How Long Does the Cambodia Visa Take from Australia? (2026 Timeline)

Timeline mapped from Australia

Here is the same clock, mapped against the Australian timezone with worked examples. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide sit three to four hours ahead of Phnom Penh depending on daylight saving — Perth is one hour ahead. When it is 9am Monday in Sydney during AEDT, it is 6am Monday in Phnom Penh. That timezone gap quietly works in your favour on Monday-morning submissions and against you on Friday-evening ones.

Worked example one: you apply Monday at 10am Sydney time. Phnom Penh is just opening for the working week. Your file enters the queue around 7am Monday Phnom Penh time. Day one Monday, day two Tuesday, day three Wednesday — approval typically lands by Wednesday afternoon Phnom Penh time, which is Wednesday evening or Thursday by noon in Sydney. That is the cleanest run.

Worked example two: you apply Friday at 7pm Melbourne time. The Cambodian working week is already winding down. Your file sits in the queue over the weekend and processing begins Monday morning Phnom Penh time. Day one Monday, day two Tuesday, day three Wednesday — approval lands Wednesday afternoon Phnom Penh time, which is Wednesday late afternoon or evening in Australia. Friday submissions feel slow because you wait four nights, but only three of those nights are actually working time.

Worked example three: you apply Tuesday morning from Perth, and Pchum Ben starts Wednesday. The queue takes your file, processes Tuesday as day one, then Cambodia closes for three working days. Day two and day three resume the following Monday and Tuesday. Approval lands the second Tuesday afternoon Phnom Penh time — six calendar days after submission, three working days. This is why the holiday windows need a 10–14 day buffer, not a 7-day one.

Why there's no real rush option

The Cambodian government portal processes every Tourist and Business eVisa application on the same three-business-day cycle. There is no expedited queue at Immigration, no priority lane for travel agents, and no premium fee that moves your file forward. Officers in Phnom Penh work through the queue in the order it arrives, and the three-day cycle is built into how they batch and review.

You will still see services on the internet advertising "24-hour Cambodia eVisa" or "guaranteed same-day approval" for a higher fee. What they are actually selling is the standard three-day product with a marketing wrapper — they submit through the same portal, into the same queue, and hope your file happens to come back faster than average. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it does not, and the guarantee turns into a refund argument after your flight has left.

We do not sell that product because it is not a real product. The honest answer is: $80 USD all-in (~$122 AUD) for the Tourist eVisa, $90 USD (~$137 AUD) for Business, three business days, no surcharge, no false promise. If you genuinely need to be in Cambodia in 48 hours, the visa-on-arrival counter at Phnom Penh and Siem Reap airports is still operating for tourists — though it is slower at the desk, cash-only in fresh USD, and adds queue time after a long flight. The Do Australians Need a Visa for Cambodia article walks through that fallback in full.

When to apply if your flight is in…

The Cambodia eVisa is valid for three months from the date of issue, with a 30-day single-entry stay window once you arrive. That gives you a generous applying window, but there is a sweet spot. Apply too late and you are sweating the three-day clock; apply too early and you waste validity. Here is the practical map.

• Flight this week (under 4 days): Apply now. There is no guarantee — if a Cambodian holiday falls in the middle, your visa will not arrive in time. Most weeks it will. Worst case, switch to visa-on-arrival at the airport.
• Flight one week away: Apply today. This is the standard scenario the three-day rule was built for. You get the full Phnom Penh working week plus a buffer for any photo or passport flag.
• Flight two weeks away: The sweet spot. Enough buffer to absorb a holiday, enough validity left on the eVisa that you keep flexibility on the 30-day stay window. Most Aussies should apply here.
• Flight one month away: Fine, comfortable. You will have your eVisa in your inbox before you have finalised your hotel booking.
• Flight three months or more away: Wait. The eVisa expires three months after issue. If your departure is more than 90 days out, applying now means the visa lapses before you fly. Set a calendar reminder and apply at the two-month mark instead.

The one exception: if your Australian passport is up for renewal, sort that first. Cambodian Immigration enforces the six-months-validity rule strictly and will reject the eVisa application outright if your passport expires too close to your arrival date. The DFAT passport service runs three weeks standard or two business days priority, and the priority lane is not guaranteed. New passport, then eVisa, in that order. The Australian application walkthrough covers the document checks in detail.

What slows applications down (and how to avoid it)

Almost every Cambodia eVisa delay has the same shortlist of causes. None of them are mysterious, all of them are fixable, and most are spotted before the file reaches Immigration if you upload clean inputs. Here is the watch list, with the one-line fix for each.

• Blurry or low-light photo — Cambodian Immigration auto-flags soft images. Fix: retake against a plain white wall, indoors, with the camera lens cleaned and the phone held steady at eye level.
• Name spelled differently from the passport machine-readable zone — the most expensive small mistake. Fix: copy the full given names and surname character-for-character from the passport photo page, including any hyphens or apostrophes.
• Passport expiring in under six months from your arrival date — auto-reject at the visa stage, and airlines also check at the Australian gate. Fix: renew the passport first through DFAT, then apply.
• Underexposed scan of the passport bio page — corners hidden, glare across the laminate, half-readable text. Fix: scan in daylight on a plain dark surface, with the full page edge-to-edge in frame, no flash.
• Email address that bounces or blocks PDF attachments — your approval letter cannot land. Fix: use a personal Gmail or iCloud address you actually check, not a corporate inbox with strict filters.
• Travel-date entry that conflicts with the three-month validity — applying too early uses up your stay window before you fly. Fix: target the two-week sweet spot in the section above.

Everything on this list is something we check before your file reaches Immigration. If something is off, you get an email with a clear list of what to change, the clock pauses, and you fix it in a couple of minutes. There is no extra charge for resubmission. The Smartraveller advisory has additional Aussie-specific entry guidance worth a five-minute read before you fly.

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