When to Apply for the Cambodia eVisa: 2026 Aussie Flight-Distance Guide

The 3-month validity gotcha for early applicants

Every Cambodia eVisa carries two clocks once it is approved. The first is the 3-month validity — the visa must be used (i.e. you must enter Cambodia) within 90 days of the date of issue. The second is the 30-day single-entry stay window — once you cross the border, you have 30 days inside Cambodia before the visa expires. The 30-day clock only starts on arrival; the 3-month clock starts the moment Immigration approves the file.

That first clock is the gotcha. Australians who lodge 4 months ahead of a long-anticipated Cambodia trip — say, a January submission for a May flight — discover the visa expires before they board. The PDF is sitting in their inbox, the approval letter looks fine, but the validity dates printed at the bottom of it are dated for the 90 days from issue, and May is outside that window. The Cambodian airline desk in Sydney or Melbourne checks those dates at the gate. A lapsed eVisa is treated the same as a missing visa — boarding is refused.

The fix is genuinely simple and it is the whole reason this article exists: do not lodge more than 90 days before your flight. For an Australian winter trip in July, lodge in mid-June. For a Christmas trip in late December, lodge in early December, not the moment the flight is booked in August. The 10–14 day sweet spot is well inside the safe zone for every flight more than two weeks away; the question is only what to do for trips booked further out.

If your flight is more than 3 months out, the answer is: do nothing yet. Set a calendar reminder for the 14-day mark and lodge then. The Cambodia eVisa system does not reward early applicants — Immigration does not stamp "priority" on files that arrive months ahead, and there is no draft-mode feature that lets you start now and submit later. The application is a single transactional flow, $80 USD Tourist or $90 USD Business, payable at submission. Sit on it until 2 weeks before flight. If you want a walkthrough of the application itself for the day you do lodge, the desktop application walkthrough has the field-by-field detail.

What to do if your flight is in 4 days

If your flight is in 4 days, do not pay a rush-eVisa service. The 3-business-day clock is genuinely tight from a Monday-to-Wednesday submission, and almost certainly does not fit a Thursday or Friday submission before a weekend flight, because Cambodian Immigration does not process on Saturdays or Sundays. A rush-service guarantee in this window is a refund argument waiting to happen — they submit the same standard application, hope it comes back fast, and refund the surcharge if it does not. That refund does not help once your flight has left.

The realistic fallback in this window is Visa on Arrival at one of the three international airports — Phnom Penh (KTI/PNH), Siem Reap (SAI/REP), or Sihanoukville (KOS). VoA is $30 USD cash for tourists, paid at a counter inside the arrival hall before you reach Immigration, and issued as a sticker pasted into your passport. It removes the 3-business-day pre-flight clock entirely. The trade-off is a 30–60 minute queue at the airport after a long flight, and a strict cash-only payment requirement — bring clean USD notes from an Australian currency exchange, not from an ATM at Phnom Penh airport.

The decision is honestly simple. If you have 5+ days before flight, lodge the eVisa today on the standard 3-business-day clock. If you have 4 days or fewer, switch to VoA at the airport, bring $40 USD cash (the $10 buffer covers any rejected note), and budget an extra 60 minutes at arrivals. Do not pay the rush market in the 4-day window — the product does not exist. The rush-options mythbusting article covers the full case against the 24-hour-eVisa industry, and the 2026 VoA airports guide flags this year's sticker-stockout risks at KTI, SAI, and KOS.

Risk buffers around Khmer New Year, Pchum Ben, Water Festival

Three Cambodian holiday windows are worth flagging on a wall calendar before you book any flight. Each one closes Cambodian government offices for three to five working days, and each one pushes a standard 3-business-day eVisa into a 5–7 calendar-day timeline. None of them are surprises — the dates are published every year by the Cambodian Ministry of Labour — but they catch Australians out because the closures land mid-week and the 14-day buffer is the difference between a calm trip and a missed flight.

• Khmer New Year — mid-April, typically 13–16 April. The biggest closure of the Cambodian calendar, government offices closed three to four working days, plus heavy domestic travel inside Cambodia that affects the eArrival processing speed too. Aussie applicants flying into Cambodia in the first half of April should lodge 14 days ahead, no exceptions.
• Pchum Ben — late September or early October, dates set by the Buddhist lunar calendar, typically a 3-day closure. Less internationally famous than Khmer New Year but the closure shape at Immigration is identical. Aussie trips through the second half of September or first week of October should also lodge 14 days ahead.
• Water Festival (Bon Om Touk) — mid-November, typically 3 working days closed for the river-boat racing on the Tonlé Sap. The closure also coincides with the start of the high tourist season for Cambodia, so the eVisa queue is heavier in the weeks immediately before and after. 14-day buffer applies, especially for Siem Reap-bound Aussies.
• Royal Birthday (King Norodom Sihamoni) — 14 May, a one-day closure. Less disruptive than the three above but still worth noting if your flight lands in mid-May.
• Constitution Day — 24 September, a one-day closure that sometimes bridges into Pchum Ben if the lunar dates fall right. Worth a one-day buffer on top of the standard 7-day window.

The practical rule: if your flight lands anywhere within a two-week window of Khmer New Year, Pchum Ben, or Water Festival, treat the 14-day lodgement buffer as the floor, not the ceiling. The Cambodia first-trip planning checklist covers the wider trip-prep timeline for Australians flying in around any of these dates, and the Smartraveller advisory has additional Aussie-specific entry guidance worth a five-minute read before you book.

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.