Schengen 90/180 rule: a calculator for UK business travellers

A UK passport holder can spend no more than 90 days in any 180-day period in the Schengen area, and every day counts — meetings, conferences and site visits included. The 180 days roll: the count is re-done for each day you are there, looking back from that day. The 29 Schengen countries share one allowance. This page quotes the regulation, gives a calculator, and explains what the EU’s Entry/Exit System changed.

The 90/180 rule in ten phrases, and what the regulation says

What Article 6 actually says

The rule is in the Schengen Borders Code, Regulation (EU) 2016/399. It is short, and three sentences of it decide everything:

Read together: every calendar day you are present counts, including the days you arrive and leave; the test is re-applied on each of those days; and the Schengen countries are one pool. The European Commission puts the same thing in one line: “You must count back 180 days from each day of your stay and ensure the total number does not exceed 90.”

How we count the 180 days

“The 180-day period preceding each day of stay” leaves one small question: does the period include the day being checked? The regulation does not answer that in so many words. Our calculator counts the period as that day plus the 179 days before it, and says so wherever it gives an answer. A different reading moves the result by at most a day at the edge of a window. The Commission’s own calculator is the authority, and it is linked above.

GOV.UK’s five steps, worked through

GOV.UK gives UK travellers a five-step method:

1. Check the date you plan to leave the Schengen area on your next trip.
2. Count back 180 days from that date to get the start of the 180-day period.
3. Add up the number of days you have already spent in the Schengen area in that 180-day period (you can use the dates stamped in your passport showing when you entered and left a country).
4. Work out how many days you will spend in the Schengen area on your next trip. Add this number to the number of days you worked out in step 3.
5. Check that the total number of days is not more than 90.

An illustrative year for a UK-based account manager with clients in France and the Netherlands. The trips are invented; the counting is the rule’s:

On 31 July, the last day of trip 4, the 180 days looking back start on 2 February, so all four trips are inside the window: 72 days, within 90. Suppose the same person is asked to start a long assignment on 1 September. Counting forward day by day, they could stay 23 days in a row before some day’s look-back total passed 90. Start on 1 October instead and the figure is 40 days, because more of the spring trips have dropped out of the window by then. (These figures are computed by the same rule as the calculator, for 2026.) Put the dates into the calculator above to see it day by day.

That is the practical problem in a company: the four trips were probably booked by different people, for different projects, sometimes through different channels. Nobody sees the running total unless the bookings are in one place.

The 29 Schengen countries

GOV.UK’s list, read on 2026-09-23:

Four of them are not EU members — Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland. Two EU members are outside Schengen: Republic of Cyprus, Ireland. Days in those two do not count towards the 90.

What EES changed for UK passport holders

The 90/180 limit is not new. What is new is how it is recorded:

• “The European Union’s (EU) Entry/Exit System (EES) started on 12 October 2025 This is a new digital border system that has changed requirements for British citizens travelling to the Schengen area.”
• “You do not need to take any action before you arrive at the border, and there is no cost for EES registration.”
• “If you enter the Schengen area through the Port of Dover, Eurotunnel Le Shuttle at Folkestone or Eurostar, St Pancras International, any EES checks will be completed at the border, before you leave the UK.”
• “Your digital EES record is valid for 3 years.”

For a company with people who travel frequently, the change is that an overstay is no longer something a border guard has to work out from stamps. The system has the dates. GOV.UK’s own advice for frequent travellers is direct: “If you frequently travel to the Schengen area for work and/or leisure purposes, you must ensure that your total stay in the Schengen area is no more than 90 days in every 180 days.”

ETIAS: not yet

ETIAS is a separate, later system: an online authorisation before travel, with a fee. As GOV.UK put it in April 2026:

• “From Autumn 2026, the EU is expected to start operations of the new European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS).”
• “The European Union will announce the specific date for the start of ETIAS before its launch.”
• “You will need to provide personal information and details about your trip, and pay a 20 Euro fee, as part of the authorisation process.”
• “Any website selling ETIAS at this time is doing so fraudulently, and you should only apply on the official EU website when able to.”

We will update this page when the EU announces a start date.

Business travel: what the 90 days does not settle

The 90/180 rule decides how long. It does not decide what you may do while you are there. GOV.UK’s list of reasons that do not need a visa includes “travelling for business for your UK employer, for example to attend a business meeting or conference”. For anything closer to working in the country — delivering a service to a client there, installing equipment, a secondment — GOV.UK’s instruction is to check the rules of the country you are visiting. Those rules are national, they differ, and we do not summarise them here because we have not read all 29 at source.

Two other things a travel policy should say for Schengen trips:

• Passports: it shall have been issued within the previous 10 years, and its validity shall extend at least three months after the intended date of departure from the territory of the Member States — both tests in Article 6(1)(a).
• Long-stay permits: “Periods of stay authorised under a residence permit or a long-stay visa shall not be taken into account in the calculation of the duration of stay on the territory of the Member States.” A person posted on a national long-stay visa is outside the count for that country.

How an employer’s obligations to travellers are set in UK law is on duty of care for business travellers, and the tax side of overseas trips is on HMRC overseas subsistence rates. Visitors coming the other way — into the UK on business — are covered on UK business visitor rules.

This page explains how the regulation and GOV.UK guidance are written. It is not immigration advice; decisions at a border are made by the border authority.

Common questions