Schengen 90/180-Day Rule

Key parameters
Limit	90 days
Period / Window	Rolling 180 days
Counting	Any part of a day
Additional requirements	Short stays only, no work

The rule applies to:

• A citizen of a visa-exempt country — including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan — visiting without a visa. British citizens have been subject to the rule since Brexit.
• A holder of a short-stay (Type C) Schengen visa, for tourism, business or family visits.
• A remote worker, retiree or frequent traveller splitting time between the area and elsewhere.

It does not apply to EU, EEA and Swiss citizens, who have free-movement rights and face no day limit at all. It's a limit on time present, not a permission to do anything in particular — it carries no right to work, and it doesn't accumulate toward any residence status.

The two features that trip people up are both structural. The 90 days are shared across the entire area rather than granted per country, so a month in Spain and two months in Germany exhaust the same allowance. And the 180-day window rolls rather than resetting, so there is no date in the calendar on which your count starts fresh.

Longer stays, work, and study sit outside this rule entirely. They need a national long-stay visa or residence permit from the specific country concerned, which is a separate permission with its own conditions.

Two separate reforms affect how visa-exempt and short-stay travellers are checked at the border. One is already live; the other isn't yet.

• What EES is — the Entry/Exit System replaced passport stamping with an electronic record of every entry and exit, captured through fingerprints and a facial image. It began a phased rollout at borders in October 2025 and became fully operational in April 2026, and it's what your day count is now calculated from — an overstay is flagged from that record without an officer needing to notice it. Your record is normally kept for 3 years after your last exit, rising to 5 years if you overstayed or were refused entry.
• What ETIAS will be — a separate, additional requirement layered on top of visa-free entry, not a replacement for it. Visa-exempt travellers will need to apply online in advance for a European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) authorisation before travelling, similar in spirit to the US ESTA.
• Current status — ETIAS is not yet in force. Its planned late-2026 launch has been dropped from official guidance with no confirmed replacement date, and industry estimates now point to sometime in 2027. Check the official ETIAS page before travelling rather than assuming either way, and be cautious of unofficial sites offering paid "ETIAS applications" for a system that isn't accepting them.

Neither reform changes the 90-day limit itself. Both only change how entry, exit and — once ETIAS launches — pre-travel screening are checked and recorded.

• The rolling window means an old trip can still constrain you. A long stay that ended four months ago is still inside the 180-day lookback, so the allowance you have left today depends on travel you may have stopped thinking about.
• Some member states have bilateral visa-waiver agreements that predate Schengen. These can, in specific nationality-and-country combinations, allow additional time beyond the 90 days. They are applied inconsistently and should never be relied on without confirming your exact case with that country.
• A residence permit or long-stay visa from a member state takes you outside this rule. Time spent in the issuing country on that permit isn't counted against the 90 days, though time in other member states generally still is.
• The area's membership changes. Countries have joined as recently as the last few years, and joining moves a country's days from a separate national allowance into the shared Schengen total.
• Being in the EU doesn't mean being in Schengen. Cyprus is the clearest case: it's an EU member with its own separate visa-free allowance, structured the same way but entirely distinct — a Schengen visa doesn't admit you to Cyprus, and time spent there doesn't touch your Schengen count either way.
• Gibraltar's land border with Spain went internal in July 2026. Since 15 July 2026, Gibraltar applies Schengen border rules even though it isn't part of the European Union or a formal Schengen member — the crossing with Spain has no routine checks, and the external border check instead happens at Gibraltar's own airport and port. Time there counts the same as time anywhere else in the area.
• Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City have no border checks either, despite not being members. Each is enclosed by, or opens directly onto, a Schengen country — Monaco by France, San Marino and Vatican City by Italy — with no border control on the way in. Days spent there count toward your 90 exactly as if you'd stayed in the neighbouring country.

An overstay is now recorded automatically rather than depending on an officer noticing it, and it follows you into every later border crossing and visa application across the area. Fines are set nationally and vary widely, but the serious outcome is an entry ban — normally capped at five years under EU rules, and longer only for a serious threat to public security. A ban goes into the area-wide alert system, so one country's decision closes all of them to you. Professional advice is strongly recommended in situations like this.

Spreading trips across the window

You spend 30 days in France in January and 30 in Italy in April, then plan a July trip. By July the January days have aged out of the 180-day lookback, so they no longer count, leaving you room for a further stay within the 90-day limit.

One long stay that uses the whole allowance

You enter Portugal on 1 March and stay put. You hit 90 days at the end of May and have to leave. You can't return immediately — you have to wait until enough of those days have aged past 180 for your count to fall back under the limit.

Country-hopping that doesn't reset anything

You spend 45 days in Spain, cross into Germany for another 40, then move on to Greece assuming each country grants its own 90. All three sit inside the same area, so your total is already 85 and you have five days left, not a fresh allowance.

• European Commission — Short-stay visa calculator
• European Commission — Entry/Exit System
• European Commission — European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS)
• EU — Regulation (EU) 2016/399 (Schengen Borders Code)