Picture this. A client books flights to Birmingham for a meeting next week. Everything looks set: the hotel, the itinerary, the flight times. Then someone mentions the ETA, and nobody on the trip actually knows what that means.
It’s an easy thing to miss. Until early 2025, most visitors from places like the US, Canada, and the EU just turned up and showed a passport. That’s no longer how it works.
Since 25 February 2026, airlines simply won’t let you board without one. There’s no soft warning and no sorting it out at the border. No ETA means no flight, full stop.
This guide explains exactly what the UK ETA is, who needs one, and what it costs. It also covers how to get it sorted before anyone sets foot near an airport.
What is the UK ETA, in plain English?
The UK ETA (Electronic Travel Authorisation) is digital permission to travel to the UK. You apply before you fly, not on arrival.
It isn’t a visa. Think of it more like a security pre-check, similar to the US ESTA or Canada’s eTA. The UK checks your details against security databases before you’re allowed to board.
Once approved, your ETA links electronically to your passport. There’s no physical document, no stamp, and no sticker. You travel on the same passport you applied with, nothing else to carry.
An approved ETA lasts two years, or until your passport expires, whichever comes first. During that time, you can enter the UK as many times as you like. Each visit can last up to six months.
That’s a useful detail for anyone who travels to the UK regularly for business. One application covers two years of trips, not just the one you’re planning right now.
Where the ETA came from, and what it doesn’t cover
The scheme sits within the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, and it didn’t appear overnight. It rolled out in phases from late 2023, starting with Gulf Cooperation Council nationals. EU citizens came into scope from April 2025. By February 2026, the transitional grace period ended completely, and enforcement became strict for everyone.
There’s a wrinkle worth knowing if your trip includes more than just England. The ETA also covers visits to the Crown Dependencies: the Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey. It doesn’t apply to British Overseas Territories, which sit under a completely different set of entry rules.
One thing worth clearing up early: the ETA only covers the UK itself. It doesn’t apply to Ireland, and it has nothing to do with the EU’s own ETIAS system, a separate scheme for travel into Schengen countries. Anyone continuing on to mainland Europe after their UK trip will need to check ETIAS separately once that scheme launches.
It also replaces something that used to be far simpler for a lot of nationalities: no advance step at all. Americans, Canadians, and most Commonwealth citizens previously just booked a flight and travelled. That older system is gone now, and it isn’t coming back. Building the ETA into trip planning is simply part of visiting the UK going forward, the same way checking a passport’s expiry date always has been.
Who actually needs a UK ETA?
If you’re not a British or Irish citizen, and you don’t already hold a UK visa or settled status, the answer is almost certainly yes.
The ETA applies to visa-exempt nationals. That’s the large group of countries whose citizens never needed a full visa for short UK visits, and instead just travelled on their passport. Since 2026, that free pass no longer exists.
Nationalities who typically need a UK ETA include:
- US, Canadian, and Australian citizens
- All 27 EU member state citizens
- Japanese, South Korean, Singaporean, and New Zealand citizens
- Most Gulf Cooperation Council nationals
- Citizens of many Caribbean and Commonwealth countries
That list runs to around 85 nationalities in total. If your country isn’t on it, you may still need a full Standard Visitor Visa instead, which works differently and costs considerably more.
No exceptions for age, family size, or residency
Age makes no difference here. Every traveller needs their own ETA, including children and infants. There’s no family bundle and no discount for booking as a group. A family of four pays for four separate applications, each one processed individually.
Permanent residents fall into their own category too. Someone holding a US green card, for example, only qualifies for the ETA route if their actual nationality is one of the eligible countries. A US green card holder who’s a citizen of a country requiring a full visa still needs that visa, regardless of where they currently live.
Dual nationals get a specific exception to flag. If one of your passports is British or Irish, you don’t need an ETA at all. You can’t apply for one even if you wanted to. You travel on your British or Irish passport instead, and that’s the passport UK border staff will expect to see.
