International Driving Permit Malaysia 2026: RM 150 at JPJ

The International Driving Permit is the travel document Malaysians buy last and read never. JPJ issues it, JPJ charges RM 150.00 for it, and JPJ gives it a life of exactly one year. Alamak — and then it goes into a drawer, because the two questions that decide whether it was worth the money are the two nobody answers at the counter: where does it work, and where is it useless?

What follows is the published version. The eligibility conditions, the document list and the one-year life come from JPJ’s own International Driving Permit page; the RM 150.00 from JPJ’s driving licence transaction fee table; the counter standard from page two of JPJ’s client charter; the form number and its application code from Borang JPJ L1 itself; the treaty position from the United Nations depositary and the certified text of the 1949 Convention; and every destination rule from that destination’s own government. Where an official page prints no figure, none is printed here either.

Quick Answer: walk into any JPJ state or branch office holding a Competent Driving Licence that is still valid for more than 1 year, bring your identity document, the licence itself and one passport-size colour photo, fill in Borang JPJ L1 under application type code 04, and pay RM 150.00. The permit runs for 1 year. It is not valid in the country that issued it, so it does nothing for you on a Malaysian road. Japan, Korea and New Zealand publish rules that want it; Great Britain does not ask a visitor for one at all; and inside ASEAN a 1985 treaty recognises the Malaysian licence itself.

• The condition that catches people: JPJ’s own English wording is a Competent Driving Licence “still valid for more than 1 year”. A licence with ten months left on it fails the condition before you reach the counter.
• The row nobody can find: on JPJ’s fee table the permit sits inside the Vocational Driving Licence block, next to GDL and PSV — not under Competent Driving Licence, which is where everybody looks first.
• The line printed inside the model permit: the 1949 model says it is valid in every Contracting State except the one that issued it, and its cover carries the name of the Convention it was issued under. Read your own cover.

Who qualifiesCounter & formOne year only

Who JPJ will issue one to, and who it will not

JPJ publishes exactly three conditions, and they are short enough to quote whole. You must have a Competent Driving Licence that is still valid for more than 1 year. You must not be blacklisted. And the permit will be for 1 year only. That is the entire eligibility test as JPJ words it in English on its own service page.

The first condition is the one that sends people home. It is not a test of how long you have held the licence — it is a test of how much life is left on it. A Competent Driving Licence with ten months still to run does not satisfy a condition written as “still valid for more than 1 year”. If you are the kind of person who renews a licence for one year at a time, the fix is to renew before you apply, not after; this site has a separate guide to renewing a Malaysian driving licence and what the multi-year options cost.

The second condition, the blacklist, is JPJ’s standard gate on almost every transaction it does, and the permit is no exception. The service page words it as the owner not being blacklisted, without saying what clears it.

Then there is the condition JPJ does not print on the service page at all. Its driving licence FAQ answers a question the service page skips: is a Probationary Driving Licence eligible? The answer is unambiguous — only Competent Driving Licence holders who are 18 years and above are eligible, and PDL holders are not. So a P-plate driver planning a self-drive holiday has a problem that cannot be solved at the counter, and an 18-year-old floor is the real minimum age. It is worth noticing that the same number appears in annex 8 of the 1949 Convention on Road Traffic, which sets 18 years as the minimum age for driving in international traffic; JPJ does not connect the two, and this guide does not connect them for it.

One thing JPJ does not restrict is who stands at the counter. Its document list allows for a representative, asking for the representative’s own original identity document where the transaction is made by one. That permission is stated in a document list rather than in a condition, so treat it as a question to confirm at the branch rather than a rule to rely on.

Which counter, which form, and what goes in the folder

JPJ’s answer to “where” is one sentence long: an application for an International Driving Permit can be made at any State or Branch JPJ office. There is no online route on that page, and the MyJPJ SuperApp FAQ, read end to end, does not list one either. The app has digitised the vehicle ownership certificate, the vehicle licence and the licence display; it has not touched the International Driving Permit. In a year when JPJ will let you show a road tax on a phone screen, this is still a queue-and-counter errand.

The service page also does not tell you which form to fill. It is Borang JPJ L1, the general driving licence application form, and on it the International Driving Permit is application type code 04 — Permit Memandu Antarabangsa (PMA). The form’s own filling guide confirms it in note (i)(c): the form is to be completed when you apply for an international driving permit. Note (ii) adds the rule that trips people who try to combine errands — use one form for one transaction type only. If you are renewing the licence and applying for the permit in the same visit, that is two forms, not one.

Two fields on that form are worth reading before you queue. Part B field 9 asks for place of birth and marks it, in brackets, as being for international permit applicants. Part C item 3 applies to a duplicate-licence or international permit application only, and asks for your licence serial number and your licence class. Both are the sort of thing you can copy off the licence in your hand, but only if you know to look.

