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Thai Labour Law, What Changed in 2025 and What Changes in 2026

Thai labour law moved twice in the last year, and a third set of changes is being reported as though it had already happened. If you employ people in Thailand, you need to know which is which, because two of these require you to change documents and one does not require you to change anything yet.

This post separates them. What is law now. What starts in January 2026. And what is still only a bill.

What became law on 7 December 2025

The Labour Protection Act (No. 9) B.E. 2568 was published in the Royal Gazette on 7 November 2025 and took effect thirty days later, on 7 December 2025. It is a family-leave amendment with one compliance change attached.

Maternity leave went from 98 days to 120 days

Section 41 now gives a pregnant employee up to 120 days of maternity leave per pregnancy. Antenatal medical appointments count inside that allowance. Holidays falling during the leave count as leave days.

The employee does not have to be Thai. She can be paid daily, monthly or by output. Employees on fixed-term contracts and employees still on probation are all entitled.

The days you have to pay went from 45 to 60

Section 59 requires you to pay wages during maternity leave at the normal working-day rate, for up to 60 days. That is up from 45.

Your employee who is insured under the Social Security scheme separately receives a maternity benefit for the work stoppage at fifty percent of wages under Section 67 of the Social Security Act. That is the fund’s payment, not yours, and it does not reduce your 60 days.

A new leave to care for a newborn with medical problems

This one is easy to miss because it is buried in a new fourth paragraph of Section 41 rather than given its own headline.

An employee who has used her maternity leave can take up to 15 more days, continuing from it, where the child has a medical condition carrying a risk of complications, an abnormality, or a disability. She has to produce a modern medical certificate.

Section 59/1 says you pay fifty percent of the normal working-day wage for those days.

Two practical points. The 15 days do not have to be taken in one block. The Ministry of Labour’s own explanation says the employee can take them in pieces as needed, three days at a time or five days at a time. And the condition must arise from the birth. If maternity leave has ended, the employee has returned to work, and the child later becomes ill from some other cause, this leave is not available.

This right belongs to the employee who gave birth. A spouse who wants to care for a sick child has to use other leave or annual leave.

A new 15 days of leave to help a spouse who gives birth

Section 41/1 gives an employee up to 15 days of leave to assist a spouse who gives birth. Section 59/2 says you pay it in full at the normal working-day rate, up to 15 days.

The employee has to request the leave before or on the day of the leave, and within 90 days from the date of the birth. After 90 days you can refuse it.

Several details here catch employers out.

“Spouse” means a lawful spouse under the Civil and Commercial Code as amended by Amendment No. 24 B.E. 2567, the Marriage Equality amendment. The word is gender neutral. A male, female or diverse-gender lawful spouse can take this leave. The exception is same-sex marriage under Islamic law in the four southern border provinces.

The two spouses do not have to work for the same employer. Your employee’s spouse can work anywhere, or nowhere.

Neither spouse has to be Thai, and neither the spouse who gave birth nor the child has to be in Thailand.

The 15 days can be taken continuously or in pieces, and holidays inside a continuous block count as leave days.

The birth can have happened before 7 December 2025. If the request comes within 90 days of the birth, the leave is still available.

If your work rules or contracts already give more than 15 days, or already gave this leave to unmarried partners before 7 December 2025, that stays valid and enforceable. It is a benefit above the statutory minimum, which the law permits. But if you now want to cut it back to the statutory 15 days, you need your employees’ consent first. Without consent the reduction does not bind them.

The January filing changed

Section 115/1 requires every employer with ten or more employees to file a form declaring employment conditions and working conditions. The amendment changed who you file it with. You now submit it to the Director-General, or a person the Director-General designates, in January of every year, by whatever method the Director-General announces.

If your employment or working conditions change after you file, you notify the change in writing within the month following the change.

Failing to file or notify carries a fine of up to 20,000 baht under Section 155/1.

The practical effect is that you can no longer wait for a labour inspector to bring you the form. Filing in January is now your own diary item.

State service contracts came inside the Act

A new Section 4/1 reaches government agencies at central, regional and local level, state enterprises, public organisations and state units that hire individuals on service contracts or similar arrangements, paying them daily, monthly or for another period, while controlling and supervising their work.

Those units must now give those people no less than the Labour Protection Act minimum on pay for work, weekly holidays, traditional holidays, annual holidays, sick leave, maternity leave, working days and hours, and rest periods. Disputes about those rights go to the Labour Court.

If you are a private employer this does not touch you. If you contract with or sit inside a state body, it does.

How this gets enforced against you

Not paying wages during maternity leave breaches Section 59, which carries a fine of up to 20,000 baht under Section 146.

Sections 59/1 and 59/2, the two new paid leaves, are different. The Act does not make failure to pay them a specific offence. What happens instead, on the Ministry’s own explanation, is that a labour inspector who finds you have not paid uses the general power in Section 139(3) to order you to pay correctly within a stated period. If you comply, or comply with the Director-General’s decision on appeal, the matter ends under Section 141. If you do not comply and the order becomes final, you are then in breach of Section 139(3) and exposed to a fine of up to 20,000 baht under Section 146.

Your employee also has a direct route. Failure to pay under Sections 59/1 or 59/2 is a dispute about rights under the law, so the employee can sue you in the Labour Court, or complain to a labour inspector. They have to pick one. They cannot run both for the same claim.

