Lithuanian passport holders have needed a UK ETA since April 2025. Two years of validity, multiple entries, up to six months in Britain per visit — applied for online in minutes.
6 months
Maximum stay per visit
2 years
ETA validity
Multiple
Entries permitted
3 working days
Typical decision time
100% online
No embassy visit
Overview
Lithuania sends more of its people to Britain, proportionally, than almost any other country in the European Union. Substantial Lithuanian communities took root in London, Peterborough, Boston and across eastern England after accession in 2004, and the traffic between Vilnius, Kaunas and the UK has been heavy ever since. For many Lithuanian families the two countries are not really separate places — work is in one, home is in the other, and people move between them constantly.
Since April 2025 that journey has required an Electronic Travel Authorisation. Lithuania remains firmly a non-visa country and nothing about what Lithuanian citizens may do in Britain has changed — the ETA is a digital pre-travel permission applied for online and attached to the passport number. What is new is completing it before departure.
The first question in this market is not how to apply but whether you need to. A very large proportion of Lithuanians connected to Britain hold settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, and none of them needs an ETA at all. Before anyone in a Lithuanian family pays for one, establish who already holds a status that makes it unnecessary.
At a glance
Eligibility
You do not need a visa, but you do need an ETA. Lithuania is a non-visa national country for UK purposes, so Lithuanian citizens travel to Britain as visitors for tourism, family visits, business, conferences or short courses without any consular application. The ETA precedes that permission and does not reduce it — the six months Lithuanian visitors have always been allowed is unchanged.
The exemptions matter more here than in most markets. Lithuanian citizens holding settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, indefinite leave to remain, or a UK visa do not need an ETA — their existing status already carries permission to travel. Given the scale of Lithuanian settlement in Britain, this covers a very large share of travellers, and unnecessary applications are among the most common in the whole scheme.
Every traveller who does need one needs their own, at any age. Children and infants need an ETA linked to their own passport and cannot be added to a parent's application. The classic trip — grandparents flying from Vilnius or Kaunas to see grandchildren in England — needs an individual authorisation for each grandparent.
The Lithuanian asmens tapatybės kortelė no longer works for travel to Britain. It stopped being accepted in October 2021 for most travellers, so a passport is required and the ETA attaches to its number. Lithuanian citizens with EU Settlement Scheme status are the exception and may still use an identity card.
Stay & validity
An approved ETA is valid for two years from the date it is granted, or until your Lithuanian passport expires, whichever comes first. Within that window there is no limit on entries, and each visit can last up to six months. For families split between the two countries, one application covering two years of visits removes a recurring step entirely.
The passport-expiry rule is the one to check first. The ETA is bound to the passport number you enter and ends when that document does. Lithuanian passports are issued for ten years for adults and five for children, so families applying together may find the children's authorisations expiring well before the parents'. Older relatives frequently hold passports closer to expiry than expected — check the page before applying, because a renewal voids the ETA with no transfer and no refund.
Britain does not require six months of onward passport validity, only that the passport covers your stay. Lithuanian travellers are used to the Schengen rule for third-country nationals and sometimes assume symmetry, but for a trip to Britain only the British requirement applies.
Six months per visit is the maximum for a single entry rather than an annual allowance, and this is a rule with real consequences in Lithuania. An ETA confers no right to work whatsoever. Lithuanians who worked in Britain under free movement and did not acquire EU Settlement Scheme status cannot simply return and work — that now requires an appropriate work visa, and repeated six-month visits are not a substitute for one.
Pricing
Live fees for Lithuanian passport holders, shown all-in — the Home Office charge and our service fee together, with nothing added later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as Lithuania
Requirements
Everything Lithuanian passport holders need before starting an application. The first five items apply to every applicant; the rest are specific to your nationality.
Passport bio-data page — a clear colour scan or photo showing your photograph, full name, date of birth, passport number and expiry date
Recent digital photograph — full face visible against a plain background, taken within the last six months, with no headwear other than for religious or medical reasons
A valid email address, which is where the approval is sent and which you should keep accessible while travelling
A credit or debit card to pay the Home Office ETA fee and our service fee together
Your travel and accommodation details — Border Force can ask about the purpose of your visit and where you are staying
Simple process
Four steps, entirely online, with our team checking every field before anything reaches the Home Office.
Enter your passport details exactly as printed, answer the suitability questions and upload your photograph. Most applicants finish in under ten minutes.
Our team checks your photo, passport number, name spelling and declarations against Home Office requirements before anything is submitted.
Your application goes to UK Visas and Immigration with the government fee paid, and we track its status until a decision is issued.
