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Straight from the horse’s mouth — your passport must be valid for three months beyond the date of departure.
One rule for Schengen
www.schengenvisainfo.com
www.iatatravelcentre.com
I wouldn't worry about that just yet. The start date for the ETIAS has already been delayed several times. And it will just be something that you do online and pay a small fee - less than 10 Euro I believe. It's similar to the ESTA that travelers from visa waiver countries need to get before arriving in the US, or the ETA for Canada.
After seeing your post @peregrina2000 saying that the rules were the same for all the Schengen zone countries I revisited the link that you gave for Spain and in the URL I changed Spain to France. That U.S. State Department page was much clearer about the rules. Later I remembered the IATA website. The forms there are pretty important because the airlines won't let you leave home if you don't meet their requirements even if you are allowed in at your destination country if you could get there.
Kind of hard to believe that the US State Department would have a website in which they give clear information for France, and ambiguous information for Spain.
Or had a hiccup during a copy and paste.
I heard on the news today that it's taking up to 18 weeks to renew a passport right now.
You should still be able to pay for expedited renewal. It might require going in person to the nearest state department passport office
Do you have a ticket? You can expedite it for a fee. It used to comes back in about 2-3 weeks. In certain cases, you can even go to the local passport office, we have one in Chicago, get it on the same day.
Oh, you just jolted my memory. One year when we were living in Lisbon, we had a Christmas visit from the kids planned. Two days before the flight, my daughter realized she couldn’t find her passport. I quickly got online and booked one of those DC expediters, and miracle of miracles, she had her passport in time for the flight.
Side note to your note - if your drivers license is not due to expire soon but your passport is, it may be a better deal to add a passport card for $30 to your passport renewal than to get Real ID drivers license. It is also accepted for air travel within the US and land crossings in Canada and the US. Of course you can always use your regular passport for these purposes too.
That was during normal times. Right now they are saying 18 weeks.
The key word here is "3 months after my return ticket to the USA". The government of the USA does not control the immigration laws of other countries. The decision to inspect and admit a national and/or citizen of another country absolutely belongs to each sovereign country. The conventional rule is that the passport should be valid 6 months or longer than the admission date. USA government does not admit those whose passports expire within less than 6 months of admission. We, the citizens of the USA, should respect the same rule.
I disagree. We need to respect the rules of the country that we are visiting. In the case of Spain, the passport needs to be valid for 3 months after the date of departure from Spain.
Do you mean to say that US citizens when returning to the USA should have a passport that is still valid for 6 months ??? I don't know what the US government has to say on this but I do know that this "conventional rule that the passport should be valid 6 months or longer than the admission date" is not as conventional, or universal, as one might think, certainly nor for or in the EU. There are laws for:
For some reason, I once asked a passport checker that precise question at Immigration. He told me that I could enter even if my passport had expired. I think it has to do with the country of destination, not the country of origin.
My passport was due to expire this fall, but sent it in January just in case since we were not sure when we were going to travel. It took only two weeks to process and return. I sent it certified return receipt mail, and it took almost a month to get to the passport office. I thought the US Mail had lost it!!
Japan is actually very relaxed about entry with soon-to-expire travel documents. If you're travelling with a US or EU passport, I am pretty sure you can enter on its last day of validity. If your passport expires while you are in Japan, you can get a new one from your embassy. It may still be preferable to get an expedited passport before leaving, but in principle at least, you can enter Japan until your passport expires.
Go on then. How do you know?
As told elsewhere here but . . . lost my UK passport and (worse still) my Ingles Credential late on the night before my early morning flight home from SdC.
I’ve been to Belgium using (inadvertently) my wife’s passport. It passed both the airline boarding process and Belgian immigration. Getting home wasn’t so easy.
There is no tyranny like petty bureaucrats, and borders sometimes have the worst. I’ve had “abuse” entering Canada and the UK for no apparent reason, just a bad day for some downtrodden soul and a jet lagged passenger with no recourse. And then in Saudi Arabia I was pulled into to holding pen for two hours while they scrolled through cassettes (yes, old timer) of US college football games I was taking to our employees in the hinterland. No real problem, just missed a connection and got to watch a roustabout argue about why he couldn’t take Playboy and Hustler in. The border agent finally told him to take it if he wanted to, but if caught with it he would not like the result. He left it.
