office; elsewhere it is usually a national motoring organisation or a government office. The application is short — your licence, a photograph, a small fee — and in many places you walk out with the booklet the same day.

The UK government puts the point bluntly: "You cannot buy an IDP outside the UK, so get one before you travel." The same logic applies wherever you are from. Once you have landed in Bangkok, no counter can issue you a valid permit for your home licence.

What happens if you turn up without one

Two things need separating, because they carry very different consequences.

The legal position first. The offence in Thai law is driving without a valid driving licence, which sits in the Motor Vehicle Act rather than the traffic legislation; translations of section 64 give imprisonment of up to one month, a fine of up to about 1,000 baht, or both. We could not check the current amended text against the Royal Gazette, so treat that as reported rather than certified. About 1,000 baht is roughly £23 or US$28. The absence of an IDP is not itself the offence — an IDP is not a licence — so a driver who left the booklet in the hotel safe is in a much better position than one who never held the entitlement at all.

The practical position is where the real cost sits. Without the permit you are relying on an officer, a rental company and eventually a claims handler each accepting a document they may not be able to read. What a stop is actually like is covered in police checkpoints in Thailand, and riding with no entitlement at all in riding without a licence in Thailand.

Policies vary on whether the IDP itself is named. The one wording we obtained in full — Fast Cover, an Australian travel insurer — requires a rider to hold both a current home licence for the class of machine and "a licence valid for the country that you are riding in", and does not mention an IDP at all. Others are widely said to require one. Since "a licence valid for the country you are riding in" is precisely the phrase an IDP exists to satisfy, the permit is the cheapest way to close the argument. Check your own wording; we cannot tell you what your insurer requires.

Carry the permit and the licence together

Whichever version you hold, carry it with your national licence. GOV.UK's instruction to British drivers in Thailand is explicit: "You'll need to carry both the 1968 version of the international driving permit (IDP) and your UK driving licence while driving." A permit on its own is incomplete by design — the licence number it refers to is printed inside it.

If you are not sure your paperwork adds up, work through the five-point legality checklist or use the licence checker. If you are hiring rather than bringing a vehicle, what you need to rent a car in Thailand covers what the counter asks for.

Frequently asked questions