Australian Passport Renewal for Cambodia eVisa: 2026 DFAT Guide (Standard, Priority, Emergency)

Priority renewal walkthrough — start to finish in 2 business days

Most Aussies dealing with a Cambodia-trip-driven renewal end up on the priority path. The standard path is fine on paper, but it leaves no buffer for postal delays and no margin if the Cambodia eVisa needs a fresh passport number before the application is resubmitted. Here is the exact priority sequence, the way thousands of our customers run it.

Step 1 — book the lodgement slot. The DFAT online appointment booker covers every Passport Office across the country, with same-week availability in most capital cities. If you are using Australia Post priority lodgement instead, ring the outlet first to confirm they handle priority and that an appointment is needed (most participating outlets prefer a booked slot, even though the website does not require it).

Step 2 — fill the PC7 renewal form. Available as a downloadable PDF from the Australian Passport Office website, or pickup from a Passport Office or Australia Post outlet. The PC7 is significantly shorter than the PC8 first-time form — no witness countersignature required — but it must be completed in dark blue or black pen, with no corrections, no liquid paper, and all dates in DD/MM/YYYY format. A single crossed-out field can mean the form is rejected at the counter and you have to start over.

Step 3 — get the passport photo. Two identical recent passport-style photos, 35mm × 45mm, plain off-white background, neutral expression, no glasses, no head covering except for religious reasons. The Australian passport photo spec is broadly the same as the Cambodia eVisa photo spec, which means a chemist or photo-booth print intended for one will usually satisfy both — handy if you are also working on the Cambodia eVisa application in parallel. One of the two photos must be signed and dated on the reverse by your guarantor.

Step 4 — payment and lodgement. Payment is taken at the counter, by card, EFTPOS, or cash in some outlets. The full priority fee — $325 AUD standard plus ~$251 AUD priority loading — is collected up front. You hand over the form, the photos, the old passport, and any supporting evidence (marriage certificate for a name change, court orders for guardianship, etc). The agent verifies, takes a digital signature, and gives you a lodgement receipt with a tracking reference.

Step 5 — collection. Priority passports are issued through the DFAT secure courier network, with delivery in roughly 2 business days. For a Sydney lodgement on a Tuesday morning, expect delivery to your registered Australian residential address by Thursday afternoon, with a signature required at the door. If you cannot guarantee someone at home, lodge with collection-from-office instead and pick it up directly. The Australian Passport Office's renewal page covers the full official sequence if you want to cross-check before you go.

Renewal-on-the-clock — which speed for which calendar?

The cleanest way to pick a renewal speed is to work backwards from your Cambodia arrival date. The Cambodia eVisa needs 3 business days through us, and the airline enforces the 6-month passport rule at the Australian gate — so the cut-off is not your departure from Sydney, it is the day you actually step on the plane.

Worked example: your trip is in 3 weeks (21 days from today), and your current passport expires in 5 months (so you fall under the 6-month rule and need renewal). The standard renewal at ~3 weeks would land roughly on departure day — too tight, with no buffer for postal delays or a Cambodia eVisa resubmission. Priority renewal at 2 business days plus a fresh Cambodia eVisa application of 3 business days gives you a combined 5-business-day window, leaving more than 2 clear weeks of breathing room before the flight. Priority is the right call.

General rule of thumb. Trip more than 6 weeks out: standard renewal is comfortable. Trip 4-6 weeks out: standard if you are organised, priority if you want zero stress. Trip 2-4 weeks out: priority renewal, no debate. Trip 1-2 weeks out: priority renewal at a Passport Office walk-in, collect in person. Trip inside 1 week: priority renewal with same-day discretion at a Passport Office, escalated case. Already overseas at the point of realisation: emergency consulate replacement.

Where this gets tricky is when the trip is 4 weeks out and the urge is to save the $251 AUD priority loading. The honest VisaToCambodia answer is: don't. The Cambodia eVisa documents required checklist already runs to five items, and any one of them flagging at upload (photo glare, name mismatch, off-white wall) costs you 1-2 business days off the original window. Add even a small Cambodia-side hiccup to a standard-speed passport renewal and the whole trip starts to feel marginal. Priority buys insurance.

