How Long Is a UK ETA Valid, and What Resets the Clock?

A UK Electronic Travel Authorisation is valid for two years, or until your passport expires, whichever comes first. That's the headline answer, and for most travelers it's the whole story.

The interesting part is the second half of that sentence. The "or until your passport expires" condition catches a lot of people off guard, because it means your ETA's actual lifespan often isn't two years at all. And separately, there's a different kind of clock that runs every time you actually use your ETA: the 6-month limit per visit. Confusing the two leads to real problems.

This guide covers both clocks, what resets them, and how to plan your applications and trips around them.

The Two-Year Validity Clock

When the Home Office approves your ETA, it's valid for 24 months from the date of approval. During that window, you can travel to the UK as many times as you want. There's no limit on the number of entries.

A few things to know about this clock:

• It starts from the date of approval, not the date you applied or the date of your first trip. If you apply six months before your first UK trip, you've already used six months of your ETA's life before setting foot in the country.
• It's fixed. Nothing you do during those two years extends it. Traveling more or less doesn't change the expiration date.
• It runs in real time. There's no pause for periods when you're not traveling.

So if your ETA is approved on June 1, 2026, it expires on June 1, 2028, regardless of what happens in between.

The Passport Expiration Clock

Here's where it gets interesting. Your ETA is digitally linked to the specific passport you applied with. If that passport expires, your ETA expires with it, even if the two-year window hasn't ended.

This means the actual lifespan of your ETA is whichever of these two dates comes first:

• The two-year anniversary of your approval date
• The expiration date of your passport

If your passport expires in 18 months when you apply for your ETA, your ETA effectively lasts 18 months. You still pay the same £20 and you don't get a partial refund when your passport expires.

This catches a lot of travelers, particularly people who apply for an ETA shortly before they were planning to renew an aging passport anyway. The smart move is almost always to renew the passport first, then apply for the ETA against the new passport. You get the full two years that way.

What Resets the Two-Year Clock

Once your ETA is approved, almost nothing resets the clock. Specifically:

• Traveling to the UK doesn't reset it. Each trip uses your existing ETA without changing its expiration.
• Multiple trips don't reset it. You can take ten trips during your ETA's validity and the expiration date is the same as if you took one.
• Leaving and re-entering the UK doesn't reset it. The ETA is permission to travel; it doesn't refresh on each entry.
• Updating personal information doesn't reset it. If you change your address or job, your existing ETA stays valid until its original expiration.

The only thing that "resets" the two-year clock is applying for a new ETA, which you do by submitting a fresh application and paying the £20 fee again. There's no renewal process. Every new ETA is a new application.

What Invalidates Your ETA Before It Expires

Several things end your ETA early, even if the two-year window isn't up yet.

Getting a New Passport

This is the biggest one. Your ETA is electronically linked to the specific passport number you applied with. The moment you get a new passport, your old ETA is invalid. Doesn't matter why you got a new one:

• Your old passport expired
• Your old passport was lost or stolen
• You renewed early to add pages
• You got a replacement after damage
• You changed your name and got a new passport reflecting the new name

In every case, the new passport breaks the link. The Home Office's database has your ETA tied to the old passport number, and that's the only number it can match against when an airline checks before boarding.

If you get a new passport during your ETA's validity period, you need to apply for a new ETA against the new passport. You don't get any credit or refund for the time remaining on the original.

Citizenship Changes

If you become a British or Irish citizen during your ETA's validity, you no longer need an ETA. Your existing one effectively becomes irrelevant because British and Irish citizens aren't part of the ETA scheme.

The reverse can also happen: if you renounce a citizenship that was the basis of your ETA, you may need to look at your situation again, although this is rare in practice.

Getting a UK Visa

If you obtain a UK visa for a longer or different purpose (a Skilled Worker visa, a Student visa, a Family visa, etc.), the visa supersedes the ETA. You don't need both. You technically still hold the ETA until its expiration, but it's not doing anything for you while the visa is in force.

Revocation

In rare cases, the Home Office can revoke an ETA after it's been issued, typically because new information has come to light (a recent conviction, a new immigration concern, evidence of misrepresentation in the original application). If this happens, you receive notification, and the ETA is no longer valid.

