Planning arriving 26th June and departing 9th July. My passport was issued 10th July 2012 and expires 10th April 2023. Arrival meets 10 years from date of issue rule and passport is clearly valid more than three months after date of departure. However some reports suggest that departure date must be at least 3 months prior to 10th anniversary of date of ISSUE. Is my passport valid for this trip?
------------- Val
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My understanding is that the passport is valid from 10 years of issue regardless of the expiry date, furthermore, it's my understanding that it must have at least 6 months of validity on it at the time of arrival, under these rules I would take that as meaning the last 6 months of the 10 years since it was issued.
I appreciate it's probably not what you want to hear, but I personally would be getting a new passport rather than jeopardising my holiday.
Despite the terrible publicity that the Passport Office has received recently ( and rightly so ) I applied to renew my passport online on the 7th April, and it arrived on the 30th April. Maybe I just got lucky, but it's evidently not all as bad as the reports make out.
Cheers
Ian
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I've just checked Gov foreign travel web site for my upcoming trip to France, and passport dates are a bit of a grey area that seem to vary from country to country (and perhaps even individual point of entry!) with regards to life and expiry dates, this is what the Gov web site states:
Your passport must meet 2 requirements. It must be:
* less than 10 years old on the day you enter (check the ‘date of issue’)
* valid for at least 3 months after the day you plan to leave (check the ‘expiry date’)
We are asking the European Commission to clarify the 10-year rule. Their guidance for Schengen border guards may not be updated until the spring of 2022. Until then, for some Schengen countries your passport may need to be less than 10 years old during your whole visit, and the 3 months at the end of your visit may need to be within 10 years of your passport’s issue date.
Check both the issue date and the expiry date in your passport. If you renewed your passport early, extra months may have been added to its expiry date. This could affect the requirement for your passport to be less than 10 years old.
Contact your travel provider or embassy of the country you are visiting if you think that your passport does not meet both these requirements. Renew your passport if you need to.
IMHO, I think with so much at stake and with the hassles of being deemed to have an invalid passport at a individual border crossing point, I'd be looking at getting a replacement. A trip to a passport office to get a rapid replacement may be a pain, but less so than falling foul of a foreign jobsworth! BTW, the quoted time for ordinary online passport renewal is allow 10 weeks, so not an option for you!
I read recently about someone who tried to book a slot at the London passport office for an urgent passport (a new / first one, not a replacement). No available appointments in time. They had to get a bus from Brighton to Glasgow to go to the passport office there.
Good to hear that online applications appear to be speeding up.
I remembered to check my passport when it all kicked off and added an entry in my calendar to renew it 6 months before the 10 years are up, and I can't find that entry anymore.
Added another entry in the calendar now as I already have a big foreign trip planned for 2027!
DK
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Topic: Passport Requirements
via mobile 05/5/2022 at 7:55am
