You can renew a Thai driving licence at a DLT office up to six months before it expires. You’ll need your passport with a non-immigrant visa, your old licence, a residence certificate, a medical certificate no older than a month and proof that you’ve completed the online course on dlt-elearning.com: one hour for a motorbike, two for a car. A five-year licence costs 255 baht for a motorbike and 505 for a car.
You can usually replace your licence up to six months before its expiry date. Start by choosing a date for your DLT visit: appointments may not be available straight away, so it’s best to leave yourself some time.
What to prepare
1. A residence certificate.
2. A medical certificate.
3. Register and watch the videos on the DLT e-Learning website. At the end, save the results screen or the certificate: proof of the course is valid for six months. A driving school may also offer this service, but for an additional fee.
How long the new licence is valid for
That depends on the type of your visa and how long it has left to run. In practice, people on anything other than a one-year visa often get a 2-year licence, and those on a one-year visa a 5-year one. The decision is DLT’s, so check the requirements and the list of documents before you go.
Where to get the residence certificate and medical certificate
The residence certificate is issued by your local immigration office or by your consulate. At immigration it costs roughly 200 to 500 baht depending on the office (300 in Pattaya), and you get it with your passport and proof of address. Under DLT rules the residence certificate just has to be valid, but some offices ask for a recent one, no older than a month, so check with yours.
Any clinic will do a medical certificate in a few minutes: blood pressure, a couple of questions, a stamp. It’s just as short-lived: no older than thirty days on the day of your visit.
At DLT you’ll need your passport with a non-immigrant visa, your old licence, both recent documents and proof that you’ve completed the course. The fee for a five-year licence is 255 baht for a motorbike and 505 for a car. If you’re given a two-year licence again, it’s 105 and 205.
Don’t put off the replacement. If your licence expired more than a year ago, you’ll have to retake the theory test, and after more than three years, both theory and practical.
One more detail that confuses a lot of people. By the rules, your first licence is always a temporary one, valid for two years, and five-year licences are only issued at the first renewal. After that your visa comes into play, which is why not everyone gets “five years”, and not always the first time.
If you don’t have a licence yet, start somewhere else, with getting one from scratch: a residence certificate, a medical certificate and driving school.
.BFiK9FRT_Z1UQs8B.webp)
