Now is the summer of our discontent.
And it’s a discontent with a very specific flavour this year: warm airport terminals, longer queues than anyone budgeted for, and a small glowing screen asking your fingers to prove they belong to you. The school run’s finished, the cases are down from the loft, and half the country’s about to find out that getting to Europe now takes more than a passport and a bit of luck.
Rosemary found this out the hard way back in March. Five attempts at a fingerprint scanner while I sailed through on the first go. The reason? My warm hands, apparently, though she has other theories involving favouritism. Since then, we’ve heard from enough readers with their own scanner horror stories to know it’s not just her.
So here’s what’s actually going on at the border this summer, minus the waffle.
The EES Queues Are Real, and Brussels Knows It
The EU’s Entry/Exit System, the fingerprint-and-face setup that quietly replaced passport stamps, went fully live across Schengen on 10 April 2026. Nice tidy milestone on paper. In practice, this summer is its first real test under proper pressure, and it’s creaking.
Europe’s airports are bracing for around 40 million more passengers in July and August than they saw in the spring, and queues at the busier hubs have already stretched up to five hours during peak periods. Airline and airport bodies, Ryanair, British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France and easyJet among them, formally asked Brussels to switch EES off entirely whenever a border gets overwhelmed. Brussels said no. As of this month, the European Commission has rejected a blanket suspension outright, calling it “not needed and not possible,” while admitting there are around twenty “difficult spots” around the network. Individual crossings can still pause biometric checks for a few hours if a queue gets dangerous, but there’s no guaranteed relief, and the airlines are still pushing for more.
The named hotspots so far include Tenerife South, Palma de Mallorca, Alicante, Málaga, Milan Bergamo, Kraków and Paris Beauvais, with Amsterdam Schiphol, Madrid, Rome Fiumicino and Berlin Brandenburg also flagged as under strain.
And here’s the bit that should really sharpen your mind: If a queue causes you to miss your flight, don’t expect much sympathy. Missing your gate because the border took three hours isn’t the airline’s fault, so there’s no legal right to a free rebooking. If you’ve booked a single through-ticket, some airlines will rebook you as a goodwill gesture, but if you’ve arranged two separate flights, or it’s your only flight, you’re paying for a new seat yourself. Your travel insurance probably won’t help either.
The Association of British Insurers has confirmed that delays caused by EES queues generally fall outside standard policies, so a new flight, an unplanned hotel night, or anything else that goes wrong because you were stuck at passport control is, in most cases, on you. Grim, but worth knowing!
Rule number one has to be: Give yourself more time than feels reasonable, particularly through Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal and France. A connection that was comfortably tight last summer is a genuine gamble this year.
Why the Scanner Won’t Recognise Your Fingers
If the machine rejects you, you haven’t done anything wrong, your fingertips have just had an off day. Cold weather, dry skin, a week of gardening, even greasy suncream can throw the reading off. The sensors need a bit of warmth and moisture in your skin to register you at all, so stepping off a chilly flight with cold hands is one of the most common reasons for a failed scan. It’s basically what happened to Rosemary.
A few things that actually help:
Warm your hands before the kiosk
Lay the pad of your finger flat and centred on the glass, don’t just jab it with the tip
A light bit of moisturiser beforehand can help, don’t overdo it, and save the hand sanitiser for after your scan, not before
If it keeps failing, don’t panic. You’ll simply get sent to a manual booth where an actual human checks your passport the old way
Children under 12 skip fingerprinting entirely, though they’ll still get the photo. And once you’re logged in the system, that record holds for three years, so your next trip or two should be quicker, assuming your passport hasn’t changed in the meantime.
The Ten-Year Rule Nobody Warns You About
This one still catches people out, and it’s got nothing to do with your passport’s expiry date. For Schengen entry, your passport must have been issued less than ten years before the day you arrive, whatever the expiry page claims.
Blame the old renewal system. Before October 2018, renewing early meant the Passport Office rolled over any unused validity, so plenty of people ended up with passports technically good for ten years and nine months. Europe doesn’t care about those extra months; it counts from the issue date and nothing else. A passport issued, say, on 1 July 2016 stopped being valid for Schengen travel on 1 July 2026. Fact.
Check the issue date before the expiry date. It’s the detail almost everyone misses.
You’ll also need at least three months of validity left beyond your planned departure from Schengen, and several destinations further afield, parts of Asia and Africa especially, still want six.
ETIAS: Still Not Here, Still Worth Knowing About
Despite the odd overexcited headline, ETIAS, the EU’s pre-travel authorisation scheme, hasn’t launched. The official line is still the last quarter of 2026, with a €20 fee and exemptions for under-18s and over-70s, and there’s nothing to apply for yet. But the Financial Times reported this week that the agency actually building the system has privately told officials a 2026 launch is “illusory,” with 2027 now looking more likely, largely because Brussels wants EES sorted before adding another layer of checks on top.
