UK ETA
Requirements & Documents

You only need three things: a valid ordinary passport from an ETA-eligible country, a working email address, and a payment card for the $100 fee. No supporting documents — no bank statements, hotel bookings, or flight confirmations — are required or accepted at the ETA application stage.

You need a valid ordinary passport from an ETA-eligible country. It must be valid for the duration of your stay in the United Kingdom.

Your passport must be valid for the full duration of your planned trip to the UK. Unlike some visa types, there is no mandatory 6-month validity rule specifically for the ETA. However, airlines and border staff may apply their own checks, so having at least 3–6 months beyond your return date is advisable. Also note: the ETA itself is capped by your passport expiry date — if your passport expires in 8 months, your ETA will also expire then even though it is normally valid for 2 years.

Yes, if one of your nationalities is ETA-eligible. You must apply for the ETA using the passport you intend to travel to the UK with, and use that same passport at the border. If you hold a British passport, you do not need an ETA at all — just use your British passport. If you hold an Irish passport, the Common Travel Area applies.

If your ETA is refused, you cannot travel to the UK on that document without obtaining a full UK Standard Visitor Visa. The $100 fee is non-refundable. You can apply for a visa at a UK Visa and Immigration centre in your country. Refusals are rare for straightforward applications — common reasons include questions about criminal history or previous UK immigration violations.

Yes. Every traveller including newborns and young children must have their own individual ETA linked to their own passport. There is no family ETA. If a child travels on a parent's passport (some countries permit this), the ETA rules depend on how border control reads the travel document — in practice all modern travel requires individual passports, so each child should have their own passport and their own ETA.