Remote workers and digital nomads ask about this often, and the answer stays the same regardless of where you’re based day to day. The ETA follows your nationality, not your current country of residence. A Canadian citizen living in Portugal still applies as a Canadian, using their Canadian passport, wherever they happen to be typing from at the time.
Already hold a valid UK visa, an eVisa, or pre-settled or settled status? You’re exempt too. The ETA exists to cover the gap for visa-exempt travellers specifically, not to add an extra step for people who already have permission to enter.
If you’re still unsure which category applies to you, the official checker on gov.uk settles it in under a minute. It’s worth doing that rather than guessing, particularly if your nationality changed recently or you hold more than one passport.
How much does a UK ETA cost right now?
The current fee is £20 per person. That figure has moved more than once, so it helps to understand why, rather than just accepting whatever number you saw last.
The scheme launched at £10 back in 2023. It rose to £16 in April 2025, then increased again to £20 from 8 April 2026. Each rise applied to everyone equally, regardless of nationality, age, or reason for travel.
That £20 is a flat fee. It doesn’t matter if you’re visiting for tourism, a single business meeting, or transiting through a UK airport on the way somewhere else. One fee, one rate, no exceptions.
It’s also non-refundable. Pay it, and you don’t get it back even if your application is refused. That’s a strong incentive to get the details right the first time, rather than rushing the form the night before a flight.
A quick way to think about the true cost for a family or group: multiply £20 by the number of travellers, including children. There’s no way around that maths, and no legitimate service that can offer a genuine discount.
Take a group of four flying in for a wedding or a family visit. That’s £80 before flights, hotels, or anything else. It’s not a large sum on its own, but it catches families out when they’ve budgeted for two adult applications and forgotten the children need their own too.
Watch out for third-party sites charging more
That last point matters more than it might sound. A handful of third-party websites charge considerably more than £20 while offering nothing extra in return. They show up high in search results, look official enough at a glance, and simply add a mark-up for filling in the same form you could complete yourself.
They’re not illegal, but they’re not doing you any favours either. The only official channels are the UK government’s own gov.uk website and the UKVI ETA app. If a site asks for more than £20, or wants payment before showing you the actual application form, that’s your cue to close the tab and start again on gov.uk.
Compare that £20 to a Standard Visitor Visa, which now costs around £135 for nationals who don’t qualify for the ETA route. The ETA is the cheaper, faster option for anyone eligible for it, and there’s no reason to pay more through an unofficial site.
For businesses processing this as a travel expense, the confirmation email doubles as a receipt. Finance teams handling visitor expenses for the first time sometimes ask what documentation exists, and the answer is simply that email, showing the fee paid and the approval date.
How do you actually apply for a UK ETA?
Most people apply through the official UKVI ETA app on their phone. It’s the primary route, and for most travellers, the simplest one.
The process itself is fairly quick. You’ll need a valid passport, a smartphone capable of running the app, and around ten minutes free from distractions.
Here’s roughly what the process involves:
- Download the official UKVI ETA app, not a third-party copy.
- Scan the photo page of your passport using your phone’s camera.
- Take a live selfie so the system can match your face to the passport photo.
- Answer a short set of security and background questions honestly.
- Pay the £20 fee by card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay.
- Submit, and wait for your decision by email.
The passport scan and live selfie steps exist for a reason. They confirm the person applying is truly the person named on the passport, which cuts down on fraudulent applications made on someone else’s behalf without their knowledge.
You can also apply through the gov.uk website directly, though the app remains the more commonly used route, particularly for the photo and selfie steps. Both routes charge the same fee and both feed into the same decision-making system.
A few extra things to know
Applying for someone else is possible, but only if they’re physically present with you. You can’t complete a passport scan or a live selfie for someone who isn’t in the room. That requirement exists because the whole point of the system is confirming identity, not just filling in a form.
One detail catches out more people than you’d expect. You cannot complete this on a desktop computer alone. The scan and selfie steps need a smartphone, not just an internet connection. If you don’t have one, or yours doesn’t support the app, borrow one from a friend or family member who’s happy to help.
