Are you ready to travel?

Most travel problems are not caused by dramatic events. They are caused by paperwork that was almost right: a passport that is still in date but no longer has enough remaining validity, a layover that quietly needs a transit visa, a stay that runs a few days past what the entry stamp allows, or an insurance policy that excludes the one activity the trip was booked for. These are all things you can check before you pay for anything, and that is what this page is for.

Start with the passport. Airlines check two separate things at the desk: whether the passport is expired, and whether it still satisfies the destination's remaining-validity rule on the day you arrive. Many countries ask for six months of validity beyond the date of entry; much of Europe asks for three months beyond your intended departure from the Schengen area; others only require the passport to cover the stay itself. Because the rule is measured from your travel date rather than from today, a passport can be perfectly usable this month and unusable for the same trip next month. The passport checker on this page shows you the last date the document would satisfy the rule commonly applied by your destination, so you can see whether a renewal needs to happen before you book.

Next comes permission to enter. Whether you need a visa or a travel authorisation depends on four things together: the passport you hold, where you are going, why you are going, and how long you intend to stay. Change any one of them and the answer can change. Where a long-established official programme clearly applies — the US ESTA, the Canadian eTA, a Schengen short-stay exemption, a government e-visa portal — the visa checker names it and links to the official site so you apply on the real government page rather than through a reseller. Where the combination is unclear, the tool says so and sends you to the immigration authority instead of guessing, because a confident wrong answer at a boarding gate is far more expensive than an honest "verify this".

Transit is the step travellers skip most often. A layover is not automatically a document-free zone: some countries require a transit visa even for passengers who never intend to leave the terminal, and the United States has no international transit area at all, so everyone passing through clears immigration and customs. Whether you must collect and re-check baggage, whether you change terminals, and how long the layover lasts all change what you need. Confirm transit rules with both the transit country's authority and the airline that issued your ticket, since the airline is the party that can refuse to board you.

The permitted-stay check exists because entry and length of stay are separate decisions. Being allowed in does not mean being allowed to stay as long as you planned; the officer at the border sets your admission period and may grant less than the published maximum. In regions that count days across a rolling period — the Schengen area is the best-known example — previous trips can reduce what is left for this one. Overstaying, even briefly and unintentionally, can lead to fines, removal and future entry bans, so it is worth checking the arithmetic before departure rather than at the border.

Health requirements are route-specific rather than country-specific. A vaccination certificate may be required only if you arrived from, or transited through, a particular region, and the same destination may ask nothing of a traveller coming from elsewhere. For that reason the health checker points to official health authorities and national travel-health services instead of publishing a single list, and it tells you when it cannot determine a requirement for your specific route.

The practical tools — documents, insurance, packing, budget, currency, time zones, weather and emergency contacts — cover the part of a trip that has no official authority to consult. They exist to make sure the obvious things are in place: a return or onward ticket if one is expected, accommodation details, proof of funds, a policy that actually covers medical repatriation, enough cash for the first day, a realistic daily budget, and the local emergency number written down somewhere that does not need a data connection. Exchange rates and forecasts are fetched live and timestamped so you can see how fresh they are, and where no reliable forecast exists — beyond roughly two weeks, for example — the tool says so rather than inventing numbers.

Nothing on this page is a substitute for the official source. Travel rules change frequently and sometimes with very little notice, and the only authoritative answers come from the destination's immigration authority, its embassy or consulate in your country, your national foreign ministry's travel advice, and your airline. Use the checks here to find out what to ask about, then verify each answer officially close to your departure date. Every result on this page links to an official source where one exists.