The folder itself is short. JPJ lists four things, and the fourth is the one that turns a trip into two trips.

RM 150, one year, and the row nobody can find

The price is RM 150.00. JPJ’s driving licence transaction fee table prints it twice, once in the citizen column and once in the non-citizen column, and both say 150.00. That is not how the rows above it work — every Competent Driving Licence row on the same table charges a non-citizen a different figure from a citizen. The duration column says 1 year, which agrees with the service page.

Finding that row is the comedy. The fee table is organised by licence type — learner, probationary, competent, vocational — and the International Driving Permit is filed in the vocational block, as item 2, immediately after the goods vehicle and public service vehicle licences. It is not in the Competent Driving Licence block, which is where anyone reasoning from the eligibility condition would look. Nothing turns on it legally. It is simply why people give up on the official page and go and read a blog.

For scale, the same table puts a Competent Driving Licence renewal at RM 20.00 a year for classes B2, B and C and RM 30.00 a year for classes D, E, F, G, H and I, for citizens. So the permit costs several years of licence renewal, lasts one year, and is worth nothing at home. That is not an argument against buying it — it is an argument for buying it in the same month you fly, rather than a season early.

How long the counter takes is the one timing figure anyone has published. JPJ’s client charter sets a standard of 15 minutes for an International Driving Permit application, in the driver licensing transactions table. That table is on page two of the charter, not on the charter page the site’s own navigation links to, which is a small thing until you go looking for it. There is no published figure for anything else — no processing days, no collection date, no queue estimate — and this guide does not invent one.

One convention, and the one Malaysia did not sign

Here is the gap in the official Malaysian story. JPJ’s International Driving Permit page, read in full in both languages, names no convention, no issuing standard and no list of countries that accept the permit. It tells you the price, the conditions and the documents, and stops. But the rest of the world does not write its rules in those terms. Japan’s rule, to pick the one most Malaysians will meet, is written as a permit “issued by a signatory to the 1949 Geneva Convention”. So the question of which treaty Malaysia is in is not trivia. It is the question.

The United Nations keeps the answer, because it is the depositary for both road traffic conventions. Malaysia acceded to the Convention on Road Traffic done at Geneva on 19 September 1949, on 10 September 1958. Its declaration excludes annexes 1 and 2 from its application of the Convention — annex 10, which is the international driving permit model, is not excluded. The same tables give Malaysia’s distinguishing sign for international traffic as MAL. As at the depositary’s own timestamp of 20 September 2026, that Convention has 103 parties.

The later treaty is the Convention on Road Traffic done at Vienna on 8 November 1968. It has 91 parties on the same timestamp, and Malaysia is not one of them. That is the whole of the 1949-versus-1968 difference for a Malaysian traveller: there is only one list you are on.

What the 1949 Convention actually promises is narrower than most people assume, and worth reading once. Article 24(1) says each Contracting State shall let a driver it has admitted, who meets the conditions in annex 8 and holds a valid driving permit from another Contracting State, drive on its roads without a further test, for the categories the permit covers. Article 24(2) then says a Contracting State may however require that a driver carry an international driving permit in the annex 10 form. That is the structure: the domestic licence is the substance, and the international permit is the format a host country is allowed to insist on.

The model permit in annex 10 carries its terms printed inside the cover. It is valid in the territory of all Contracting States with the exception of the territory of the State where issued, for one year from the date of issue, for the categories listed on its last page. Two consequences fall straight out of that sentence. A permit issued under the model is no use on the roads of the country that issued it, which is why nobody at home has ever asked to see one. And the one-year life that JPJ prints as its own rule is also the life the model gives it.

Annex 10 also settles a small mystery about the booklet’s layout: its first two pages are drawn up in the national language of the issuing State, and the entire last page is drawn up in French. If your permit’s back page looks like a French document, it is supposed to. The model’s cover is the other thing worth turning to: it carries the issuing country, the words International Driving Permit, and a line naming the Convention it was issued under, followed by its date. JPJ does not publish which model its booklet is printed to, so the booklet itself is the place that answers it.

On the Malaysian side, the power to issue anything of this kind sits in section 25 of the Road Transport Act 1987, headed International certificates. Where an international agreement for facilitating the international circulation of motor vehicles has been applied to Malaysia, the Minister may make rules for the grant and authentication of travelling passes, certificates, driving licences or other authorities of use to drivers proceeding abroad and desiring to drive. That is the hook the permit hangs on: the Act does not name the document, and JPJ does not name the Act.

Where you do not need it at all

Start with the trips most Malaysians actually take, which are short ones across a land border or a one-hour flight. For those there is a treaty older than most of the people using it, and it is not the Geneva Convention.