Nothing’s official yet. Once it does arrive, it sits alongside EES rather than replacing it, one is your permission to travel, the other logs you at the border.
Worth a mental note for later in the year. Not worth losing sleep over now.
What a UK Passport Actually Costs Now
Fees jumped on 8 April 2026, so here’s what you’re actually looking at if yours needs renewing:
Adult, online: £102
Adult, by post: £115.50
Child (under 16), online: £66.50
Child, by post: £80
Premium same-day service (renewals only): £239.50
Online beats paper on price and speed every time, and the Post Office’s Check and Send service is still there for £16 on top if you’d rather someone double-check your form before it goes off. HM Passport Office still says allow ten weeks, and summer is exactly when that estimate has a habit of stretching further than promised.
The UK’s Own Front Door
Quick one for anyone travelling with a non-British, non-Irish companion: the UK’s Electronic Travel Authorisation has been fully enforced since 25 February 2026. Visitors from around 85 visa-exempt countries, the US, Canada and the EU among them, now need one before they’re even allowed to board, no grace period, no exceptions. It costs £16, applied for through the UK ETA app. British and Irish citizens, dual nationals included, don’t need one, though the Home Office would very much like dual nationals travelling on a British passport to avoid any awkwardness at check-in.
Gibraltar Loses Its Border, Sort Of
If you saw the headlines about Gibraltar’s 118-year-old border with Spain coming down, they’re not wrong, but they’re not the whole story either. From 15 July, the land crossing at La Línea opened up properly, ending well over a century of queues for the roughly 15,000 people who commute across it every day. It’s a genuinely big moment for the Rock, and the fences are already coming down as we write this.
What it doesn’t mean is that you can wander into Gibraltar without a passport check. Britain is still outside Schengen, so anyone flying or sailing in from the UK still goes through border control and EES at Gibraltar’s airport and port, same as before. The open border applies to land crossings from Spain, not arrivals from home. Worth knowing before you picture strolling in unchecked, that bit hasn’t changed. The treaty itself was only signed in Brussels on 14 July and still needs European Parliament approval, so treat it as provisional rather than permanent just yet.
Switzerland: Good News, Just Not Quite Yet
There’s also a new UK-Switzerland trade deal doing the rounds, and buried in the trade jargon are two genuinely useful bits for holidaymakers. First, Britons are set to get access to Swiss e-gates, cutting out the queue at passport control. UK travellers can already exit via e-gates at Zurich, with entry access there expected by the end of this year, and Geneva and Basel are pencilled in to follow, though Switzerland hasn’t confirmed a date yet. Handy if you’re planning a ski trip this winter, less so if you were hoping to use it this August.
Second, the deal states an intention to scrap roaming charges between the UK and Switzerland, though that word “intention” is carrying most of the weight in that sentence, no date has been confirmed and none of the big UK networks have said when it’ll actually show up on your bill. Nice to have on the horizon. Not something to plan your data usage around this summer.
Further Down the Road
Two more changes worth flagging, neither of which affects you this summer, but both worth knowing about.
The EU has just approved, after thirteen years of arguing about it, a ban on airlines charging extra for hand luggage. The European Parliament voted it through on 7 July, though it still needs sign-off from the Council of the EU before it’s officially law. Once fully in force, expected sometime in 2027, every EU flight will have to include a free personal item and a larger cabin bag, up to 100cm total dimensions and 7kg, in the base fare. Airlines will still be allowed to offer cheaper “no bag” fares for anyone happy to travel light. The same package bans the old trick of cancelling your return flight automatically if you miss the outbound leg, which will be a genuine relief for anyone who’s ever had a connecting flight go wrong. None of this applies yet, current baggage fees still stand until the rules land.
Further afield, Australia has just announced it’s finally retiring the paper incoming passenger card that’s been a fixture of every long-haul arrival for decades. The government confirmed on 13 July it’s putting AU$56.1 million behind the Australia Travel Declaration, a digital alternative that’s currently only available to selected Qantas passengers via the airline’s app after a successful trial of over 450,000 travellers. Capital city airports are expected to get it before the end of this year, with the rest of the country’s airports and seaports following over the next 12 to 18 months. Until it reaches you, you’ll still get handed the paper card and a pen.
The Short Version
Check the issue date on your passport, not just the expiry. Expect EES queues to be a lottery this summer and pad your connections accordingly. Warm your hands before the scanner, not after. ETIAS isn’t live, so ignore anyone telling you otherwise. And if your passport needs renewing for this trip, do it now, do it online, don’t leave it for the week before you fly.
Or you could just stay home and complain about the weather instead. Nobody’s fingerprinting you for that.
This article was checked and accurate as of 17 July 2026. Several of the changes covered here, particularly EES queue management, ETIAS’s launch date and the Gibraltar treaty’s final ratification, are still moving. Rules can and do shift at short notice, so always check the official source for your specific trip before you travel.
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