UK’s Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme to roll out worldwide in 2025

The government’s new Electronic Travel Authorisation, or ETA, scheme has reached a key milestone. From January 8, 2025, it became mandatory for certain non-European nationals visiting the UK, marking a significant shift in border security and immigration controls. The scheme is designed to enhance security by requiring pre-travel authorisation for visitors who do not need a visa for short stays, such as tourism, business, or short-term study. Costing £10 and valid for multiple journeys over two years, the government says the system will modernise UK border checks, bringing it in line with countries like the US and Australia. But how will it work in practice and what does this mean for businesses, particularly those reliant on international talent and short-term visitors? We’ll ask an immigration expert that question. 

A reminder. The ETA is a digital travel permission, not a visa, meaning it does not guarantee entry into the UK, but it will be a mandatory requirement before travel. The process is designed to be simple, with most applications decided within three working days. The scheme first applied to Qatari nationals in 2023 and was later extended to citizens of Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE in late 2024. Now, from January 2025, the requirement applies more broadly to all non-visa nationals, with European travellers set to follow in April 2025.

The government argues the ETA will improve border security and streamline travel, but there are concerns. Some businesses fear delays, particularly where short-notice travel is required. There have also been reports of travellers being denied boarding because they were unaware of the new rules. Meanwhile, immigration specialists are watching closely to see how the system beds in and whether it creates unintended barriers.

So let’s get a view on this. Earlier immigration lawyer Alex Wright joined me by video-link from Manchester:

Alex Wright: “Yes, so the ETA scheme has been something that we've had in place for a little while and there were some pilot schemes predominantly around Gulf states. If anyone has ever travelled to the US, you might be familiar with the ESTA scheme where, in advance of travel, you have to fill in a very short visa waiver and say why you're coming to the US, what your intentions are and how long you plan on being here. So there are dozens and dozens of nationalities where previously they could just come to the UK with a passport only and they didn't need to do anything else apart from show up at the border. They are now going to be subject to a similar scheme to the ESTA helpfully called the ETA, which is not a common acronym for anything else at all! Congratulations to the Home Office on naming that. It's a very quick and easy visa scheme. It costs £10, it lasts for two years, and essentially it allows people to make short visits to the UK. That has been rolled out to 48 more countries as of 7 January, and that includes some countries where we have a huge amount of travel to the UK, like you mentioned, US, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Israel, I think Bolivia and Peru. It’s a very, very long list. So essentially, anyone who wants to come to the UK for short travel, normal business travel,  visitor travel, they're going to have to do one of these applications in advance and we're expecting to then see that rolled out to EU member states in early April, the Home Office advise that people apply generally at least a week before they're planning on traveling. It's a new scheme and we have yet to hear of any massive buildups at the border, but it's just something to be aware of, it’s an additional administrative step if you're planning on doing regular visits to the UK and as a non-visa national, you've previously not had to do anything apart from say hi, I'm here and here's my passport.”

Joe Glavina: “I’m thinking about the impact on employers. Are we talking about arrangements for visitors, essentially? So people coming to the UK on short-term assignments?”

Alex Wright: “So this is purely about visitors. Anyone who's doing a structured work assignment who's going to be traveling to the UK for work for a UK company is still going to need the appropriate visa for that. This is for people who are coming either to visit family or friends, undertake short term study or undertake permitted business visit activities. So that's things like attending training sessions, going to a trade fair, coming to a company meeting. So if you're a company, and you've got a number of branches throughout the UK and Europe and you are used to regularly sending your European staff to the UK to attend brief visits, which is absolutely fine, they're just going to need to make sure they've got one of these ETA waivers in place  so when they arrive in the UK they should not be able to just travel through the border as per normal, and they'll just want to make sure that they've got that set up for in the future. The only way in which I could see this being a particular problem is there are certain circumstances where an ETA is not applicable and that's normally going to be people with certain types of criminal offence. Now that's very unlikely to apply to the majority of people coming to the UK, but it might be that if people have got certain spent offences, certain minor convictions, they might find that they then have to go through the standard visit visa process which might take a little bit longer. So it's worth being aware of, if you're coming to the UK, what the exceptions are and why you might need to start going through the slightly longer visit visa reprocess but, for most people, no change apart from £10 and a short time application.”

On 20 January, the government updated its website to include the latest information on the ETA scheme. We’ve included a link to it in the transcript of this programme for you.

 - Link to government guidance on applying for an electronic travel authorisation (ETA)