When Should US Citizens Apply for a Cambodia eVisa? Best Timing Explained

How the 3-business-day approval clock actually counts

Approval lands in 3 business days. The word that does the work there is business. Weekends do not count, and neither do US public holidays or Cambodian public holidays that fall inside the window. This is the single most underestimated piece of eVisa timing for American travelers, because a quick mental count of "three days" rarely matches what the calendar actually delivers.

A worked example makes it concrete. Lodge your application on a Monday morning and you are typically looking at approval by Thursday — three clean business days. Lodge it on a Friday, and Saturday and Sunday are dead air; the clock effectively resumes Monday and you are looking at the middle of the following week. Add a holiday Monday like Labor Day or Memorial Day and that pushes another day. None of this is a delay in the bad sense — it is simply how business days work, and planning around it removes the surprise.

Build a buffer day on top of the three

We always tell US travelers to plan for the approval to land, and then to have at least one spare day after that before they fly. The reason is correction headroom. If Immigration flags something — a photo that needs a cleaner background, a passport scan with glare, a name that does not match the passport exactly — you want time to fix it and resubmit while the trip is still comfortably ahead of you. Resubmission is free if a correction is needed, but it only helps if there is a day left to use it.

So the real math for a fixed departure is: 3 business days for approval, plus a buffer day, then map that onto a real calendar including weekends and holidays. That is how a "three-day visa" becomes a 2-to-3-week recommendation in practice — not because the processing is slow, but because the buffer is what keeps a small hiccup from becoming a missed flight. If you want to see the full lodge-to-inbox sequence, our step-by-step application walkthrough lays out every field and what each one feeds.

The e-Arrival Card runs on its own, much shorter timer

This is where timing gets genuinely counterintuitive, and where careful planners sometimes trip themselves up. The Cambodia e-Arrival Card is a separate, mandatory step for every air arrival — and unlike the visa, you cannot do it early. It must be submitted within the 7 days before you arrive. Lodge it eight or ten days out and the system will not accept it; the window simply has not opened yet.

So the two steps have opposite timing instincts. The visa rewards a small head start — apply 2 to 3 weeks out, clear the 3-business-day clock, relax. The e-Arrival Card punishes a head start — it is the thing you do in the final week, once your flight details are locked. The clean sequence for most US travelers is: visa first, two to three weeks before departure; e-Arrival second, inside the 7-day window once the visa is already in hand.

The e-Arrival Card itself is $5 USD verified through us, 14 fields covering your flight, passport, and arrival details, submitted in that final week. It is short, but the date and flight-number fields are exactly the kind of thing a tired traveler fat-fingers the night before a long-haul. Doing it a few days before you fly — not the morning of — gives you a calm moment to check it against your boarding details rather than fixing it in a check-in line.

A useful way to hold both timers in your head: the visa is a two-to-three-week-out task, the e-Arrival is a final-week task, and they never overlap. If you want the field-by-field detail before you start, our guide on how to fill out the e-Arrival Card walks through each of the 14 entries and the formats Immigration expects.

Holidays, peak season, and what to do when you are tight on time

Two things stretch the timeline beyond the standard three business days, and both are predictable. The first is Cambodian public holidays — Khmer New Year in mid-April and Pchum Ben in the fall are the big ones, when processing offices slow down and the business-day count effectively pauses. If your trip lands near either, add a few extra days to your buffer and apply at the earlier end of the window. The second is your own home-side timing: US holiday weekends do not stop Cambodian processing, but they can affect when you sit down to apply, so plan the lodge date deliberately rather than leaving it to a busy pre-trip evening.

Peak booking season — the December-to-February dry season and the summer family-travel months — does not change the 3-business-day standard, but it does mean more travelers are in the queue and more of them are making the same avoidable photo and passport mistakes. The fix is not to apply earlier than the validity allows; it is to apply within the sensible window and get the upload right the first time so you never touch the correction loop at all.

Applying last-minute: survivable, but build no surprises in

If your trip is days away, the eVisa is still very much doable — the 3-business-day approval is reliable, and plenty of US travelers lodge with a week or less to spare and fly without drama. The risk is purely the lack of a cushion. Inside 3 business days of your flight, there is no room left for a correction round, so everything has to be right on the first submission. Use a clean photo against a plain background, match the name to your passport exactly, and double-check the passport number before you pay.

If you are right up against the wire, do not guess at the timeline — our last-minute Cambodia visa guide covers exactly what is realistic inside a tight window and how to give a rushed application the best chance of clearing on the first pass.

Your full pre-trip timeline, in order

Pull it all together and the timeline is simple to run. Count back from your arrival date, not from today. Roughly 2 to 3 weeks out, lodge the eVisa — that clears the 3-business-day approval with a comfortable buffer and keeps the 3-month validity well within reach. Once it is approved and the PDF is in your inbox, print a copy and set it aside. Then, in the final week before you fly, submit the e-Arrival Card inside its 7-day window with your locked flight details. Visa first and early-ish, e-Arrival second and late. That order is the whole game.

Get the order right and the whole process is calm: a Tourist eVisa at $80 USD or a Business eVisa at $90 USD, approved in 3 business days, delivered as a printable PDF by email, with free resubmission if Immigration flags a correction and US-timezone support if you get stuck. When your dates are set, apply for your Cambodia eVisa, then put the e-Arrival reminder in your calendar for the week before you fly.