From October 12, there will be new rules when you fly, and this means that you won’t be getting your passport stamped when you enter and leave a country – which has left many Brits devastated.
Many like to keep their passports as a bit of a status symbol of all the cool places they’ve travelled to in Europe, boasting to their friends and family about how many full pages they have on the document.
But they’ll be able to boast no more from mid-October, because everything will be done in a very different way when you’re at the airport.
Kate, who posts on TikTok as @thedonnellyedit, is a travel mentor, and she shared what the “EU is rolling out”.
“Are you a UK passport holder travelling to the UK this coming October? If so, keep watching, because there are some important changes coming into play that you’re gonna need to know about,” Kate explained.
She said: “So from the 12th October, the EU is going to be introducing its new entry, exit system and this is gonna apply to all countries in the Schengen area”.
The Schengen area refers to 25 of the 27 EU member states and all members of the European Free Trade Association (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) where people can freely travel without border checks. Controls at the internal borders with Cyprus have not yet been lifted, and Ireland is not part of the Schengen area.
Kate continued: “So this is a new digital border system that’s going to be using your biometrics, so photograph and fingerprint, and by April 2026, it’s gonna completely replace the traditional method of stamping your passports”.
Kate admitted she was “really sad about this,” saying that she “loves collecting passport stamps” from the countries she’s been to.
So how will it work? She said: “When you arrive at the airport for the first time, they will scan your passport, take your photograph, and take your fingerprints. If you are 12 or under, you will not need to provide fingerprints”.
The data that you give will be “stored for three years” so you only need to provide this stuff once, and “then travel after that time should be a lot more efficient”.
She said that this “applies to all UK travellers and all non-EU passport holders” with the aim of the new system being “to tighten up security” and “to reduce illegal migration”.
Kate reiterated that there’s “nothing you need to do ahead of your trip,” however, as everything else is staying the same.
“Everything is done at the airport when you get there, there is no paperwork, no fees, nothing additional to be done beforehand,” she said.
She did say, though, that you should “expect some delays” thanks to the “brand new system,” saying “it’s gonna take a little bit of time to collect everybody’s data”.
