Rechecked: every entry rule that changed in 2026 so far

Eight entry rules changed in the first nine months of 2026, and three of our own guides were behind on one of them for between 70 and 112 days. This is the log, the arithmetic behind it and what I changed in how we check.

The scope is the 19 entry-rule guides we maintain: our EES explainer and 18 others, from ETIAS to the Jordan Pass. A change counts if it alters who needs permission, what the permission costs, how long you may stay or what you do at the border, and if an official page states it. A change that only appears in a news story does not count, and neither does a rumor about one.

Between 21 and 30 September 2026 I went through the guides one at a time. For each rule I opened the primary source: the regulation or the EU's own portal, the national government's pages, a ministry or embassy notice. I read the page itself and not a summary of it. That meant, for example, the European Commission's EES and ETIAS pages, GOV.UK, the Government of Canada's eTA pages, the Egyptian e-visa portal and the Turkish foreign ministry. I wrote down the date, and compared it with our guide sentence by sentence. Elena Petrova reviewed the story and re-added every fee and currency figure in it against the sources.

The one rule I held to is the one on every page we run: if the source does not state something, we do not state it. In this recheck nine of the 19 guides lost at least one sentence that I could not confirm on an official page, such as a count of eligible countries or the date an earlier fee began. Most of those sentences were probably true. We cut them anyway, because the rule is source or silence.

In September I also spent two mornings in the arrivals halls at Schiphol and Frankfurt, watching non-EU travelers register at the kiosks and booths, which fits what our EES guide now says about stamps.

The table lists the changes in order of when they took effect. "In our guide" is the date our changelog first carries the change, and the number is the days from the effective date to that line.

Our guides and our changelog, rechecked 21 to 30 September 2026. The ETIAS row is logged on the day I checked it, because the EU pages give no start date and no date for any change.

Counted by month, January had one change, February one, March none, April one, May two, June and July none, August one and September two. The median month had one, three months had none and the busiest had two. Nine of the 19 guides carry at least one of these changes, since the EES change touches both the EES guide and the 90/180 guide and ETIAS touches the EES guide and its own. Ten guides had no change I could confirm on an official page. I cannot prove a negative, and that count means only that I read the sources and found nothing to change.

Three judgment calls shaped the count. I counted EES once, at full operation on 10 April, because its October 2025 start belongs to last year. I did not count South Korea's temporary exemption running on to the end of 2026, since nothing changed for a traveler who is already exempt. And no fee change in force made the list: the amounts on our ETIAS (€20), UK ETA (£20), ESTA ($40.27) and Canada eTA (CAN$7) pages matched the official sites when I read them. The ESTA fee is due to rise to $40.62 on 16 October 2026, which is announced and not yet in force.

By direction, four of the eight changes loosened a rule, one added an option, two tightened a rule and one is still open. The year so far has opened more doors than it closed.

Thailand's cut is the one I would have missed on a trip. Most visa-exempt visitors used to get 60 days. Since 15 September 2026 they get 30, for tourism only, and can use the exemption twice per calendar year. People who entered before that date keep the stay they were given. Someone who planned 45 days for an October arrival on the old 60-day assumption now has 15 days to account for. It is the only change in the table that takes days away from a stay people already plan around.

The ETIAS row is the quietest and may matter most for 2027 bookings. The EU has not announced a start date and says it will announce one several months before launch. I will not guess one. What I can say is that ETIAS is not running and nobody needs one today.

Egypt's Cairo digital visa is a new option and leaves the old rule in place. It costs US$36, which includes a US$6 service fee, against US$30 for the ordinary visa on arrival, so the digital route costs $6 more.

The loosening changes share one trait: each applies to named nationalities, so most readers are untouched by any one of them. A UK or Canadian citizen planning China is the person for whom the February change matters, and a Chinese citizen planning Türkiye for the January one. For those readers a stale page costs a visa fee and a queue at an embassy.

Only EES comes with a long runway. It started on 12 October 2025 with a phase-in of about six months, so a traveler could see the full-operation date from the day it began. I can give no notice period for the other seven. The official pages I read state when a change takes effect and often stop there, and I will not take an announcement date from a news article.

What I can measure is our own delay: the days from the effective date to the first line in our changelog. For the seven rows with an effective date it runs 1, 1, 4, 30, 127, 225 and 271 days, a median of 30 and a mean of 94. The median happens to match our recheck rule, and I take no comfort from that. The spread is the story, and it comes from two kinds of page. The four short delays are guides that carried the change within a month, three of them within four days. The three long ones are guides that went up already missing a change.

Three guides missed a change while they were live. The Türkiye guide went up on 22 July without China's visa exemption and carried the gap for 70 days. The China guide went up on 10 June without the UK and Canada on the 30-day list, and the Canada guide went up the same day without the Indonesia and Malaysia change. Each carried its gap for 112 days, until I fixed all three on 30 September.

All three errors ran in the cautious direction. A reader following the old text would have been told to buy a visa, an e-visa or a more expensive form of permission that they no longer needed. None would have been told to skip a permission they did need. I have no report of a reader who paid for one, which proves very little. I prefer this kind of mistake to the other kind and I do not call it acceptable.

I cannot tell from the log whether we checked those pages and missed the change or never checked them in that window. That uncertainty is a finding in itself. A changelog records changes. It does not record checks, so a long silence looks the same as a long series of "nothing new". From this month each guide logs a dated "checked, no change" line as well.

Every entry-rule guide must show a check date no older than 30 days. On day 31 the Rechecked label comes off the page, and the guide goes into the editor's queue. When I began this recheck on 21 September, six of the 19 guides were past that line. All 19 now carry a date inside it. Our how we check page describes the process for the rest of the site.

The rule sets how often we look. It does not promise we notice a change within 30 days, and the three late guides show the gap. With eight changes in nine months, a 30-day window means a typical guide is at most one change behind, which is why I think 30 days is about right for a rule that moves this slowly. For the date-sensitive ones I look weekly.

Two dates to watch. South Korea's temporary K-ETA exemption for the countries on its list runs to 31 December 2026, and our K-ETA guide says what happens if it ends. ETIAS has no start date. Our ETIAS guide is checked every 30 days and updated on the day the EU names one.

The guides behind this story, with the date each changed:

The sentence I would quote from all this: entry rules moved about once a month in 2026, more of them loosened than tightened, and the check date on a page shows that someone looked, which is a smaller claim than that the page is right. Confirm on the official site for your passport before you pay for anything.