Roughly once a week somebody forwards me an article saying they need a new permit to enter Europe, usually with a link to a website that will sell them one for $89. The article is half right. The website is a scam.

Here is the actual state of play, as of today, for a trip in 2027.

What is actually live: the Entry/Exit System

The EU’s Entry/Exit System became fully operational at every Schengen external border on April 10, 2026, finishing a rollout that started the previous October.

Passport stamps are gone. In their place, the first time you cross into the Schengen area you give a facial image and four fingerprints, and your entry is recorded digitally. On later crossings the system verifies you against that record rather than starting over.

There is nothing to apply for and nothing to pay. You cannot prepare for it beyond showing up with your passport. The only thing it costs you is time, and how much time is genuinely disputed.

The queue argument, and who to believe

The European Commission’s position is that registration averages about 70 seconds and the impact at most crossings has been limited.

Analysis of airport queue data published this August tells a different story. Average July waits at Frankfurt roughly doubled year over year to around two hours, with comparable peaks at Amsterdam Schiphol. Several airlines have been vocal about it.

Both of those are on the record and I am not going to pretend one of them is obviously right. What I will say is that the risk is asymmetric. If the Commission is right, a generous connection costs you an hour in a lounge. If the queue data is right, a tight connection costs you the first night of your trip.

ETIAS: the one everybody is worried about

ETIAS is a travel authorization, similar in spirit to the American ESTA, that Americans will eventually need before flying to Europe. It has been announced, delayed, re-announced and delayed again for years.

As of today it does not exist in any usable form. You cannot apply. There is no launch date, because the EU removed the one it had from the official ETIAS site this July after the timeline slipped again. The agency responsible was due to meet in September 2026 to set a new one.

Will you need it for summer 2027?

Possibly not, and that surprises people. When ETIAS does launch, the regulation builds in a transitional period of roughly six months during which you can still enter without it, followed by a further grace period. Depending on when the launch lands, a summer 2027 trip has a reasonable chance of falling inside that window.

I am not telling you to ignore it. I am telling you that there is nothing to do about it right now, and that changes only when a date is published.

When it does arrive

• Cost. Around €20, one time, with exemptions for travelers under 18 and over 70.
• Validity. Three years, or until your passport expires, whichever comes first. Multiple entries.
• Speed. Most decisions in minutes. A flagged application can take a few days, and in rare cases considerably longer.

The part that matters today

Do not pay anyone for an ETIAS. Every site currently offering to process, pre-register or reserve one for you is either an outright scam or a subscription that quietly renews. When it launches there will be exactly one official application site, and it will cost about twenty euros. If you are ever unsure whether a travel document site is real, send it to me before you enter a card number.

Britain is separate, and it is real

The United Kingdom is not in the Schengen area and runs an entirely separate system, which is the single most common point of confusion I see.

You need an Electronic Travel Authorisation. It costs £20, it is valid for two years or until your passport expires, and it covers multiple visits of up to six months each. Most applications are approved within minutes through the official app, though you are advised to apply at least three working days before you travel in case yours needs a closer look.

Apply on GOV.UK or the official UK ETA app and nowhere else. The same ecosystem of overcharging middlemen that surrounds ETIAS has grown up around this one, and here the permit is real, which makes the fake sites more convincing.

One thing worth knowing: an approved permit is permission to travel, not a guarantee of entry. That distinction almost never matters, but it is why the wording on the confirmation is careful.

The 90 day rule now does its own arithmetic

The rule itself has not changed. As an American you may spend 90 days in any rolling 180 day period inside the Schengen area without a visa. That is the same rule it has been for years.

What changed is enforcement. It used to depend on a border officer reading a smudged stamp and doing mental arithmetic, which meant a great many people ran slightly over and never knew. Now the system holds an exact record of every entry and exit and flags an overstay automatically.

For most trips this is irrelevant. It matters if you own or rent property in Europe, if you are stringing together a long summer across several countries, or if you are taking a second or third European trip in the same year. Penalties are set by individual countries and can include fines and entry bans.

If you are anywhere near the line, count precisely, and remember that the 180 day window rolls rather than resetting on January 1.

What to do before a 2027 trip

Now

• Check your passport properly. Schengen entry keys off both your expiry date and your issue date, and the combination catches people out every season. Tell me both of those dates when we talk and I will check them against your travel window rather than have you guess.
• Get the UK permit if Britain is in the trip. It is valid two years, so there is no reason to wait, and it removes one thing from the pile.
• Count your days if you have already been to Europe this year. Especially if a 2027 trip is long or if you are combining it with a second one.

When we build the itinerary

• Buffer the first arrival. Your first landing in the Schengen area is now the slowest part of the journey. A 75 minute connection through a major hub in July was fine in 2024 and is a bad idea today.
• Choose where that first landing happens. Entering through a quieter airport and connecting onward inside Schengen moves the biometric step to a shorter queue. This is a design decision, and it is one of the more useful things an advisor does now.
• Do not schedule anything precious for arrival evening. A dinner reservation on landing day has always been optimistic. It is now genuinely fragile.

About six months out

• Re-check ETIAS. If a date has been published by then, you will have plenty of time. If it has not, there is nothing to do.

None of this is a reason to change where you go. It is a reason to change how the first day is built, which is a smaller adjustment than most of the coverage suggests.

If you are deciding where to go in the first place, that is a different question, and last summer changed the answer more than these rules did. I wrote about that in Coolcations for Summer 2027.