The Agreement on the Recognition of Domestic Driving Licences Issued by ASEAN Countries was signed in Kuala Lumpur on 9 July 1985 between the Governments of Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Article 1 is the whole point of it: the Contracting Parties agree to recognise all domestic driving licences except temporary, provisional or learner’s licences, issued by the designated authorities or national automobile associations of the ASEAN countries. Article 2 spells out what that buys you — a holder from one ASEAN country making only a temporary stay in another may drive there the classes of vehicle the licence permits.

Two articles come with it that people skip. Article 3: any licence not drawn up in English shall be accompanied by a certified translation in English. Article 4: a licence that has expired, or that would be invalid under the law of the country that issued it, is not recognised at all — the treaty does not resurrect a dead licence. And article 6 removes the last illusion: you remain liable for traffic offence penalties under the law of whichever country you are driving in.

Singapore states the consequence in plain words on the Traffic Police page for foreigners. The general rule there is that a foreigner residing in Singapore for less than 12 months must hold a foreign driving licence and an International Driving Permit issued by an authorised body from the country of origin, or an official English translation if an IDP is not available. Then the exception: if you are a foreigner from an ASEAN member state, you do not need an IDP — just make sure the foreign licence is valid. For a Malaysian driving down the causeway for a weekend, that is the answer, from the force that would be stopping you.

One honest limit on the ASEAN answer. The 1985 Agreement names six countries. Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia joined ASEAN afterwards, and a Protocol to Amend ASEAN Agreements, done at Subang Jaya on 23 July 1997, inserted an article 10A saying new members of ASEAN shall accede on terms agreed between them and the existing members. The Protocol creates the door; it does not record who has walked through it, and the ASEAN legal repository publishes no status list for this Agreement. So the six are the six. For the rest of ASEAN, a permit in the bag is the cheap way to stop wondering.

Further afield, the clearest “you do not need one” in English belongs to Great Britain. GOV.UK’s decision tool, asked about a visitor holding a licence from any other country, answers that you can drive any type of small vehicle listed on your full and valid licence for 12 months from when you last entered Great Britain. No permit, no translation, no form. Twelve months, and the licence in your wallet.

Where the permit is the whole ticket

Japan is the clean case, and the one that makes the treaty question concrete. The National Police Agency’s leaflet for foreign drivers is blunt: those without a Japanese driver’s licence must have an international driving permit issued by a signatory to the 1949 Geneva Convention, or a foreign driver’s licence issued in Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium, Monaco or Taiwan together with a Japanese translation. There is no third option. Either type is valid for up to one year from the date of entry into Japan, and only within the term of validity of the licence behind it — so a permit issued in March does not stretch a licence that expires in June.

Korea works the same way and says so with statute numbers attached. The Ministry of Government Legislation’s official legal information service explains that a driver entering Korea with a valid international driving permit, or a mutually recognised foreign licence, may drive for one year from the date of entry, under the former part of article 96(1) of the Road Traffic Act. The same page defines an international driving permit for Korean purposes as one issued under the 1949 Geneva Convention, the 1968 Vienna Convention, or a bilateral or multilateral agreement between Korea and a foreign country — the 1949 route being the one Malaysia is on.

New Zealand is the destination to check twice this year, because the number is moving. The NZ Transport Agency says you must have a current and valid overseas driver licence or international driving permit to drive there. Today you can drive on an overseas car licence for 18 months, or 12 months on an overseas truck or motorcycle licence. From 1 November 2026, the car figure drops: the time you can drive on an overseas car licence will reduce from 18 months to 12 months from the day you last arrived in New Zealand. If you are planning a long southern summer, that change lands in the middle of it.

Australia is not one rule but eight, because licensing is a state and territory matter. Taking New South Wales as the worked example: a tourist or temporary overseas visitor may drive on an overseas licence for up to six months, provided the licence is current, the driver has not been disqualified or suspended, and the licence is carried. And then the conditional clause that decides whether you needed the RM 150.00 — if your licence is not written in English, you must also carry an English translation, or an International Driving Permit. Neither JPJ nor Transport for NSW publishes a ruling on whether a Malaysian licence card counts as written in English, so this is the sentence to read against the card in your own wallet before you decide.

When a foreign officer stops you

The permit is not a licence, and every authority that bothers to say so says the same thing: it travels with the licence, not instead of it. Article 24 of the 1949 Convention builds the whole arrangement on the driver holding a valid driving permit from his own country; the international permit is the form a host state may require on top of that. The categories you are allowed to drive are the categories printed on the permit’s last page, and those came off your Malaysian licence.