What you have to do about all of this

Amend your work rules and your leave forms to show 120 days of maternity leave, 60 paid days, the 15-day newborn care leave at half pay with a medical certificate, and the 15-day spouse leave at full pay within 90 days of the birth.

Make your spouse-leave form gender neutral, and do not ask for proof that the spouses work for the same employer or that either is Thai.

Check whether you already give a partner or paternity benefit above the statutory level. If you do, you cannot quietly cut it back to 15 days.

Put the Section 115/1 filing in your January calendar.

What changes on 1 January 2026

This one is not the Labour Protection Act. It is Social Security, and it is a straight cost increase.

The wage ceiling for Social Security contributions was raised by a notification published in the Royal Gazette on 12 December 2025, effective 1 January 2026.

Period	Wage ceiling	Maximum contribution per side per month
1 Jan 2026 to 31 Dec 2028	17,500 baht	875 baht
1 Jan 2029 to 31 Dec 2031	20,000 baht	1,000 baht
From 1 Jan 2032	23,000 baht	1,150 baht

You contribute, and your employee contributes, on the higher ceiling. For every employee earning above the old ceiling, your monthly cost per head goes up, and it goes up again in 2029 and 2032. The benefits calculated off the contribution base rise as well, which matters to employees but does not change your payroll arithmetic.

Budget for it and update your payroll software. Employers who leave the old ceiling in the system under-contribute quietly for months.

Where the minimum wage stands

Minimum wage in Thailand is set by area and in some cases by business type, so there is no single national number.

Wage Committee Notification No. 13 took effect on 1 January 2025. In Chiang Mai it set 380 baht a day for Mueang Chiang Mai district and 357 baht a day for the rest of the province.

Wage Committee Notification No. 14 took effect on 1 July 2025. It brought Bangkok to 400 baht a day across all sectors, and applied 400 baht in other provinces to hotels in categories 2, 3 and 4 and to entertainment venues.

If you run a hotel or an entertainment venue outside Bangkok, check which category you fall into and which notification governs your province, because the sector rule can put you above the general provincial rate.

What is not law yet, whatever you have read

This is the part where employers are being misled.

On 24 September 2025 the House of Representatives approved two draft Labour Protection Act bills in principle and sent them to an ad hoc committee for review. Approval in principle is an early stage. Neither bill is law.

The first bill proposes cutting standard working hours to 40 a week, down from 48, with 35 hours for hazardous work, at least two rest days a week, and a minimum of ten days of paid annual leave, up from six.

The second bill proposes banning discrimination on grounds including disability, gender identity, religion and political views, up to three days of menstrual leave a month, up to 15 working days a year of family care leave, and breastfeeding facilities with at least two sessions a day of thirty minutes each.

Several published summaries of the December 2025 amendment list menstrual leave and the 40-hour week among the changes that took effect. They did not. Amendment No. 9 contains the maternity, newborn care, spouse leave, state service contract and January filing changes described above, and nothing about menstrual leave or weekly hours.

The practical consequence is simple. Do not rewrite your work rules for a 40-hour week or for menstrual leave yet. If you shorten your standard week in your work rules now, you have granted a benefit above the statutory minimum, and you will need your employees’ consent to take it back later. Wait for the enacted text.

Watch these bills. Both would cost real money if they pass in their current form, and the annual leave change alone would affect the accrued leave liability on your books.

One earlier change that still catches employers

Section 23/1 came in with Amendment No. 8 B.E. 2566 and a surprising number of employers with remote staff have never implemented it.

If you and an employee agree that the employee will work from home, from their accommodation, or through information technology from anywhere, you must record the agreement in writing, or in electronic form that can be accessed and reused without the meaning changing.

The section lists what the agreement may cover. When the arrangement starts and ends. Normal working days and hours, rest periods, and overtime. The rules for overtime and for work on holidays, and the various kinds of leave. The scope of the employee’s duties and how you will supervise or monitor the work. And who supplies the equipment, together with who bears the necessary costs of the work.

Then comes the part employers overlook. Once normal working hours end, or the assigned work is finished, the employee has the right to refuse contact of any kind from you, from a manager, from a supervisor or from an inspector. The only exception is where the employee has given written consent in advance.

Remote employees also have the same rights as employees working in your premises.

So if your company messages remote staff in the evening as a matter of habit, you need written advance consent or you need to stop. And if you have remote staff on nothing but a verbal understanding, you are missing a document the Act requires.

The employer checklist

Update your work rules for the December 2025 leave changes and get the new leave forms right.

Check whether any existing partner or paternity benefit you offer sits above the statutory 15 days, and do not reduce it without consent.

Put the Section 115/1 filing in your January diary and file with the Director-General.

Change the Social Security ceiling in payroll before the January 2026 cycle.

Confirm the minimum wage that applies to your province and your business type.

Put remote-work agreements in writing, including the after-hours contact position.

Leave the 40-hour week and menstrual leave alone until the bills are enacted.

Where to get this checked

We act for employers. A compliance review of your work rules, employment contracts and leave forms against the current Act is the cheapest labour work you will ever buy, because it is done before anything goes wrong.

Aphiwat Bualoi Law Office Co., Ltd., Chiang Mai. Write to aphiwat@aphiwatlaw.com.

This post explains the law in general terms and is not advice on your situation. Figures and legislative status stated here are as at 19 September 2026.

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