The Schengen 90/180 rule, explained with worked examples

If you visit Europe without a visa, the most important number is not the price of a train ticket but 90. Visitors from countries such as the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and Japan can usually stay in the Schengen area for a maximum of 90 days within any 180-day period. The rule is simple to state and easy to get wrong, because the 180 days are not a calendar half-year and leaving does not reset anything.

It matters more now than it did. The Entry/Exit System records your entries and exits electronically, and from 10 April 2026 it is fully operational at all external border crossing points of the countries using it, with an automated calculator and a list of overstayers.

The rule comes from the Schengen Borders Code, which the EU's EES FAQ describes as harmonising short stays at 90 days in any 180 days. The EES pages add that this period "is calculated as a single period for all the European countries using the EES," not per country.

The European Commission's short-stay calculator applies the rule to your dates, with a "check" mode for stays you have already made and a "planning" mode for trips you have not. The EU's Travel to Europe EES page links to the tool that checks your remaining days against your recorded entries. Use both before you book a second trip, and keep your own record of the results.

Pick any day of your trip. Look back 180 days, including that day, and count every day you were in the Schengen area. If the total is 90 or less, you are within the rule on that day. The check has to hold on every day you are inside, including the day you leave, and it is the day of each future entry that matters when you plan a return.

Plan as if the day you arrive and the day you leave both count as days inside the area, however late you land or early you fly out, because the calculator works with calendar dates. On that basis a long weekend from Friday night to Monday morning uses four days. Days outside the Schengen area do not count, but they also do not reset anything: they are just days that add nothing to the total.

Here is how that plays out. Say you spend 1 March to 29 April in Spain and Portugal, which is 60 days. You go home, then come back on 1 July. On 1 July, the 180-day look-back reaches back to early January and still includes all 60 days, so you have 30 days left. In a non-leap year the first day of that spring trip only drops out of the window on 28 August, and the rest follow one day at a time, which is why a traveler who assumed "90 days per trip" can get into trouble on a second summer visit.

A second pattern catches people on long routes. Suppose you spend 45 days in Italy, take 10 days in a non-Schengen country, and return to France for 45 days. The 10 days outside do not pause or cancel anything: on your last day in France you have spent 90 days inside the area in a window of 100 days, so you are exactly at the limit with no room for a day trip. A break only helps if it is long enough for old days to drop out of the window.

The Commission says the Schengen area is composed of 29 countries: 25 EU Member States and 4 non-EU countries, which are Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It also says Bulgaria and Romania were the last countries to join, on 1 January 2025, so days there count like days in France or Italy. Every day in any of the 29 goes into the same total.

Two EU members are outside the count. The Commission's calculator page says plainly: "Cyprus and Ireland are not part of the Schengen Area." Days in either do not use up your 90. The EES pages add that in Cyprus and Ireland passports will still be stamped manually. The United Kingdom and other countries that are not on the Commission's list of 29 are also outside the count, with their own entry rules for visitors, so a week in Albania or Ireland in the middle of a long trip pauses the Schengen count. Check each country's own entry rules before you build a route around them, because staying outside the area does not exempt you from the next country's requirements.

The EES FAQ says the system applies to a non-EU national travelling for a short stay who either possesses a short-stay visa or does not need a visa to stay for a maximum of 90 days in any 180-day period. It is your nationality that counts, not where you live. A US citizen who lives in London is counted the same as one who flies in from New York.

The Commission's calculator page states that if you hold an EU residence permit or long-stay visa you are not subject to the 90/180-day rule, and that periods of stay on those documents should not be entered. If you hold a short-stay visa, check the period of authorised stay printed on the visa sticker, and if it is shorter than 90 days, do not use the calculator. Citizens of any EU or Schengen country are not covered at all, and dual nationals should travel on their EU passport. The EES pages also note that the automated calculator does not apply to non-EU family members of EU citizens who are covered by EU free movement rules and do not hold a residence card.

A few nationalities have older bilateral agreements with individual Schengen countries that can allow extra time in that one country. These are not part of the Schengen rule and are handled nationally, so if you are relying on one, get it confirmed in writing by that country's embassy before you go.

The EU's EES FAQ is explicit that EES does not change the rule: "The implementation of the EES changes nothing to the rules on short stays." It changes the enforcement. The system records your entry and exit dates electronically, and the FAQ says that as of 10 April 2026, when the progressive period ended, manual stamping of passports was abolished and the automated calculator and the list of overstayers started functioning. A border officer sees your record when you enter or leave. The EES guide covers what happens at the booth.

There is one catch for 2026. The EU's check tool says: "the remaining authorised stay does NOT reflect any time spent in the Schengen area that began before 10 April 2026, regardless of whether the visit ended before or continued after that date." If you were in Europe in early 2026, count those days yourself and keep boarding passes or old stamps, because the rule still applied to them even if the tool does not show them. The tool adds that until 6 October 2026 included, the "OK" answer may be unreliable for holders of single or double entry visas who used an entry between 12 October 2025 and 9 April 2026, when the use of these visas was not recorded in the system.

The tool also warns that its answer "cannot be interpreted as a decision to grant or refuse entry to the Schengen Area." For any question about your remaining stay, the EU says to contact the competent authorities of the Member State where you last entered or exited the Schengen area. If you have not visited since 10 April 2026, contact the authorities of the country you plan to visit.

If you stay beyond 90 days, EES records the overstay, and the FAQ says that excessive stay of over 90 days in any 180 days is subject to EU and national rules. The EU's FAQ says a person who has already stayed 90 days within 180 and tries to enter again "will be refused entry at the border," and that the refusal is registered in the EES. Return decisions can be accompanied by an entry ban in some cases, both are entered into the Schengen Information System, and the FAQ says the length of the ban "shall not in principle exceed five years."

Do not count on extending a visa-free stay once you are in Europe. If you want more than 90 days, ask the relevant country about a national long-stay visa or residence permit before the trip. For long itineraries, the practical fix is often a detour: a stretch in a country outside the Schengen area can keep a Schengen-heavy summer within the rule, as long as you count the days before you book and the stay outside is long enough for older days to drop out of the window.

Keep your own record as you travel: entry and exit dates, boarding passes and train tickets. For ETIAS, the EU says your travel document should be valid for more than three months after the intended date of departure and should not be older than 10 years, and ETIAS has no start date yet, but it shows the passport standard the EU has in mind. For planning train-heavy routes across several countries, see the guide on whether a Eurail pass is worth it.

Before you book flights, write each Schengen entry and exit on one page, enter them in the Commission's planning mode, and check the result on the day of every planned departure. If a trip is close to the limit, build a buffer of several days for delayed flights, because a missed connection can push your exit date past the limit. If you will cross between Schengen and non-Schengen countries often, keep a spreadsheet with the date you cross each border, since a missing entry is the most common reason the numbers do not match.

If you plan a trip of several months, treat the 90/180 rule as a planning constraint, not a surprise: choose a base for the Schengen months, set the non-Schengen months deliberately, and consider whether a long-stay visa for one country fits better. The right answer depends on your passport, the countries you want and how long you stay, so read the official pages for each country on your route.