Can You Travel Internationally If Your Passport Is About To Expire?

by SharonKurheg

You’re getting ready to go to your most favorite country you love to visit. Or maybe you’re finally going on that bucket list trip to that place around the world. You get your passport out and OH NO, It expires in a month! You’ll be there and back before the actual expiration date, but is that good enough? I mean, you can still travel internationally with a passport that’s so close to its expiration date, right? As long as it hasn’t actually expired, you’re OK, yes?

Well, it depends.

There are some countries, such as Mexico and Brazil, where you only need your passport to be valid on your day of entry. Even if it expires while you’re in those countries, as long as it was unexpired when you arrived, you’re good.

There are other countries where your passport needs to be valid for a month, 3 months, or even 6 months after your departure.

You can check the specific passport expiration date guidelines for every country in the world if you go to this page of the department of state website.

Once you’re there, you can enter a country in the Learn about your destination window.

Also keep in mind that there may also be certain restrictions such as how many blank pages are left in your passport, whether or not you’re traveling with an emergency passport book, or if you’ve booked a one-way vs. a round-trip ticket.

Let’s use, I dunno, China as an example:

a screenshot of a computer

 

The passport information will be found in the “Quick Facts” section:

Screen Shot 2019-09-16 at 4.06.31 PM.pngSo you have to have 6 more months on your passport, as well as at least 2 blank pages in your passport.

How about the United Kingdom?

Screen Shot 2019-09-16 at 4.20.08 PM.pngSo as long as you’re going back home and have at least 1 blank page left, as long as your passport is valid for the entire time you’re there, you’re good. But if you’re traveling on to other countries, chances are you’ll need to have at least 6 more months of validity on it.

The pages that are brought up have lots of other information for the counties in question, including travel advisories and risk factors of visiting them.

Also, don’t forget to do this before you travel overseas!

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary

2 comments

USBusinessTraveller September 17, 2019 - 9:05 pm

The Department of State website is notoriously bad for passport validity requirements. Just look at the different advice for Portugal, Finland and Switzerland, and indeed all Schengen countries. All countries within the Schegnen area require passport validity of three months from date of intended departure. But travel.state.gov gets so many countries wrong.

The best site for this is Timatic, IATA’s databse used by the airlines. Their official site is http://www.iatatravelcentre.com but you can use the portal on the Emitaes website for a faster more explanatory report – http://www.emirates.com/english/before-you-fly/visa-passport-information/find-visa-requirements.aspx

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SharonKurheg September 18, 2019 - 1:52 am

Thanks for the heads up!

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