Latvia has been in the Visa Waiver Program since 2008. Latvian citizens with a citizen's e-passport and an approved ESTA may stay up to 90 days per visit, while holders of a non-citizen passport must apply for a visa.
90 days
Maximum stay per visit
2 years
ESTA validity
Multiple
Entries permitted
72 hours
Apply at least this far ahead
100% online
No embassy visit
Overview
Latvians have had reasons to cross the Atlantic for generations. The communities founded by post-war refugees in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis and Kalamazoo are still active, the Gaŗezers summer camp in Michigan draws families from Latvia as well as from the diaspora, and a new wave of travel has followed Latvian basketball and ice hockey players into the American leagues.
Since Latvia entered the Visa Waiver Program in 2008, its citizens have not needed a visa for short visits. They do need an ESTA, which is applied for online and granted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. As there are no nonstop flights from Riga, it is checked at the start of the journey, before the first leg to a European hub.
The Latvian application has two characteristic pitfalls. One is the difference between a citizen's passport and a non-citizen passport, which decides whether the waiver is available at all. The other is the Latvian language itself, with its long vowels, soft consonants and surnames that change with gender.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes. A Latvian citizen must hold an ESTA to travel visa-free to the United States by air or sea, and equally when entering overland from Canada or Mexico. Passengers in transit are not exempt, so a Latvian flying via New York to the Dominican Republic applies like anyone else.
Eligibility depends on citizenship, and in Latvia that distinction is a live one. The waiver covers passports issued to citizens of Latvia. The nepilsoņa pase, issued to the country's non-citizen residents, is not accepted, and anyone travelling on it needs a visitor visa from the embassy in Riga regardless of how short the stay will be.
Even citizens are excluded in certain cases. Those who have travelled to Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen or North Korea on or after 1 March 2011, or to Cuba on or after 12 January 2021, are generally outside the programme. So are Latvian citizens holding a further nationality of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, North Korea or Cuba.
Every member of a travelling party applies separately, down to the smallest child. The authorisation supports holidays, visits to relatives, business meetings, medical treatment and transit, but not a summer job, a paid internship or a course taken for academic credit.
Stay & validity
The standard ESTA is valid for two years and for repeated entries, with a maximum of 90 days each time. It is bound to one passport. When a Latvian passport expires or is replaced by the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs, the authorisation falls away and has to be requested again.
A change of surname has the same consequence, and in Latvia this affects more than newly married women. Because passports record the Latvian form of a name, a reissued document with a corrected spelling counts as a new passport for ESTA purposes.
Latvians visiting family often combine the Midwest with Toronto, where there is another long-standing community. Those Canadian days are counted inside the 90, as are days in Mexico or the adjacent Caribbean. There is no procedure for extending the visit once in the country.
Pricing
Live fees for Latvian passport holders, shown all-in — the US government charge and our service fee together, with nothing added later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as Latvia
Requirements
Everything Latvian passport holders need before starting an application. The first five items apply to every applicant; the rest are specific to your nationality.
A biometric e-passport from a Visa Waiver Program country, carrying the chip symbol on its cover
A valid email address, which is where the decision is sent and which you should keep accessible while travelling
A credit or debit card to pay the government ESTA charge and our service fee together
Your home address, phone number and an emergency contact
Employer details and, if you have them, the address of where you are staying in the United States
Simple process
Four steps, entirely online, with our team checking every field before anything reaches U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Enter your passport details exactly as printed, your contact and employment information, and answer the eligibility questions. Most applicants finish in about fifteen minutes.
Our team checks your passport number, name spelling, dates and declarations against CBP requirements before anything is submitted.
Your application goes to U.S. Customs and Border Protection with the government charge paid, and we track its status until a decision is issued.
There is nothing to stick in your passport. The authorisation is held electronically against your passport number, and the airline verifies it when you check in.
Replies to Latvian applications mostly come within hours. CBP's guidance is to apply at least 72 hours ahead of departure, because some applications are held as pending and cannot be chased.
Latvians frequently plan American trips around family occasions on the other side, such as graduations in May and June, song festival gatherings and weddings. Since those dates are known well ahead, there is every reason to apply as soon as the invitation arrives.
If you need a visa instead, the interview is at the embassy in Riga, on the left bank of the Daugava. Demand rises sharply before the summer, so non-citizen passport holders and others outside the waiver should begin several months before the planned journey.
On arrival
An approved ESTA gets you on the plane. This is what happens once you land, and how to make the arrival as quick as possible.
Visa Waiver travellers are seen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the first American airport they land at, even when connecting onward. The officer takes a photograph and, for most adults, fingerprints.
There is no paper form to fill in on the aircraft. Your arrival record, the I-94, is created digitally and shows the date by which you must leave. You can look it up online afterwards.
Expect to be asked where you are staying, for how long and what you do for a living. A return ticket and the address of your first night are usually all it takes.
Queues at the busiest gateways can run past an hour at peak arrival times. If you are connecting to a domestic flight, leave a generous margin, since you also reclaim and recheck your bags.