There is no sticker, label or document to print. The authorisation is held digitally against your passport number, and we explain exactly what to show at check-in.
Applications from Lithuania are decided automatically in the great majority of cases, and most applicants receive approval within minutes. The Home Office asks travellers to allow up to three working days, and a small proportion are referred for manual review, usually where a photograph fails the automated check.
Apply at least a week before travelling. The Lithuania–UK routes are dense and inexpensive, so trips are frequently booked at short notice and last-minute applications are common. A photograph that fails the automated check turns an instant approval into a wait of up to three working days.
Family visits deserve particular attention. Where an older relative in Lithuania is travelling to Britain, the practical work — locating the passport, confirming it is still valid, producing a compliant photograph — usually falls to family members in the UK doing it remotely. Start that weeks rather than days ahead, especially around Christmas and Easter when flights are full and rebooking is expensive.
On arrival
An approved ETA gets you on the plane. This is what happens once you land — and your nationality is one of those that can use the automated gates.
Your nationality is eligible to use the automated gates at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Edinburgh and most other UK ports, alongside British and Irish citizens. The gate reads your biometric passport chip and checks your ETA against it electronically.
Children aged 10 or 11 can use the gates when accompanied by an adult using them at the same time. Younger children must be seen at a staffed desk, so families with under-tens should join the officer queue together.
The gates do not stamp passports. Your arrival is recorded digitally, and your six-month permission runs from that date. Keep your boarding pass and booking confirmations if you need to evidence your arrival date later.
The gates refer a proportion of passengers to Border Force at random or where the chip does not read cleanly. This is routine, is not a sign of a problem with your ETA, and usually adds only a few minutes.
Getting there
Lithuania has an unusually wide British network for its size, built on two decades of migration. Vilnius and Kaunas both have extensive direct services, and Palanga adds options for the coast. The route map deliberately serves the British regional airports nearest the areas where Lithuanians have settled in numbers.
Best time to go
Lithuanians find the British winter conspicuously mild. A December in London has around eight hours of daylight against Vilnius's seven, and temperatures rarely drop below freezing where Vilnius is routinely well below. November through February in Britain is therefore comfortable and inexpensive for Lithuanian visitors.
May, June and September are the strongest months for weather and value together. All three sit below the July and August peak in British prices, and September benefits from the end of the British school holidays while the weather in the south often holds into October.
The peak periods for Lithuanian travel to Britain are Christmas, Easter and midsummer, when families reunite in both directions. All three are heavily booked and expensive on these routes, and all three are when a missing ETA is hardest to recover from. Since the authorisation lasts two years, there is no reason to leave it until the month of travel.
One practical note. Lithuania is two hours ahead of Britain year-round, with both changing clocks on the same dates. Many Vilnius and Kaunas services to Britain fly at early or late hours to keep fares low, which leaves little margin if anything needs resolving at check-in.
Avoid these
Refusals are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the problems that come up most often on applications from Lithuania — we check for every one of them before submitting.
This is the most common and most costly error in the Lithuanian market. A very large proportion of Lithuanians connected to Britain hold settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, which already carries permission to travel. An ETA is neither required nor useful. Check before anyone in the family pays for one.
Free movement ended with Brexit. Lithuanians who worked in Britain previously and do not hold EU Settlement Scheme status cannot return and work on an ETA — it is a visitor permission only. Arriving as a visitor intending to take a job is grounds for refusal at the border, and repeated visits are not a substitute for a work visa.
The Lithuanian identity card has not been accepted for travel to Britain since October 2021. You need a passport, and the ETA is linked to that passport number. The exception is for Lithuanian citizens with EU Settlement Scheme status, who may still use an identity card and need no ETA at all.
Lithuanian surnames change form according to sex and, traditionally, marital status — the same family name may appear as Kazlauskas, Kazlauskienė or Kazlauskaitė. The ETA must reproduce exactly what is printed in the machine-readable zone of the passport, not a form used informally or an anglicised version used in Britain.
The ETA must match the machine-readable zone, where ą, č, ę, ė, į, š, ų, ū and ž are stripped to plain Latin letters. Entering the accented characters, or guessing at a substitution, creates a mismatch that the airline check can flag at the gate.
The classic Lithuanian trip is a parent or grandparent flying to Britain with arrangements made remotely by family in the UK. Passports are often close to expiry and photographs harder to get right at a distance. Start weeks ahead, particularly around Christmas and Easter when the flights are full.
Passport number mistyped
By far the most common problem. The authorisation attaches to the number you enter, so a single wrong character produces an ETA that does not exist as far as the airline's check is concerned.
