Decay spectroscopy of the long-lived states in $^{186}$Tl has been performed at the ISOLDE Decay Station at ISOLDE, CERN. The $alpha$ decay from the low-spin $(2^-)$ state in $^{186}$Tl was observed for the first time and a half-life of $3.4^{+0.5}_{-0.4}$ s was determined. Based on the $alpha$-decay energy, the relative positions of the long-lived states were fixed, with the $(2^-)$ state as the ground state, the $7^{(+)}$ state at 77(56)~keV and the $10^{(-)}$ state at 451(56) keV. The level scheme of the internal decay of the $^{186}$Tl($10^{(-)}$) state ($T_{1/2} = 3.40(9)$ s), which was known to decay solely through emission of 374 keV $gamma$-ray transition, was extended and a lower-limit for the $beta$-decay branching $b_beta > 5.9(3)%$ was determined. The extracted retardation factors for the $gamma$ decay of the $10^{(-)}$ state were compared to the available data in neighboring odd-odd thallium isotopes indicating the importance of the $pi d_{3/2}$ shell in the isomeric decay and significant structure differences between $^{184}$Tl and $^{186}$Tl.
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