Passport - how long do you need from date of return ?

[hollyblueivy]

Is it three months, six months ago t something else from the date you leave the country?

Thanks

For Spain!

https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/spain/entry-requirements

Your passport must be less than 10 years old on the day you enter the EU. To check that, look at the date of issue.

It must also have three months on it on the day you plan to leave the EU (a return air ticket is usually sufficient proof). To check that, look at the expiration date.

Your passport has to pass both of the above tests.

There can be some confusion because the passport office used to credit up to 9 months of unused time from an old passport to a new one if you renewed early. (They stopped doing this as of about 2017.) This means that a few UK passports pass one of the two tests, but not both, as they get close to 10 years old.

Also, for about six months after Brexit the UK government web site had the wrong information 🙄 and said that everyone needed 6 months validity on the day they entered the EU. This has now been fixed, and the airlines all seem to be up to speed finally too. (It would only be true if you were planning to stay the maximum 3 months in the EU.)

If you can post your travel dates and passport start/end dates I can do the numbers for you.

Since you offered...

My passport says Date of issue 21 April 16 and Date of expiry 21 May 26.

If I want to travel to the EU in May 2026, when do I need to renew it?

You will need to renew it before 21 April 2026, as for the purposes of entering the EU that is when it will expire.

The question is not so much "When you need to renew it" as "Do you need to renew it" for that trip. And yes, you do.

You wrote "May 2026" for the travel date, without a day. Let's say you intend to go to the EU on 1 May 2026 and leave on 8 May 2026. In that case your current passport would fail both tests:

• It will be more than 10 years old on 1 May 2026 (it will 10 years and 10 days old).
• It will have less than 3 months remaining on 8 May 2026 (in fact just 13 days).

You also couldn't travel to the EU on 14 March 2026 and leave on 21 March 2026, because while your passport would pass the first test (it has not yet reached its 10th birthday), it will fail the second because on your intended day of departure it will have only two months of validity left.

Let's try travelling to the EU on 10 February 2026 and leaving on 18 February 2026. Here your passport is OK on both rules. On 18 February it will have more than 3 months left (21 May is more than 3 months after 18 February).

(Aside: The rules (Regulation (EU) 2016/399, aka the Schengen Borders Code) do not define whether 3 months means "90 days" or "the same numbered day in the third month after this one". I suggest you don't try to find out the hard way.)

Once the last of the UK passports that were issued with more than 10 years of validity on them have expired, which I think will be in 2027, the first EU entry rule ("Must be less than 10 years old on the day of entry) will become obsolete (at least for UK passports; I don't know if any other country has the same issue). At that point, any passport that passes the second test ("At least 3 months remaining on the date you plan to leave") will automatically pass the no-more-than-10-years-old rule.

This requirement to have time on your passport after your planned departure date is very common. In some countries you need six months on the date you arrive, and in some others you need six months after you intend to leave. So while a passport is officially valid for 10 years, in practice it can often only be used for travel for 9½ to 9¾ years.

Here is the relevant bit of the EU rules.

Thanks all this is really helpful.

For some reason I thought you had to have 6 months left at date of return but 3 months will be fine in this case.

For most EU countries its 3 months. For some countries its 6 months. Some countries only need it valid for the duration of your holiday.