An undeclared conviction or refusal
The Home Office asks about criminal convictions and previous immigration refusals or removals. History found later is treated far more seriously than the original matter would have been if declared.
A photograph that fails the check
Shadows across the face, glasses, a patterned background or a cropped chin all cause the automated check to reject an image, which turns a routine approval into a manual review.
Conditions
These conditions are set by the UK Home Office and do not vary by nationality. The passport-linking rule in particular catches out a great many otherwise well-planned trips.
Your authorisation is held digitally against the passport number you enter. There is nothing placed in your passport and nothing to print for the border. If you renew or replace that passport, the ETA does not transfer — you must apply for a new one on the new document.
Every person travelling needs their own ETA, including babies and children. A child cannot be added to a parent's application, and each traveller needs their own valid passport to apply against.
An approved ETA lasts two years from the date it is granted, or until the expiry date of the passport it is linked to, whichever comes first. This is the single most misunderstood rule in the scheme — a passport with eight months left produces an ETA with eight months left.
Within its validity you can travel to the UK as many times as you like. Each individual visit can be up to six months. There is no formal annual cap, but repeated long stays that add up to the majority of the year will attract questions at the border.
One ETA covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and it is also accepted for travel to Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. You do not need a separate authorisation for the Crown Dependencies.
An ETA lets you board your flight, train or ship. The decision to admit you is made by Border Force on arrival, who can ask about your funds, your accommodation, your onward plans and the purpose of your visit.
Consular services
The United Kingdom maintains an embassy in Vilnius, but it plays no part in issuing an ETA. The application is completed online and decided digitally — there is no interview, no appointment and no passport submission. The embassy handles consular assistance, visa routes where an ETA is not appropriate, and support for applicants whose circumstances require a human decision.
FAQs
The questions Lithuanian passport holders ask most often about travelling to the United Kingdom.
No. Lithuanian citizens do not need a visa for tourism, business visits, short study or transit in the United Kingdom. Since April 2025 they do need an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA), a digital permission linked to the passport rather than a visa. It is applied for online in about ten minutes and usually approved the same day.
No. Lithuanian citizens with settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, indefinite leave to remain, or a valid UK visa do not need an ETA — the existing status already carries permission to travel. Given how many Lithuanians hold EUSS status, this is the first question to answer before anyone pays for an application.
No. Free movement ended with Brexit, and the ETA is a visitor permission that confers no right to work in the UK labour market. Lithuanians who worked in Britain previously and do not hold EU Settlement Scheme status need an appropriate work visa. Arriving as a visitor intending to find a job is grounds for refusal at the border.
Exactly as it appears in the machine-readable zone at the bottom of your passport photo page, with the diacritics stripped to plain Latin letters. Lithuanian surnames change form by sex and marital status, so use the form printed on the document rather than one used informally or an anglicised version you may use in Britain.
In most cases no. The Lithuanian identity card has not been accepted for travel to Britain since October 2021, and you need a passport. The exception is for Lithuanian citizens with EU Settlement Scheme status, who may continue to use an identity card — and who do not need an ETA at all.
Each of them needs their own ETA, linked to their own passport — they cannot share one or be added to yours. Check their passport expiry dates carefully, as older Lithuanian passports are often closer to expiry than expected, and the ETA ends when the passport does. Start weeks ahead if they are travelling at Christmas or Easter.
Up to six months per visit. The ETA is valid for two years, or until your Lithuanian passport expires if that is sooner, and permits unlimited entries within that period. Six months is a per-visit maximum rather than an annual allowance — repeated long stays will lead Border Force to ask whether you are living in Britain.
Yes. Lithuanian citizens, like all EU nationals, are eligible for the automated ePassport gates at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Edinburgh and most other UK ports, provided the passport is biometric and the traveller is aged 10 or over. Children aged 10 and 11 must be accompanied by an adult using the gates at the same time.
Only for courses lasting up to six months, such as a summer school or a short language programme. An academic year, a full degree or an exchange running beyond six months requires a Student visa applied for from Lithuania before travel. You cannot switch from within the UK after arriving on an ETA.
Yes. A single ETA covers the entire United Kingdom and is also accepted for Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. There are no internal immigration checks between the four nations, so a trip combining London, Peterborough and Edinburgh needs only one authorisation.
Your nationality is already set to Lithuania. Complete the form in under ten minutes, and our team will check every detail before it reaches the Home Office.
Other nationalities
Requirements, routes and border formalities differ by passport. Here are the guides for other eligible nationalities.