Travel agents and corporate travel bookers sometimes ask if they can apply on behalf of a client remotely. They can’t, for the same identity-check reason mentioned above. The best a booker can do is send a clear reminder with a link to the official app, well before the trip, and let the traveller complete it themselves.
Get a question wrong, or misjudge which category applies to you, and the safest move is starting again carefully rather than guessing. The fee doesn’t come back either way, so a rushed second attempt costs exactly as much as getting it right the first time.
Once approved, keep the confirmation email somewhere easy to find. You won’t need to print anything, since the authorisation links electronically to your passport, but having that email accessible on your phone saves an awkward search at check-in.
How long does the UK ETA take to come through?
For most applicants, the answer is minutes, not days. Plenty of people receive their decision by email within an hour of applying.
Official guidance is more cautious, and asks travellers to allow up to three working days before assuming something has gone wrong. That’s a sensible buffer to plan around, even though the reality for most people is much faster.
If three working days pass with nothing in your inbox, check your spam folder first. It’s a surprisingly common reason people think their application has vanished when it’s quietly sitting unread in a junk folder.
Genuinely delayed or refused applications do happen, though they’re the exception rather than the rule. If your application gets refused, and you have a relevant criminal record or a previous UK entry refusal on file, an ETA might not be the right route for you. A Standard Visitor Visa lets you explain your circumstances directly, which the automated ETA system can’t do.
There’s no way to speed up a stuck application beyond checking your details are correct and your spam folder is clear. Contacting UKVI only helps once the official three-day window has already passed.
The honest takeaway here: apply well before your trip, not the night before. Most people won’t need the buffer, but the ones who do will be glad they built it in.
What happens if you land in Birmingham without one?
The short answer is that you won’t be landing at all. Airlines, ferry operators, and even Eurostar must verify ETA status before you board, not after you arrive.
That’s a genuine shift from how this used to work. Previously, entry checks happened at the UK border itself. Now, the check happens at check-in, sometimes days before you even reach the airport.
Turn up without a valid ETA, and the airline won’t issue a boarding pass. There’s no exception for a client meeting the next morning, no fast-track queue at the gate, and no way to sort it out once you’re airside.
Picture a genuine scenario. An American sales director books a same-week trip to meet a Birmingham client, flying out within 48 hours of the invite. Everything else moves fast except one overlooked step, and they discover at check-in that boarding isn’t happening. The meeting doesn’t get moved. The flight does.
This is exactly the kind of thing that causes real problems for business travel specifically. A missed flight because of a paperwork gap looks completely different to one delayed by weather or an air traffic issue. One sits entirely outside anyone’s control. The other is avoidable with ten minutes of planning.
For anyone organising travel on behalf of a visiting colleague, client, or guest speaker, this is worth flagging early rather than assuming they already know. A lot of frequent travellers to the UK are still adjusting to a system that simply didn’t exist a couple of years ago.
What should you check before you fly?
Getting this right comes down to a handful of straightforward checks, done early rather than at the airport.
Things to consider before travelling to the UK:
- Confirm whether your specific nationality needs an ETA, rather than assuming based on what a friend told you.
- Apply through the official UKVI app or gov.uk only, never a third-party site charging more than £20.
- Apply at least a week before travel, even though most decisions land within hours.
- Check every traveller in your party has their own approved ETA, including children and infants.
- Keep a note of your ETA confirmation email in case an airline or border officer asks to see it.
- If your passport is close to expiring, renew it first, since your ETA becomes invalid the moment your passport does.
- Dual nationals should confirm which passport they’re travelling on, since that determines whether an ETA applies at all.
None of these checks take long individually. Skip them, though, and the consequences land at the worst possible moment: standing at a check-in desk with a flight about to close.
If you’re hosting a visitor rather than travelling yourself, send them a short, clear note about the ETA well ahead of their trip. A lot of international guests, particularly from countries that never needed anything like this before, won’t know it exists until someone tells them.
Why more visitors let a chauffeur handle the rest
Getting the ETA sorted is only half the journey. The other half starts the moment your visitor’s wheels touch down at Birmingham Airport.
