Do you need a visa?
Pick your passport and where you are going. Every answer gets its own page.
Pick your passport and where you are going.
Every destination
The 211 countries we hold entry rules for. Each page lists the rule for the most-checked passports.
Where can I go visa-free?
The other way round: pick a passport and see every country it opens, grouped by what each one asks for.
How visa requirements work
Whether you need a visa depends on two things: the passport you hold and the country you are entering. The same trip can be visa-free for one traveller and mean weeks of paperwork for another, which is why a single country’s “visa requirements” page is never the whole answer.
Broadly there are five outcomes. Visa-free means you are admitted on arrival for a set number of days. A travel authorisation such as ESTA or ETIAS is not a visa, but you must be approved online before you board. An e-visa is a real visa applied for entirely online. A visa on arrival is issued at the border, usually for a fee. And a consular visa means applying in advance, often with biometrics and an appointment.
Two things catch people out even when no visa is needed. Most countries require your passport to stay valid for months beyond your arrival date, six being the common figure. A growing number also require a separate arrival registration or digital entry card that has nothing to do with a visa. Both are shown on every page here.
Common questions
The words that do the work: visa, e-visa, visa on arrival, travel authorisation.
A visa is a permission issued by the destination country, often through an embassy, that is checked against your circumstances. A travel authorisation — ESTA for the United States, ETIAS for the Schengen Area, an ETA for the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia — is a pre-screening of travellers who already need no visa. It is applied for online, approved in minutes to days, costs far less, and carries no interview. If you are refused one you still need a visa; holding one is not a guarantee of entry either way.
A visa issued at the border when you land, rather than before you travel. You queue at a counter in the arrivals hall, present your passport, a return or onward ticket and usually an address, pay a fee, and receive the visa in your passport. The catch is that it is granted at the counter and cannot be fixed there: if a document is missing or the daily quota is full, the alternative is being refused entry, so treat the published document list as mandatory rather than indicative.
An e-visa is a real visa applied for and approved online before you travel — you upload documents, pay, and receive an approval to print or show at check-in. A visa on arrival is issued at the border after you land. The practical difference is where the risk sits: with an e-visa you know before you board, and airlines will check for it at check-in; with a visa on arrival you find out at the destination. Where a country offers both, the e-visa is almost always the safer choice.
Many countries require your passport to remain valid for a set period beyond your arrival date — six months is the most common figure, though some ask for three and some only for the length of your stay. The rule exists so that a traveller who has to stay longer than planned still holds a valid document. It is enforced by airlines at check-in, not only at the border, so a passport that expires five months after your trip can stop you boarding even where no visa is needed.
It depends on two things and only two: the passport you hold and the country you are entering. The same trip can be visa-free for one traveller and weeks of paperwork for another, which is why there is no single answer to this question — pick both sides in the checker above and you get the rule for that exact pair, with the stay it allows, the passport validity required and any arrival registration to complete separately.
