The number to fix in your head is twenty pounds, per person, before you have booked a train or a bed. If you hold an EU, Swiss, Norwegian, Icelandic or Liechtenstein passport, this one is aimed at you: you have needed a UK Electronic Travel Authorisation since April 2, 2025, and since April 8, 2026 it costs twenty pounds, up from sixteen, and up from the ten pounds it cost at launch in 2023, when only Qatari nationals needed it. Non-Europeans were folded in earlier and their dates differ: Gulf travelers across 2023 and 2024, then Americans, Canadians and Australians from January 8, 2025. What changed for everyone this year is enforcement. The transitional tolerance period ended on February 25, 2026, and the Home Office is blunt about the consequence: without an ETA you will not be allowed to board, and that means the Eurostar gate at Brussels-Midi as much as the plane.
So this is not a queue you clear on arrival at St Pancras. It is a permission you carry before you leave, and the carrier checks it. I have watched enough people miss a train over a document they assumed they could sort later to take that seriously.
The good news is that the thing you are buying is not bad value if you travel more than once. An ETA covers multiple journeys, stays of up to six months at a time, and lasts two years or until your passport expires, whichever comes first. It is tied to that specific passport, so renew the passport and the ETA dies with it. It is not a visa and it does not guarantee entry; it authorizes you to travel, and the officer at the border still decides.
The fact that catches families out is that there is no family. Every traveler needs their own ETA, babies and children included, at twenty pounds each, with no group application. A family of four pays eighty pounds. Children aged nine and under skip the live face scan though a photo is still required, and anyone under eighteen needs a parent or guardian's contact details on the form, but nobody rides free on a parent's authorization.
Who is actually exempt: British and Irish citizens, including dual nationals, need nothing. Neither do people with existing UK immigration status, an eVisa or settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme. Legal residents of Ireland who are non-visa nationals can travel within the Common Travel Area without an ETA if they can show proof of residence. And passengers transiting airside at Heathrow or Manchester, without passing through UK border control, do not need one for now.
Apply through the official UK ETA app or at gov.uk/eta, and nowhere else. Most applications get an automatic decision in minutes, but the guidance says allow at least three working days, and I would give it more if you can. The one rule that saves both money and grief: ignore every site that offers to do this for you. They add a fee for filling in a form you can fill in yourself. The government has issued 24.8 million of these since 2023, so the process works.
Treat this as the new normal, because it is. The EU's own ETIAS, also twenty euros, is expected to start operating in the last quarter of this year and become mandatory in 2027 after a grace period; the US ESTA now runs to $40. Same model everywhere: a small fee, tied to your passport, cleared before you go. Book the permit before the ticket. It is the cheapest part of the trip and the one that stops you at the gate.
