Frequent travelers know the thrill of a fresh, new passport stamp. However, the simple pleasure may soon be a thing of the past as countries begin phasing them out.
“The world is moving away from those physical passport stamps and toward digital systems, all for the sake of increased security, more efficient border crossings and a more standardized form of data collection,” Gabe Saglie, a senior editor at Travelzoo, told HuffPost.
Beginning October 12, 29 European countries will begin gradually replacing passport stamps with a new Entry/Exit System. Full implementation is expected by April 10, 2026.
“I think the biggest thing to point out is that passport stamps really came into their own in the era of the 1950s and ’60s when travel really was made more accessible for people — air travel, specifically,” Katy Nastro, a spokesperson and travel expert at Going, told HuffPost. “And then you come into the ’80s and ’90s and we saw specific precautions of certain ink to be used that couldn’t be replicated and specific distinctive symbols and marks and machine-readable text in the early 2000s.”
Other countries have already begun phasing out stamps, including Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Argentina.
These Are the European Countries:
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
The U.S. Is Moving Away From Passport Stamps
“You see places around the world adopting these e-gates, which will just automatically use your biometrics to then scan against your passport,” Nastro explained.
TSA recently announced its partnership with CLEAR across select airports nationwide.
“The eGates allow TSA to automatically compare traveler biometrics with their identity document and boarding pass without the need for a human operator, enhancing efficiency and security,” the agency explained.
TSA began using these eGates at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson with plans to expand to DC’s Ronald Reagan National Airport and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