What happens to your Cambodia eVisa if your passport renews mid-application

This is the single most common question Aussies ask once they realise the renewal is needed. You have already paid the $80 USD (~$122 AUD) for the Cambodia eVisa under your old passport number, the new passport is on its way from DFAT, and the eVisa is tied to a passport number that will no longer exist in 2 business days. What happens next depends entirely on where you applied.

Through us, the answer is simple. We hold your Cambodia eVisa application open for 5 business days while you sort the DFAT renewal, so the fee does not get burned on the old passport number. As soon as the new passport is in your hand, you reply to our email thread with the new passport number and a fresh bio-page scan, and we update the application before resubmitting to Cambodian Immigration. No second fee, no fresh application from scratch, no losing your spot in the queue. The full 3-business-day Immigration clock starts again from the resubmission, but that is genuinely the only delay — and it is more than absorbed by the priority renewal window you were already waiting on.

Through the direct government portal, the answer is harder. The Cambodian eVisa is bound to the exact passport number on the original submission, and there is no formal amendment path — a renewed passport means the original eVisa is dead. Most Aussies in this position end up applying a second time on the direct portal at full government fee, which doubles the visa cost outright. This is one of the practical reasons our pricing exists in the form it does. The $80 USD (~$122 AUD) tourist or $90 USD (~$137 AUD) business price you see at checkout has the renewal-overlap scenario factored in, and the 5-business-day hold is part of that pricing — not an extra service.

A small note on timing within the hold window. The 5 business days starts from the moment you notify us that a renewal is in progress, not from the date of the original eVisa submission. So if you applied for the eVisa on a Monday, realised the passport issue on Tuesday, and emailed us the same day, the hold runs Tuesday through to the following Tuesday. DFAT priority renewal at 2 business days fits comfortably inside that window. Standard renewal at 3 weeks does not — in which case the right move is a fresh eVisa application once the new passport arrives, since the original fee gets refunded back to your card if the hold expires.

If your eVisa has already been issued before you discover the passport problem, the picture changes again. The Cambodia eVisa rejected guide covers the closely related case where Cambodian Immigration bounces the application back for a passport-too-close-to-expiry flag — same fix, same 5-business-day hold, same no-second-fee policy through us.

Putting the renewal and the eVisa together

The whole thing is more forgiving than it looks at first. Three DFAT speeds, a clean decision tree off your departure date, and a Cambodia eVisa application that can be paused mid-flight while the renewal lands. Most of the trip-saving on the renewal side comes from picking priority earlier than feels strictly necessary, and most of the trip-saving on the eVisa side comes from applying through a path that has the renewal scenario already baked in. If you are still working out the upstream visa question, the Do Australians Need a Visa for Cambodia explainer covers the 2026 eligibility picture in full, and the Cambodia visa edge cases for Australians piece runs through dual citizens, PR holders, and name-change overlaps with renewals.

One last consideration before you commit. Smartraveller's standing advice for Cambodia is worth a five-minute read while you are at the Passport Office anyway — it covers the practical health and safety context once you arrive, and it is the same advisory DFAT staff will reference if any consular issue comes up overseas. The Cambodia eVisa application walkthrough is then the right next step once your new passport is on the way.

When to start the renewal versus when to start the eVisa

If both the renewal and the eVisa are on your plate, start with the renewal — always. The eVisa cannot be locked to a passport number that is about to change, and the 5-business-day hold we offer is generous but not infinite. The moment the new passport is in your hand, the eVisa application becomes a 10-minute job with a 3-business-day Immigration window, and you are done. Renewal first, eVisa second, e-Arrival third in the week before you fly. That sequence is the cleanest and the cheapest for almost every Aussie this guide is written for.

A final practical note. If your trip involves more than one Aussie traveller — a partner, kids, parents — run the renewal check on every passport before you commit to any travel dates. A single passport in the group with under 6 months of validity is enough to bench the entire booking, and family renewals are easier to handle together (especially child passports, which generally require both parents present at lodgement). One trip to the Passport Office covers the whole family if you book the appointments back-to-back. Save the priority loading where you can, but never to the point of betting the trip on a 3-week standard turnaround that has no margin for a Cambodia eVisa flag.

Next steps and related reading for Australians: apply for your Cambodia eVisa when you are ready to lodge, bookmark our Cambodia visa hub for Australian citizens as the single canonical reference, skim the FAQ on Cambodia visa passport requirements for quick answers, and use our glossary of Cambodia visa terms to decode any acronym in this guide.