Getting there
Riga is the largest airport in the Baltic states and airBaltic's home, but it has no nonstop service to the United States. Latvians connect once, using airBaltic or a partner airline to reach a hub such as Helsinki, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Amsterdam or Warsaw. LOT's Chicago flights from Warsaw are especially popular because of the Latvian community there.
Best time to go
Summer is when most Latvians visit relatives in America, and the school holiday from June to the end of August gives plenty of room. The exception is Līgo and Jāņi on 23 and 24 June, which few people want to spend away from the Latvian countryside.
For a holiday as opposed to a family visit, late winter is the best fit. Florida is dry and warm in February and March, far from hurricane season, and the contrast with a Baltic winter is as great as it gets.
Autumn suits the cities. October in Chicago, New York and Boston is crisp and clear, and the school break at the end of the month is long enough for a week away. The long weekend around 18 November falls shortly before Thanksgiving, when American domestic flights are at their fullest.
The time difference is seven hours to the East Coast, eight to Chicago and ten to California. Morning departures from Riga usually connect to transatlantic flights that land in the afternoon, which gets you through immigration and to your hosts by dinner.
Avoid these
Refusals are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the problems that come up most often on applications from Latvia — we check for every one of them before submitting.
Latvia's non-citizen passport is a genuine travel document, which leads some holders to assume it works for America. It does not, and the only route is a visa.
When one person completes the forms for the family, Bērziņš can easily be typed for a wife whose passport says Bērziņa, or Kalniņa for a son who is Kalniņš. Each application must follow its own passport.
Latvian has eleven letters that the form will not take. The machine-readable zone gives the stripped version, and that is what belongs in the name fields, not the spelling from the line above.
Some Latvian passports carry a note of a name's original or historical spelling on a separate page. That entry is for information only; the ESTA must match the main photo page.
Travel to a restricted country
Anyone who has been in Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia or Yemen on or after 1 March 2011, or in Cuba on or after 12 January 2021, is generally not eligible for the Visa Waiver Program and needs a visa instead.
A previous visa refusal or overstay
An earlier refusal of a US visa, a denied entry or a past overstay must be declared. Each one commonly leads to an ESTA being refused and the traveller being directed to apply for a visa.
Passport details that do not match
A single wrong character in the passport number, or an expiry date typed in the wrong order, produces an authorisation the airline cannot find at check-in.
Conditions
These conditions are set under the Visa Waiver Program and do not vary by nationality. The 90-day limit and the passport-linking rule catch out a great many otherwise well-planned trips.
Your authorisation is held electronically against the passport number you enter. If you renew or replace that passport, change your name or change citizenship, the ESTA no longer applies and you need a new one.
Every person travelling under the Visa Waiver Program needs their own ESTA, including babies and children, each linked to that traveller's own e-passport.
An approved ESTA generally lasts two years from the date of authorisation, or until the passport it is linked to expires, whichever comes first.
Within its validity you can make repeated trips. Each stay can be up to 90 days, and time spent in Canada, Mexico or the nearby Caribbean islands during a trip counts towards those 90 days.
A Visa Waiver stay cannot be extended and cannot be converted into another immigration status from inside the United States. Anyone who needs longer must apply for a visa before travelling.
An ESTA lets you board a carrier bound for the United States. Admission is decided by a CBP officer at the port of entry, who can ask about your plans, your funds and your ties to home.
Consular services
Latvian citizens who qualify for an ESTA do not deal with the embassy in Riga at any stage. Its consular section is where non-citizen passport holders, and citizens whose plans exceed the waiver, apply for visas.
FAQs
The questions Latvian passport holders ask most often about travelling to the United States.
No. Latvian citizens can visit the United States without a visa for up to 90 days under the Visa Waiver Program, provided they have an approved ESTA. Latvia has been a member since 2008. People holding a Latvian non-citizen passport do need a visa.
No. The programme is open to citizens' passports only, and the non-citizen passport is not eligible. Its holders should apply for a visitor visa at the US embassy in Riga.
Use the version in the machine-readable zone at the bottom of your passport's photo page. The diacritical marks are removed there, and the form should carry the same letters.
Not at all, as long as each application matches the passport of the person it is for. Latvian masculine and feminine endings are simply different spellings to the US system, and families are not required to share one.
Not at present. Travellers from Riga change once, commonly in Helsinki, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Amsterdam or Warsaw. The whole journey to the East Coast takes roughly eleven to thirteen hours.
Normally two years from approval, or until the passport expires if earlier. It allows multiple trips in that time, each limited to 90 days.
No. Seasonal work, including summer work-and-travel programmes for students, requires the relevant visa. The waiver is strictly for visits that involve no employment.
Yes. Children of any age need their own authorisation, tied to their own Latvian citizen's passport, even for a family visit where they will stay in a relative's home.
Your nationality is already set to Latvia. Complete the form in about fifteen minutes, and our team will check every detail before it reaches CBP.
Other nationalities
Routes, passport rules and the practical details differ by country. Here are the guides for other Visa Waiver Program nationalities.
