also called TM.8 · multiple re-entry permit · single re-entry permit
A stamp or endorsement that lets a long-stay visa holder leave a country and return without cancelling the remaining permission to stay.
If you hold a long-stay visa and leave the country, some places treat that as you giving up the visa unless you first get a re-entry permit. The permit keeps your existing stay alive while you pop out and come back. A multiple-entry visa builds that in from the start; a re-entry permit is the add-on you buy when yours does not.
Someone in Thailand on a long extension nips over to a neighbouring country for a weekend without getting a re-entry permit. At the airport on the way out, their extension is cancelled, and they come back to nothing but a standard short entry, the months they paid for gone.
In places such as Thailand, leaving without one can void an expensive extension overnight. Travellers treat the visa as reusable until immigration cancels it at the exit gate.
The difference is the whole point, so here is each one in a line.
The core confusion is that a visa's validity, meaning how long you can use it to enter, is not the same as your duration of stay, meaning how long each visit may last, which the permission to stay granted at the border actually sets.
A single-entry visa dies once you leave; a multiple-entry visa lets you come and go within its validity; a re-entry permit lets a long-stay holder leave and return without losing their status; and Indonesia's EPO does the reverse, cancelling a permit so the holder can exit for good.
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