This is uncommon. The vast majority of ETAs run their full two-year course without any intervention.

The 6-Month Visit Clock (Different From the 2-Year Clock)

This is a separate clock and confusing it with the validity period causes real trouble.

Your ETA is valid for two years, but each individual visit to the UK is limited to 6 months. That's the maximum length of any single stay, regardless of how much time is left on your ETA.

So:

• A two-year ETA does not let you stay in the UK for two years
• It does not let you stay for "as long as you want, as long as the ETA is valid"
• Each entry resets a new 6-month visit window, but the visits themselves are bounded by that window

In practice, most ETA holders don't get anywhere near the 6-month limit. A two-week vacation is a two-week vacation. The 6-month limit is a ceiling, not a target.

The Continuous-Visits Problem

Where the two clocks collide, and where Border Force pays close attention, is when people try to use back-to-back visits to effectively live in the UK.

The legal text says each visit can be up to 6 months. It doesn't explicitly say how much time you have to spend out of the UK between visits. That's deliberate, because the Home Office wants the rule to be assessed by intent rather than by a specific gap.

The general expectation is that an ETA holder is genuinely visiting the UK, not living there. That means:

• Most of your time is spent outside the UK
• You have a real life elsewhere (job, home, family, ties)
• You're returning home to that life between trips
• You're not using sequential visits to extend a single de facto stay

What gets people in trouble is a pattern that adds up to something different. Someone who spends 5 months in the UK, leaves for 2 weeks, comes back for another 5 months, leaves for 2 weeks, and so on, isn't visiting. They're living in the UK on a visitor permission, which the ETA doesn't allow.

Border Force can see your entry and exit history, and an officer who notices this pattern can refuse you entry on a future trip even with a valid ETA. The ETA is permission to travel to the UK; the visitor terms about not residing here are still enforced at the border.

If your real plan is to spend significant time in the UK, the right route is a visa that fits your actual purpose (work, study, family), not a chain of ETA visits.

Planning Around Both Clocks

A few practical implications when you're thinking through ETA timing:

• If your passport expires in less than two years, renew it first, then apply for the ETA. You'll get the full two-year value of the £20 fee.
• If you're planning your first UK trip months in advance, you can apply early, but remember that the validity window starts from the approval date, not the trip date. Applying eight months before a trip means your ETA only covers 16 months of subsequent travel.
• If you're a frequent UK traveler, plan to reapply on a roughly two-year cycle, and align it with your passport renewal cycle so you're not paying for a fresh ETA every year.
• If you have a passport that's close to but not yet at the 6-month buffer some countries require for entry, renew before traveling. UK entry doesn't have the same hard 6-month rule that some destinations do, but having a passport close to expiration creates downstream problems with your ETA anyway.
• If you're booking a longer trip, remember that the 6-month per-visit limit is firm. If you actually need to be in the UK for 8 months, you need a visa, not an ETA.

A Few Common Scenarios

• You apply on January 15, 2026, for a March trip. Your ETA was approved on January 16. Your ETA is valid until January 16, 2028.
• Your passport expires on October 1, 2027, and your ETA was approved on January 16, 2026. Your ETA is valid until October 1, 2027 (the earlier date), not January 16, 2028.
• You renew your passport on March 1, 2027, even though your old one was valid until October 2027. Your ETA is invalidated on March 1, 2027. You need a new one for any UK trip after that date.
• You take five trips to the UK during your ETA's validity. Your ETA still expires on its original date. Trips don't extend it.
• You enter the UK on May 1 for a 6-month visit, leave on October 30, and try to return on November 5. This is the kind of pattern that triggers questions at the border, and Border Force can refuse entry even with a valid ETA, because you'd be using visits to live in the UK rather than visit it.

The Short Version

A UK ETA lasts two years from the date of approval, or until your passport expires, whichever comes first. Each individual visit during that window is limited to 6 months. Nothing extends the two-year clock; getting a new passport ends it early; and using back-to-back visits to live in the UK rather than visit it can cause problems at the border even when your ETA is technically still valid.

For most travelers, the practical version is even simpler: apply against a passport you don't plan to renew soon, take however many trips you want over the next two years, and apply again when the time's up.