Cambodia eVisa Rejected — What Australians Should Do Next (2026 Fix Guide)

Why this happens and why it's usually fine

A Cambodia eVisa rejection email lands in your inbox and the first reaction is always the same — heart drops, flight booking flashes in front of your eyes, the trip starts to feel wobbly. Take a breath. The vast majority of rejections Australians get from Cambodian Immigration are administrative, not substantive. The system flagged something on the upload, not something about you, your travel history, or your right to enter Cambodia.

Cambodian Immigration's spec is strict but predictable. They want a passport with at least 6 months of life left, a photo that meets their format rules, a name that matches the passport's machine-readable zone character-for-character, and clean scans they can actually read. Miss any one of those and the file bounces back, usually within 24-48 hours of submission. That fast turnaround is actually the good news — you find out quickly and you have plenty of runway to fix it.

This guide walks through the six rejection reasons that account for almost every Aussie case, how to fix each one, what it costs you in time and money, and the edge case where a passport problem you cannot fix in time actually does threaten the trip. If you have not applied yet and want to do it right the first time, the Australian application walkthrough covers the upload flow in full. See our full Cambodia visa for Australians for the end-to-end walkthrough.

The 6 most common rejection reasons for Aussies

After tens of thousands of Australian applications, the rejection list is short and stable. Six causes account for almost every flag, and they fall into two buckets — upload-quality issues you fix in a couple of minutes, and passport issues that need DFAT involvement. Here is the rank-ordered list, with the one-line cause and the one-line fix for each.

Photo flagged. Cause: glasses worn, slight smile, off-white wall in the background, the file uploaded as HEIC from a recent iPhone, or a shadow behind the head from artificial light. Fix: stand against a plain white wall in daylight, take the glasses off, neutral expression, save as JPEG under 2 MB.

Passport too close to expiry. Cause: passport has under 6 months of validity from your planned date of entry into Cambodia. Fix: renew through DFAT — 3 weeks standard, 2 business days priority — and re-apply with the new passport number.

Name mismatch with passport MRZ. Cause: you entered "Tom Smith" but the machine-readable zone at the bottom of the bio page reads "SMITH<<THOMAS<JOHN". Cambodian Immigration's system reads the MRZ exactly. Fix: re-enter the name character-for-character as it appears in the MRZ, including all middle names.

Passport bio page scan issue. Cause: glare from the laminate has washed out part of the page, a corner is cropped off, or the camera flash bounced back. Fix: lay the passport flat on a dark surface, use daylight from a side window, hold the phone parallel to the page, tilt a few degrees if there is glare.

Wrong date format on the application. Cause: entered the arrival date or your date of birth in MM/DD/YYYY format when Cambodia expects DD/MM/YYYY. Fix: re-enter all dates in DD/MM/YYYY — day first, then month, then full year.

Blank or missing required field. Cause: scrolled past a field on a phone screen, typically the intended address in Cambodia or a middle-name field. Fix: fill the missing field — a hotel name and city is enough for the address, no booking reference needed. The Cambodia eVisa documents required guide covers what every field actually needs.

If the rejection is a photo issue

Photo rejections are by far the most common, and they are also the easiest to fix. You do not need a chemist or a passport-photo booth — a phone camera and a plain white wall is the setup that works for the vast majority of Australian applicants. Stand 50 cm from a plain white interior wall, face a window with daylight coming in sideways, hold the phone in portrait at eye level, neutral expression, no glasses, no hat. Save as a JPEG (not HEIC — modern iPhones default to HEIC and the Cambodian portal cannot read it), under 2 MB, ideally 600×600 pixels or larger. The full Cambodia eVisa photo requirements piece walks through every spec the auto-flagger looks for.

If the rejection is a passport-expiry issue

This one needs DFAT, not us. If your passport has under 6 months of validity from your planned date of entry into Cambodia, no amount of fiddling with the application will get it through — the airline will also deny boarding at the Australian gate regardless of what the visa says. The fix is renewal. DFAT passport renewal takes roughly 3 weeks for standard service, and DFAT priority passport service runs at 2 business days for the express option. Once the new passport is in your hand, re-apply with the new passport number and a fresh scan of the new bio page.

The exact email Aussies get from us when something is flagged

One of the biggest differences between going through us and going through the direct government portal is the rejection email itself. The portal sends a generic, often cryptic auto-response that tells you the application has been declined without saying which field is the problem. Many Aussies read it three times and still cannot work out what to fix.

When Cambodian Immigration flags an application through us, we translate it into plain English, point you at the exact field that needs changing, and tell you the expected new timeline. Here is the shape of the email — names and reference numbers redacted, but the format is real:

"Hi Sarah — your Cambodia eVisa application (Ref: VTC-2026-XXXXX) has been flagged by Cambodian Immigration for a photo issue. The photo you uploaded shows prescription glasses, which the Cambodian system rejects automatically. To fix this, please reply to this email with a new photo: plain white wall, no glasses, neutral expression (no smile), saved as a JPEG under 2 MB. Once we receive it, we will resubmit at no extra charge. Expected new approval: 1-2 business days from your reply. Any questions, just hit reply — Aussie-timezone support is on this thread. — Connor, VisaToCambodia."