Korea writes the obligation down as a statutory duty: while driving, holders must carry their international driving permit or mutually recognised foreign licence and present it on request by a police officer, under article 92 of the Road Traffic Act. New South Wales words the same expectation as a condition of the six months — carry your overseas driver or rider licence with you, and the English translation or International Driving Permit alongside it if the licence is not in English. Nobody anywhere says it is enough to have the document at the hotel.

One more clause is worth knowing before you hand anything over. Article 24(5) lets a Contracting State withdraw the right to use either permit where the driver has committed an offence that would entail forfeiture of a licence under that State’s own law, and retain the permit until the withdrawal period expires or the holder leaves its territory, whichever comes first. A confiscated permit is a contemplated outcome, not a misunderstanding.

One practical note follows from all of this rather than from any single page: the clock starts at issue, not at departure. Get the permit too early and you are buying months you will spend at home, where it is invalid by design.

The other direction: a foreign licence on a Malaysian road

The mirror question comes up constantly, usually from a relative flying in: can they drive here on what is in their wallet? Malaysia answers it in statute rather than on a service page. Section 26(1) of the Road Transport Act 1987 sets the baseline that nobody may drive a motor vehicle on a road unless they hold a driving licence authorising that class. Section 28, headed Recognition of driving licences of other countries, is the door out of that: a driving licence issued under the corresponding provisions of any law in force in any country which is a party to a treaty to which Malaysia is also a party, and which purports to recognise domestic driving licences issued by the contracting countries, is deemed to be a driving licence granted under this Part, so long as it remains in force in that country.

Read section 28 with the 1985 Agreement and the shape becomes clear. A valid Brunei, Indonesian, Philippine, Singaporean or Thai licence is exactly the kind of licence section 28 is describing, which is why the causeway works in both directions. Article 1 of the Agreement excludes temporary, provisional and learner’s licences, so a learner permit is not covered either way. Article 4 excludes anything expired. And article 6 leaves the visiting driver fully liable for traffic offences under Malaysian law, which is the part that surprises people who assume a foreign licence is a foreign problem.

For a licence from outside that treaty, section 28 does not automatically apply unless another qualifying treaty exists — and no other such treaty for Malaysia is published — so the question becomes a JPJ counter question rather than a reading-comprehension one. No rule is printed here that JPJ has not published.

Walaoeh Verdict

Buy it late, not early. The permit costs RM 150.00 and lasts 1 year from issue, and under the 1949 model it is invalid in the country that issued it, so every month you hold it at home is a month spent. Check the licence in your wallet first: if it has less than a year to run, JPJ’s condition is not met and you are renewing before you are applying. Then check the destination, because the honest answer splits three ways. Around ASEAN the 1985 Agreement already recognises your licence, and Singapore’s Traffic Police say so in as many words. In Great Britain a visitor drives on the licence itself for 12 months. In Japan, Korea, New Zealand and — if your card is not in English — New South Wales, the permit is what makes the rental happen.

Take Borang JPJ L1, fill it under code 04, bring the licence, your identity document and one photo, and expect a counter, because there is no app for this one. For anywhere not in the table above, the rule you need is on that country’s own transport or police website, which is the only place worth reading it. Where money or a rental contract turns on the answer, confirm with JPJ or the destination’s authority first. This site’s guide to visa-free travel on a Malaysian passport covers the getting-in half of the same trip.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

Every figure above comes from one of these, all checked on 21 September 2026.

• JPJ — International Driving Permit Application and its Malay original, Permohonan Permit Memandu Antarabangsa. JPJ’s own listing gives the page a last modified date of 21 November 2025.
• JPJ — Driving License Transaction Fee Rate, which carries the RM 150.00 row, and the driving licence FAQ, which carries the age and PDL answer.
• JPJ — the client charter, driver licensing transactions. This is page two of the charter; page one carries enforcement and vehicle licensing only.
• JPJ — Borang Permohonan Lesen Memandu (JPJ L1), from the forms page, and the MyJPJ SuperApp FAQ, read in full for an IDP function it does not have.
• Laws of Malaysia, Act 333 — Road Transport Act 1987, hosted by the Ministry of Transport. Sections 25, 26 and 28.
• United Nations Treaty Collection — status of the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic and of the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, plus the certified text of the 1949 Convention for article 24, annex 8 and annex 10.
• ASEAN Secretariat — the Agreement on the Recognition of Domestic Driving Licences Issued by ASEAN Countries and the 1997 Protocol to Amend ASEAN Agreements, which records the signing date and adds the accession clause.
• Destination rules — Singapore Police Force, Singapore Driving Licence; GOV.UK, Driving in Great Britain on a non-GB licence; National Police Agency Japan, To all foreigners driving in Japan; Ministry of Government Legislation Korea, Using a Foreign Driver’s License; NZ Transport Agency, Visiting New Zealand; NSW Government, Driving with an overseas or interstate licence in NSW.