A lot of international visitors, especially those flying in for a single meeting or a short business trip, don’t know Birmingham at all. They’ve spent their planning energy on flights, hotels, and now the ETA. Ground transport becomes an afterthought, sorted in a rush from the arrivals hall.
That’s exactly where a pre-booked chauffeur changes the experience. Your guest walks out of arrivals, and someone is already there holding a name board, ready to go. No queue for a taxi, no working out an unfamiliar app, no explaining a UK postcode to a driver who’s never heard of the venue.
This matters particularly for corporate and executive travel, where first impressions carry real weight. A relaxed arrival sets a completely different tone to one where a visitor has just spent twenty stressful minutes figuring out ground transport in a country they’ve never visited.
Businesses that host international visitors regularly tend to build this into their planning, alongside the practical guidance already covered in our business travel guide for executives and visitors coming to Birmingham. Getting the ETA right and getting the arrival right are really two halves of the same job.
Every National Executive Transfers journey runs in a Mercedes-Benz. The licensed, DBS-checked chauffeur already knows the route from Birmingham Airport to wherever your guest needs to be. A solo director travelling for a single meeting usually books an S-Class from the fleet, while a visiting team travelling together takes the V-Class, with proper space for luggage rather than everyone squeezed in with cases on laps.
The real time and stress comparison
Compare that to the alternative. A visitor lands, clears the ETA check they’ve already sorted, then faces a taxi rank, a rental car counter, or a public transport system they’ve never used. None of that is impossible. It’s just an unnecessary layer of stress on top of a long flight.
A fixed-price airport transfer, booked before the flight even takes off, removes that layer completely. The price is agreed in advance. The driver tracks the flight and adjusts for delays. There’s nothing left to figure out on arrival.
For anyone weighing up the actual cost of a chauffeur in Birmingham against a taxi or rental car, the maths isn’t as one-sided as people expect. Factor in the time saved and the certainty of a fixed price, and the value case holds up well against a queue at an unfamiliar rental desk.
If your visitor has a day or two spare either side of the meeting, mention what’s worth seeing nearby. Plenty of guests are surprised by how much sits within easy reach of Birmingham, covered in our guide to the best day trips from the city.
Sorting the ETA is the first hurdle. Sorting the arrival is the second, and it’s the one that shapes how the whole trip actually feels. Book the transfer alongside the ETA application, and your visitor’s entire journey is sorted before they’ve even packed a bag.
The UK ETA isn’t complicated once you know the basics. Check who needs one, apply early through the official channels, and keep your confirmation email handy. Get that part right, and the only thing left to plan is how smoothly the rest of the trip goes from the moment they land.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, in most cases. Transit through UK airports counts as one of the activities the ETA covers, so visa-exempt nationals typically need one even if they're not leaving the airport.
No. It covers short-term visits for tourism, business meetings, and similar activities, not employment. Working in the UK requires a different type of visa entirely.
You can submit multiple applications from the same device, but each person, including children, needs their own individual ETA. There's no combined family application.
You'll receive a reason for the refusal. You can apply again, though the fee isn't refunded either way. If the refusal relates to something like a previous immigration issue, a Standard Visitor Visa may suit your situation better.
No. They're entirely separate schemes run by different governments. The UK ETA covers UK entry, while ETIAS covers entry into Schengen Area countries, and the two have no connection to each other.
Not if your existing one is still valid. A single approved ETA covers multiple trips over its full two-year validity period, provided your passport doesn't expire first.
Generally, no. The official app requires a smartphone for the passport scan and live selfie. The gov.uk website exists as an alternative, but most travellers find the app the more straightforward route.
The main check happens before you board, at check-in in your home country. UK border staff can still verify it on arrival, so keep your confirmation email accessible on your phone throughout the journey.
No. It confirms you've cleared a pre-travel security check and are authorised to board transport to the UK. Border officers still make the final entry decision when you arrive, as with any visa-exempt travel.
There's no minimum notice period, and many people apply the same week they travel. Applying at least several days ahead gives you a safety margin in case of any unexpected delay or query.
