Cambodia wants 2 facing blank pages at Immigration on arrival in 2026, and the rule trips up well-travelled Aussies more often than any other document check. Here is how to count pages properly, why the 'endorsements' section does not save you, and the DFAT renewal workaround for last-minute travellers.
Two facing blank pages in your Australian passport at Cambodian Immigration on arrival — and they have to be inside the visa section, not the back-of-passport 'Pages reserved for endorsements' area. The rule applies whether you arrived on a Tourist or Business eVisa, and Cambodian Immigration officers at KTI, SAI and KOS do check before they stamp. Well-travelled Aussies get caught by this more than any other document rule because Schengen, Indian and Indonesian stamps eat pages faster than you remember. If your count is short, the only clean fix before flight is a DFAT renewal — priority is roughly 2 business days for around $251 AUD on top of the standard adult fee.
Most Aussies who get bumped at Cambodian Immigration in 2026 are not bumped because the eVisa is wrong, or the photo is wrong, or the 6-month validity is wrong. They are bumped because there is nowhere clean for the officer to land the entry stamp. Cambodian Immigration wants two facing blank pages — a left-hand page and a right-hand page next to each other — and well-travelled Aussies with Schengen entries, an Indian e-Visa sticker, an Indonesian arrival stamp, a Japan landing stamp and a UK chop on every other spread genuinely do not have that pair sitting empty by the time they fly.
The rule itself is not subtle. The officer flips the passport open at the visa section, scans for a clean spread, and stamps. If there is no clean spread, the conversation gets quieter and the queue stops moving. Cambodia is one of the easier countries in the region to enter on paper, but the page count is one of the genuinely strict checks at the arrival counter. Officers at Techo International (KTI), Siem Reap-Angkor (SAI) and Sihanoukville (KOS) all run the same standard.
The first thing to understand is that Cambodian Immigration counts blank pages, not unused pages. The two phrases sound interchangeable. They are not. An Australian passport has a visa section in the middle — that is where entry stamps and visa stickers go — and a smaller back-of-passport section that is labelled 'Pages reserved for endorsements'. The endorsements section is structurally similar to the visa section and looks identical at a glance, but Cambodian Immigration officers will not stamp on it.
If you flip to the back of your Australian passport and count three clean pages, then turn to the visa section and count zero, you do not have three blank pages for Cambodia. You have zero. The endorsements pages are reserved by DFAT for official notes and visa-equivalent annotations, and Cambodian Immigration treats them as off-limits for the arrival stamp. Officers will return you to the secondary line and ask for proper visa-section pages, which you do not have, which is where the trouble starts.
Sit at a table under good light, open your Australian passport, and turn slowly through the visa section page by page. Mark with a soft pencil tick on a separate sheet — not on the passport itself — every page that is completely empty of any stamp, sticker, hand-written endorsement, or perforation note. Pay attention to the spread. Two blank pages that face each other across the central fold count as a facing pair, which is what Cambodian Immigration wants. Two single blank pages with a stamped page between them are not a facing pair, even though they sum to two blanks.
When a Cambodian Immigration officer opens an Australian passport and cannot find a clean spread, the standard process is to set the passport aside, gesture you to the secondary holding area, and call a supervisor. The supervisor reviews the passport, the eVisa printout, and the e-Arrival confirmation. From there the outcomes split into three lanes. Most commonly the supervisor finds a single blank page they are willing to stamp on the edge of, the entry is recorded, and you are released into the arrivals hall. The trip continues, but you spent 40 minutes in a holding line you did not need to spend.
Less commonly, the supervisor declines to stamp anything and offers to reroute the passenger. Reroute in this context means refusing entry and putting you on a return flight, which is the worst case and genuinely does happen — not every week, but more often than airlines or travel agents will tell you. The third lane is the in-between: the officer asks for a fee or a 'service' payment to stamp on a borderline page. Refuse politely and ask for a supervisor; the formal Cambodian Immigration process does not require a payment to stamp a passport.
Tourist or Business — the rule is identical
There is no carve-out for Business eVisa holders or repeat visitors. The two-facing-blank-pages standard applies to every passport on every entry, whether you arrived on a Tourist eVisa for a beach week or a Business eVisa for a fortnight of supplier visits.
If the page count comes up short and the trip is anywhere inside 4 weeks, the only clean fix is a DFAT renewal. Australian passports are not page-extendable — DFAT discontinued the additional-pages service years ago, and the only path to a fresh visa section is a full new passport. The cost is real, but the alternative is a refused entry at KTI, which is materially worse.
New passport, new number — re-apply for the eVisa
Every new Australian passport has a fresh passport number. The Cambodia eVisa is tied to the passport number on the application — an eVisa attached to the old number is unusable at the border. Once your new passport arrives, re-apply for the eVisa with the new number and a fresh scan of the new bio page.
Inside 10 days is uncomfortable but recoverable. The sequence runs like this. Book the earliest available DFAT priority appointment in person at your nearest passport office. Bring the old passport, two fresh photos that meet DFAT's specifications, the renewal form completed in advance, and payment for both the standard fee and the priority uplift. Priority issuance is roughly 2 business days, so a Monday appointment usually yields the new passport by Wednesday or Thursday.
Once the new passport is in your hand, apply for the Cambodia eVisa with the new passport number that same day. Approved in 3 business days at $80 USD (~$122 AUD) for Tourist or $90 USD (~$137 AUD) for Business, with free resubmission if Immigration flags a correction. If the trip is genuinely tight — say, flight on day 9 with new passport in hand on day 4 — the eVisa landing on day 7 leaves two days of margin. Inside 5 days from new passport to flight is too tight for the standard 3-business-day eVisa, and at that point a Visa on Arrival fallback at KTI, SAI or KOS becomes the realistic alternative.
Stamp-heavy Bangkok stopover? Count pages before you fly Cambodia-bound.
Read the 2026 update →Vietnam eVisa stickers eat a full page — factor it into your count.
See the combo guide →Land entry stamps from Laos add up across multiple visits.
Plan the Laos route →Did this guide help you?
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A clean Singapore stopover stamp barely touches your pages.
