What actually changed in Phuket this year
Flights, hotels and rules — each one dated and sourced
This page used to list restaurants as new openings without a single opening date between them, under an intro promising that every entry had a source and a date. It now covers only changes we can date and attribute — which turns out to be flights, hotels and the visa rules rather than restaurants.
If you want somewhere to eat, the Michelin and halal guides are the honest answer. Those lists are checked against Michelin’s own selection and against Google’s place records.
Saudia is flying direct to Phuket again
Saudia has restarted non-stop flights from both Riyadh and Jeddah to Phuket, three times a week on each route. The Jeddah leg restarted on 5 August 2026.
It is the route’s second season rather than a trial: Saudia first flew it in December 2024 with Boeing 787-9s and ran it through February 2025. The Tourism Authority of Thailand counted 209,929 Saudi visitors to Thailand between January and November 2024, up 28 percent year on year, with more than three quarters of them first-time visitors.
Day-by-day departure times for the relaunch had not been published as of early August, and the non-stop fares were not yet appearing in every flight search. Check Saudia directly rather than an aggregator until that settles.
The visa-free stay is being cut, but not yet
The Thai cabinet approved the end of the 60-day visa exemption on 19 May 2026. Most nationalities, including all six GCC passports, move to 30 days.
It is not law. It takes effect fifteen days after publication in the Royal Gazette, and as of 7 August 2026 that had not happened — the border is still stamping 60 days. This is the change most likely to affect a trip you are booking now, so check it rather than assuming.
The hotel pipeline
Several large hotels have been announced for Phuket in 2026, none with a confirmed public opening date at the time of writing. Treat all of them as announced rather than open, and check before you build a trip around one.
Riu Palace Phuket would be RIU’s first hotel in Thailand, running its 24-hour all-inclusive format. Chatrium Rawai Resort is planned for the quieter southern coast. MGallery has announced two, Kamaliss MontAzure and Navera Phuket. A luxury tented camp has opened at Bang Tao, billed as the island’s first.
The pattern worth noticing is where they are going: Bang Tao, Rawai and the north rather than Patong. That is the same shift the halal and prayer guides describe from a different angle — the money is moving off the strip.
Michelin, unchanged
Phuket holds 19 Bib Gourmand restaurants in the 2026 guide plus one star, and there is no change to the Bib list this year. Nine of the nineteen are Southern Thai and thirteen are cash only — both figures are Michelin’s own filters rather than our count.
Exactly one of the nineteen records halal options. If that matters to you, the halal guide is the page you want, not this one.
Photography is licensed stock, credited to Maksim Romashkin on Pexels. Some images show the named place; where no photograph of a venue exists, the picture shows Thailand rather than that venue.