Since 25 February 2026, airlines are legally required to deny boarding to visa-exempt travellers heading to the United Kingdom without an approved Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA). If your last UK trip only needed a passport, the rules have changed.
Who needs a UK ETA?
Everyone who could previously enter the UK visa-free for short stays — including citizens of the United States, Canada, Australia, the EU and many other countries — now needs an ETA before travelling. You don't need one if you hold a UK or Irish passport, have UK immigration status (a visa or settlement), or are travelling on a valid UK visa.
The key facts
- Fee: £20, paid online to the UK Home Office (it was £10 at launch and £16 through most of 2025 — check gov.uk rather than an older article, ours included)
- Validity: 2 years, or until your passport expires — whichever comes first
- Entries: multiple, for stays of up to 6 months each
- Where to apply: the official UK ETA app or the gov.uk website
- Processing: most decisions arrive within hours, but the Home Office asks you to allow 3 working days
The ETA is linked electronically to your passport. Renew your passport and the ETA dies with it — you'll need a new one.
Airport transit — corrected, 3 September 2026
This post originally said the UK required an ETA even for airside transit. That is not the current position, and we were wrong to state it. After pressure from airlines and airports the government reversed course, and passengers transiting airside — without passing through UK border control — do not currently need an ETA. In practice that means Heathrow and Manchester, the two UK airports with genuine international-to-international transfer facilities.
Read the conditions carefully before relying on it:
- You must actually stay airside. A connection that sends you through immigration, or that forces a terminal change through the arrivals hall, is not airside transit.
- It normally assumes a single or connected booking with your bags checked through to the final destination.
- The Home Office describes the exemption as temporary and kept under review, and no end date has been announced. An exemption that can be withdrawn is not a rule to build a non-refundable itinerary on.
If your itinerary connects through the UK, ask the airline to confirm which side of the border you will be on. If there is any doubt, £20 for two years of multiple entries is cheap insurance against being denied boarding at the far end.
How it compares
The UK joins a growing club of destinations that swapped visa-free entry for a pre-travel electronic check — the same model as the Canada eTA and Kenya's eTA, and the ETIAS system the EU is still building. The pattern is consistent everywhere: a small fee, a short online form, approval linked to your passport, and boarding denied if you skip it.
Two practical lessons carry over from every eTA system we process:
- Apply before you book non-refundable travel, not after. Approval is usually fast, but "usually" is not "always" — referrals for manual review can take days.
- Triple-check your passport number. An ETA issued against a mistyped number is worthless at the gate. The airport-issues guide covers what happens when a traveller and their authorisation don't match.
Applying for other destinations?
Vuvgo doesn't process UK ETA applications — apply directly through the Home Office's official channels. For the destinations we do cover, our team prepares, reviews and submits your application for you: see all destinations or start with the Vietnam eVisa, India eVisa or Kenya eTA.