Visa requirements by country — US passport 2026

Visa vs passport — not the same thing

A visa is temporary permission to enter a country — usually for tourism, from a few days to a few months. A passport is the document you carry, and it's also your route to residence and citizenship. We keep the two apart: this section is only about temporary entry. If you're thinking about living somewhere else, that's the passports section.

Within visas there's a further split: tourist, business, student, work and working-holiday visas. Most of you will only ever need the first, and that's the one we detail on each country's page.

Where the rules come from

The data here is built on the open passport-index dataset, which tracks every country's entry policy for every passport. We sync it periodically and cross-check it. Even so, the official rule is always set by the destination's immigration authority and can change without notice. Verify with the mission before you book.

e-Visa, ESTA and ETA are different

An e-Visa is a full visa, just applied for online instead of at an embassy. ESTA (US) and ETA (Canada, UK, Australia and others) are lighter travel authorisations for travellers who are already visa-exempt — a short form, a small fee, approval usually within minutes to 72 hours. In both cases: use only the official government site. Middleman sites charge tens of dollars extra for the same thing.