Norway joined the Visa Waiver Program in 1991. With a Norwegian e-passport and an approved ESTA you can spend up to 90 days in the United States per visit, whether that means Florida in February or family in Minnesota.
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
There are said to be about as many people of Norwegian descent in the United States as there are Norwegians in Norway. They are concentrated in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas and around Seattle's Ballard district, and the family ties are kept up in both directions. Add the oil and gas link between Stavanger and Houston, and America is one of the most familiar long-haul destinations Norwegians have.
Norway has belonged to the Visa Waiver Program since 1991. Norwegian citizens therefore do not queue for a visa to take a holiday or attend a meeting in the States, but they must hold an ESTA, an electronic authorisation issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and verified by the airline before boarding at Gardermoen, Flesland or Sola.
Norwegians tend to apply late because the trip feels routine. That is usually fine, but not always, and the cost of a pending application the night before a fully paid Florida holiday is high. Below you will find what is particular to Norwegian applicants: the red passport and its validity, the letters æ, ø and å, and how the 90 days interact with cruises and cross-border trips.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes. A Norwegian citizen flying to the United States without a visa must have an ESTA in place first, and the same is true when arriving on a cruise ship or crossing by road from Canada or Mexico. It applies to transit as well, so a Norwegian changing planes in Miami on the way to a Caribbean island needs one even if they never leave the terminal.
Each traveller applies separately. Parents taking children to Disney World in the vinterferie submit one application per person, baby included, and each is matched to that person's own Norwegian passport. Nothing about a parent's approval extends to the rest of the family.
The waiver is closed to Norwegians who have spent time in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen or North Korea on or after 1 March 2011, or in Cuba on or after 12 January 2021. Norwegians who also hold Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Sudanese, North Korean or Cuban citizenship are excluded as well. Aid workers, journalists and Norwegians with Somali or Iraqi family ties meet this rule more often than they expect.
What you intend to do also decides the matter. Visiting relatives in Minneapolis, a ski week in Colorado or contract talks in Houston all fit. An offshore engineer rotating onto a job for an American employer does not, and neither does an exchange year at a US high school or college, both of which call for a visa obtained beforehand.
Stay & validity
An ESTA normally lasts two years and allows repeated visits of up to 90 days each. Adult Norwegian passports are issued for ten years, so in most cases the full two years are available. The exception is the last stretch of the passport's life: with fourteen months remaining, the authorisation will end with the passport and not a day later.
Children are a different story. Norwegian passports for the under-sixteens run for much shorter periods than adult ones, and for small children the term is very brief. A family that applies for everyone at once can easily find the parents covered for two years and the youngest child for a fraction of that, so each child's expiry date deserves its own look.
Days are counted continuously from admission. A Norwegian who lands in New York, sails on a cruise calling at the Bahamas and Mexico and returns to Florida has not restarted anything. Nor does a week across the border in British Columbia during a Pacific Northwest trip give a new 90 days on re-entry.
Pricing
Live fees for Norwegian passport holders, shown all-in — the US government charge and our service fee together, with nothing added later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as Norway
Requirements
Everything Norwegian 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.
Norwegian applicants generally hear back within hours and frequently within minutes. CBP's own advice is to apply at least 72 hours ahead of the flight, and that margin exists for the minority of applications that sit as pending while they are looked at more closely.
A good rule in Norway is to apply when you book. Winter trips to Florida and summer road trips are typically paid for many months in advance, and since the authorisation is valid for multiple journeys there is no advantage in waiting until the week of departure.
Where the waiver is not open to you, the path is a B-1/B-2 visa with an interview at the embassy in Oslo. Norwegians in the far north should factor in the journey to the capital as well, and check eligibility before buying tickets from Tromsø or Bodø.
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
Norway's nonstop links to the United States are few and run from Oslo to New York, so most journeys involve a connection. Travellers from Bergen, Stavanger and Trondheim usually change in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London or Frankfurt, while Icelandair via Keflavik is a favourite from the west coast because it shortens the total distance. Whatever the routing, immigration is done at the first American airport.
Best time to go
Norwegians are among the keenest winter visitors to Florida, and the timing works. The vinterferie in February and the Easter week, which Norway takes more seriously than almost anywhere, both fall in Florida's dry season, with warm days and no hurricane risk.
The school summer, from around midsummer to mid-August, lines up with American school holidays, so the big national parks and the theme parks are at full stretch. Late August and September are quieter and still warm across most of the West, and fall inside the period when many Norwegian employers are flexible about a late holiday.
Høstferie in early October suits New England, where the autumn colour is at its best, and the cities of the East Coast, which are mild and uncrowded. It is still hurricane season on the Gulf and in Florida at that point, so a beach trip in the autumn break carries more weather risk than one in February.
The East Coast is six hours behind Norway and the Pacific coast nine. Flights from Oslo leave around midday and land in the early afternoon local time, which makes the first day long.
Avoid these
Refusals are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the problems that come up most often on applications from Norway — we check for every one of them before submitting.
Norwegian adult passports run for a decade, but those issued to children expire much sooner. Families regularly discover at check-in that a child's passport, and with it the child's authorisation, lapsed after the last trip. Look at every booklet before applying.
The printed name on the photo page shows the Norwegian letters, but the form takes only the plain alphabet. The version to copy is in the machine-readable zone underneath, so that Bjørn Ødegård is entered as the chip has it and not as it is written at home.
Norway sends many people abroad with aid organisations, the armed forces and the energy industry. Time in Iraq, Libya, Sudan or Yemen since March 2011 has to be declared, and outside narrow official exceptions it moves the traveller from the waiver to a visa.
A popular Norwegian itinerary combines a week in Florida with a cruise. Leaving on the ship and coming back does not start a new 90 days, and an authorisation that has expired mid-trip will stop you reboarding. Check both the dates and the day count.
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
Norway is served by the United States embassy at Huseby in Oslo. It is not involved in ESTA applications at all; Norwegians contact it for visa interviews when the waiver does not cover their plans or an authorisation has been refused.
FAQs
The questions Norwegian passport holders ask most often about travelling to the United States.
No. Norwegian citizens can visit the United States for up to 90 days without a visa under the Visa Waiver Program, provided they hold an approved ESTA. A visa is needed only for purposes outside the waiver, such as employment, study for credit or stays longer than three months.
No. The ID card works within the EEA but not for the United States. You need a Norwegian e-passport, and the ESTA is attached to that passport's number.
Use the spelling in the machine-readable zone of your passport, the two lines printed in capital letters below your photograph. Norwegian letters are converted there into ordinary ones, and that converted form is what the airline's system compares against.
Up to 90 days on each visit. Time in Canada, Mexico and the nearby Caribbean islands during the same journey is included in that total, and the stay cannot be extended once you are there.
Only if the whole stay is 90 days or less. A longer winter requires a B-2 visitor visa from the embassy in Oslo, applied for before you travel. Leaving briefly for the Bahamas does not create a second 90-day period.
Only a handful, from Oslo to New York, and they are seasonal. Most Norwegians connect in Copenhagen, Reykjavik, Amsterdam, London or Frankfurt.
Yes. Infants need their own authorisation linked to their own passport. Because passports for young Norwegian children are short-lived, the baby's ESTA will often end long before the parents' do.
Not if you will be working for an American employer; that is employment and needs a work visa. Short business visits for meetings or training discussions on behalf of your Norwegian company are a different matter and fall within the waiver.
Your nationality is already set to Norway. 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.
