Lithuania joined the Visa Waiver Program in 2008. A Lithuanian e-passport and an approved ESTA allow visits of up to 90 days, whether you are seeing family in Chicago, touring the national parks or attending meetings.
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
Chicago is sometimes called the second Lithuanian city, and with reason. Lithuanians have been settling there since the nineteenth century, and the suburbs of Lemont and the old neighbourhood of Marquette Park still have Lithuanian schools, churches and cultural centres. Almost everyone in Lithuania seems to have a relative somewhere in Illinois, and that connection shapes the country's travel to the United States more than anything else.
Until 2008 those family visits meant a visa interview. Lithuania's admission to the Visa Waiver Program that year replaced it, for most people, with an ESTA, an online authorisation issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The airline confirms it before you leave Vilnius or Kaunas, hours before you see an American official.
Lithuanian applicants should be alert to a few things in particular: women's surnames that differ from those of their fathers and husbands, an alphabet with nine letters the form cannot take, and the temptation to treat a long stay with relatives as an opportunity to earn some money. The last of these is the one that causes real trouble at the border.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes. Lithuanian citizens travelling to the United States without a visa need an ESTA, and that holds for arrivals by air, by sea and across the land borders with Canada and Mexico. Changing planes at an American airport counts as entering, so a transit passenger bound for another country needs one as well.
The authorisation is issued to an individual and attached to one passport. A couple travelling with two children make four applications, each with the name and number from the relevant passport. Lithuanian parents should expect the children's surnames, and often the mother's, to differ in form from the father's.
The programme is not open to Lithuanians who have been in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen or North Korea since 1 March 2011, or in Cuba since 12 January 2021. Nor is it open to those who hold, alongside Lithuanian citizenship, the nationality of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, North Korea or Cuba. In either case the embassy in Vilnius handles a visa application instead.
An ESTA is for visiting. Staying with an aunt in Lemont for two months is fine; helping out for pay in her business, minding children for a wage or taking building work is employment and is not permitted. Previous visa refusals and overstays, which were not rare before 2008, must also be declared and often lead to refusal.
Stay & validity
An ESTA normally remains valid for two years and covers any number of visits within that time, each of no more than 90 days. It ends early if the Lithuanian passport expires first. After a new passport is issued by the Migration Department, a new authorisation is required, even if the old one had time left.
Marriage commonly brings a change of surname in Lithuania, and with it a new passport. The earlier ESTA cannot be carried across to the married name. Anyone planning a honeymoon in the United States should either travel on the existing passport and authorisation or allow time to obtain both afresh.
Grandparents who fly over to spend a long summer with family need to count carefully. The 90 days include any time in Canada, Mexico or the neighbouring Caribbean islands, and they cannot be extended from inside the United States. Arriving on 1 June and leaving in mid-September is too long.
Pricing
Live fees for Lithuanian passport holders, shown all-in — the US government 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.
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.
Lithuanian applications are generally decided within a day. The official advice from CBP is to apply no later than 72 hours before travelling, which leaves room for the occasional application that is set to pending.
Since most Lithuanian trips to America are family visits arranged long in advance, there is rarely a reason to cut it fine. Apply when the flights are booked, and check at the same time that every family member's passport will still be valid on the return date.
Those refused, or ineligible because of an old overstay or refusal, apply for a visitor visa and attend an interview at the embassy in Vilnius. Bring evidence of your ties to Lithuania, such as employment and property, since the officer will want to see that you intend to come back.
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
There are no nonstop flights from Lithuania to the United States. From Vilnius the usual connections are through Warsaw with LOT, Frankfurt with Lufthansa, Copenhagen with SAS, Helsinki with Finnair or Amsterdam with KLM. Warsaw is the favourite for Chicago, with a short first leg and a single long flight to O'Hare. Travellers from Kaunas and Klaipėda mostly start from Vilnius.
Best time to go
Family visits cluster in summer, when Lithuanian schools are closed from mid-June to the end of August. Chicago is hot and humid in July, the lakefront is at its best, and Lithuanian festivals and camps in the Midwest are in full swing. Flights for those months sell early.
Many Lithuanians time a visit around the Christmas period, to spend Kūčios with relatives abroad. Chicago in December is bitterly cold and transatlantic fares are high, so those who can travel in early December and return after the New Year tend to pay less.
For sightseeing, September and October are ideal. The national parks of Utah and Arizona have cooled down, New York is at its most pleasant, and the crowds of the American school summer have gone home. Basketball followers may prefer to wait for the NBA season, which begins in late October.
Vilnius is seven hours ahead of New York and eight ahead of Chicago. An early flight to Warsaw or Frankfurt connects to a midday transatlantic departure and lands in the afternoon, which is late evening by Lithuanian time, so expect the first evening with relatives to be a short one.
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.
CBP officers in Chicago know the pattern well. A visitor who mentions helping in a relative's firm, or who carries tools or a CV, can be refused entry and lose the waiver for future trips. Keep the purpose strictly a visit.
Before Lithuania joined the programme, visa refusals were common and some visitors stayed too long. The records still exist. Answering no to that question when the true answer is yes is far worse than declaring it and applying for a visa.
Kazlauskas, Kazlauskienė and Kazlauskaitė are one family but three spellings. The person completing the forms must enter each traveller's surname exactly as that traveller's passport has it.
The form recognises only the basic Latin alphabet. Lithuanian letters should be entered as the passport's machine-readable zone shows them, which keeps the application consistent with the chip.
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
Lithuanians applying for an ESTA have no dealings with the embassy in Vilnius. It processes visas for those who are not eligible for the waiver or whose purpose, such as work or study, lies beyond it.
FAQs
The questions Lithuanian passport holders ask most often about travelling to the United States.
No. Lithuanian citizens have been able to visit the United States without a visa since 2008, for up to 90 days at a time, as long as they hold an approved ESTA. A visa remains necessary for work, study for credit and longer stays.
You must declare the refusal, and it commonly results in the ESTA being refused as well. The usual route is then a B-1/B-2 visitor visa through the embassy in Vilnius, where you can explain how your circumstances have changed.
Up to 90 days on each visit. The period cannot be extended, and repeated long stays close together may prompt questions from the officer about whether you are really just visiting.
Exactly as your own passport's machine-readable zone prints it, with plain letters in place of ė. Do not change the ending to match your husband's or father's surname.
No. Every itinerary includes a connection, usually in Warsaw, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Helsinki or Amsterdam. Chicago via Warsaw is the routing most Lithuanian travellers choose.
No. The identity card is not a valid document for travel to the United States. The waiver requires an e-passport, and the ESTA is recorded against its number.
Spending time with family, including helping informally with grandchildren, is a normal part of a visit. Being paid as a nanny or carer is employment and is not allowed. Be clear about the difference if asked on arrival.
Yes. A new surname means a new passport, and an ESTA does not transfer between passports or names. Apply again once the new Lithuanian passport has been issued.
Your nationality is already set to Lithuania. 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.