That is the entire fix loop. Specific field, specific instruction, specific timeline, free resubmission. Contrast with the direct portal email, which typically says something close to: "Your application has been declined. Please review your submission and reapply if eligible." — and leaves you to work out which of fourteen fields it was unhappy with.

What happens to your money if you're rejected

Through us, the money question is short — nothing happens. A rejection does not trigger a second fee. We resubmit at no extra charge, the original payment covers the fix, and you do not see another transaction on your card. This is built into the all-in pricing on purpose. Tourist eVisa $80 USD (~$122 AUD) and Business eVisa $90 USD (~$137 AUD) include the resubmission path because, after thousands of applications, we know rejections are common enough that pretending otherwise would just hide the cost.

Through the direct government portal, the answer depends on whether Cambodian Immigration considers your correction a new application or an amendment — and in practice, it is almost always treated as a new application. A new application means a new fee. The portal does not refund the original fee on rejection. So a self-filed rejection on the direct route typically costs you another full government fee plus the same amount of time you would have spent on a resubmission anyway, just without anyone helping you work out what to change.

Our model exists because rejections are common enough that we want the fix path baked into the price you see at checkout. You are not paying for a fancy form — you are paying for the document review before submission, the plain-English rejection email if something does still get flagged, free resubmission, and Aussie-timezone support on the thread. The Cambodia visa cost guide for Australians breaks down where each dollar of the all-in price goes.

Edge case: rejection because of a passport problem you can't fix in time

Almost every rejection is fixable inside the original 3-business-day window. The one genuine exception is a passport that is expiring inside the 6-month rule and a flight that is only a few weeks away. This is the case where the visa rejection email is not really about the visa — it is a signal that the trip itself needs a small course-correction before anything else can move.

Say your passport expires in late September 2026 and your flight is in 4 weeks. The standard DFAT renewal sits at roughly 3 weeks, which makes it touch-and-go. The realistic options: book the DFAT priority passport service for the 2 business-day turnaround (it costs more but it is genuinely fast), apply for the priority service in person at a passport office, collect the new passport, and re-apply for the Cambodia eVisa with the new passport number and a fresh bio-page scan.

If you are working with us, we will hold the application open for 5 business days while you sort the renewal — that way you do not lose your spot in the queue, you do not pay a second time, and the moment your new passport is in your hand we update the file and resubmit. The combined timeline ends up at roughly 5-7 business days from initial rejection to approved PDF, which still works for any trip more than 2 weeks out. The Smartraveller advisory for Cambodia is also worth a five-minute read while you are sorting the passport, since it covers the standing health and safety context that matters once you arrive.

Reapplication walkthrough — from rejection email to approved PDF

Here is the exact sequence Aussies go through when something is flagged. It is short and almost always faster than people expect — most of the elapsed time is Cambodian Immigration re-processing, not anything you have to do.

• Step 1: wait for our email. Plain English, specific field, what to do, expected new timeline. Usually arrives 12-24 hours after Immigration's first response on the file.
• Step 2: update the flagged field on your end — retake the photo, re-scan the passport bio page, correct the name spelling, or update the date format. The instruction email tells you exactly which one.
• Step 3: reply to the email with the updated file or text. No new payment, no new form to fill out from scratch — just the replacement asset attached.
• Step 4: we resubmit at no extra cost. The new 3-business-day Immigration clock starts the moment your complete file reaches them.
• Step 5: approved PDF lands in your inbox. Typical end-to-end timeline from first rejection to approved PDF is 2-4 business days for a fixable issue, or 5-7 days if a passport renewal sits in the middle.

The net loss against the original plan is small — usually 1-2 business days off the original 3-business-day window. If you applied with the recommended one-week-before-departure buffer, you will still have time to spare. If you cut it close, the priority lever is the passport (when that is the issue) or our prioritised support thread (when the issue is anything else). Once the visa is back on track, the Cambodia visa processing time from Australia guide is worth a glance for the timing context around when to expect the new PDF.

Putting it all together for Aussie travellers

A Cambodia eVisa rejection is usually a small administrative speed bump, not a trip-ender. Six causes, six fixes, almost all of them sortable inside 24 hours. The one that needs more lead time — a passport too close to expiry — is solved by DFAT, not by us, and even that fits comfortably into a 5-7-day rescue timeline. If you are doing the maths on whether to go direct or through a service, the rejection-handling difference is one of the larger practical reasons most Aussies pick the assisted route. The Do Australians Need a Visa for Cambodia explainer covers the upstream eligibility picture if you want the wider context.

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 eligibility for quick answers, and use our glossary of Cambodia visa terms to decode any acronym in this guide.