Slovenia has belonged to the Visa Waiver Program since 1997. With a biometric potni list and an approved ESTA you can spend up to 90 days in the United States, wherever your long-haul flight begins: Ljubljana, Venice, Vienna or Munich.
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
Slovenia has been in the Visa Waiver Program since 1997, more than a decade ahead of neighbouring Hungary and long before Croatia. A whole generation of Slovenians has therefore never needed a visa for a short American trip, whether to see relatives in Cleveland, attend a trade fair, ski in the Rockies or drive Route 66.
What they do need is an ESTA. This online authorisation from U.S. Customs and Border Protection is tied to the passport and checked by the airline at the start of the journey, which for Slovenians usually means a desk at Ljubljana, Venice, Vienna or Munich rather than a transatlantic terminal.
The paragraphs below set out the Slovenian specifics: how č, š and ž are handled, the different passport terms for adults and children, the choice of departure airport in a country without long-haul flights of its own, and the best moments in the school year to go.
At a glance
Eligibility
Slovenian citizens need an ESTA for every visa-free visit to the United States, and a visit can last up to 90 days. Tourism, business meetings, medical treatment and changing planes on the way elsewhere are permitted purposes. It is asked for on arrival by air or sea and, from 2022, at land border posts with Canada and Mexico as well.
The osebna izkaznica, enough for nearly every other trip a Slovenian takes, is not accepted. You need the biometric potni list, and so does each person travelling with you. Children are not entered in a parent's passport or application; each has an authorisation of their own.
Many Slovenian citizens have roots elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia and some hold a second passport from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia or North Macedonia. None of those nationalities is on the excluded list. The ones that do rule out a dual citizen are Iranian, Iraqi, North Korean, Sudanese, Syrian and Cuban.
If you intend to work, study for academic credit, report as a journalist or stay beyond 90 days, an ESTA is the wrong instrument and a visa is required. The same is true in practice after a previous refusal of entry, an overstay or a relevant criminal record, when the B-1/B-2 application through the embassy in Ljubljana takes over.
Stay & validity
The usual validity is two years, during which you may come and go freely, staying no more than 90 days each time. A Slovenian who visits Cleveland for a family reunion this year and Hawaii next year uses the same authorisation for both.
Passport terms differ sharply by age in Slovenia. Adults receive ten-year passports, minors from three to eighteen five-year ones, and children under three passports valid for only three years. Since an ESTA expires with the passport, parents should line up the children's expiry dates before applying for the family.
Trips that mix the United States with Canada, Mexico or a Caribbean island are still measured against a single 90-day limit, and there is no procedure for extending a stay after arrival. A new passport, a change of surname after marriage or a change in any eligibility answer each requires a new application.
Pricing
Live fees for Slovenian passport holders, shown all-in — the US government charge and our service fee together, with nothing added later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as Slovenia
Requirements
Everything Slovenian 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.
The recommendation from CBP is to apply at least 72 hours before you travel. Slovenian applications are usually decided quickly, but a pending status is always possible and simply has to be waited out.
Because most Slovenians start their journey with a drive or a feeder flight, a problem with the ESTA is discovered far from home. Being refused boarding in Venice or Munich after three hours on the motorway is an expensive way to learn the authorisation expired last year. Check the status the week you book and again before you leave.
The busy periods for applications mirror the school breaks: the staggered winter holiday in February, the long weekend around 27 April and 1 May, and the summer holiday from late June. Apply a few weeks ahead of those, when you are comparing fares, and the paperwork is out of the way.
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 between Slovenia and the United States, so every itinerary has two parts. From Ljubljana the common connections are Frankfurt and Munich with Lufthansa, Zurich with Swiss, Paris with Air France and Istanbul with Turkish Airlines. Just as many travellers go by car or shuttle to a larger airport, chiefly Venice, Vienna, Munich or Zagreb, and board a long-haul flight there.
Best time to go
Slovenian schools finish on or around 24 June and start again on 1 September, which gives a clear ten-week window that coincides almost exactly with peak season in the United States. The quietest part of it is the final week of August, when many American districts have already returned to class.
The spring holidays are underrated for a transatlantic trip. The days off between 27 April and 2 May can be turned into ten days away with little leave, late enough for mild weather in New York and Washington and for the desert parks of Utah and Arizona before they become too hot.
Skiers have a reason to go in winter. The February school break lines up with the deepest snow in Colorado and Utah, and for a nation raised on Kranjska Gora and Vogel the scale of the Rockies is the attraction. Cleveland and the Midwest, by contrast, are bitterly cold then; relatives there are better visited between May and October.
Central European Time is six hours ahead of New York and Cleveland and nine ahead of California. Morning feeder flights from Ljubljana put you on the East Coast by mid-afternoon. If you drive to Venice or Vienna for the long-haul leg, consider an overnight stay on the return, as arriving jet-lagged and then driving several hours home is unwise.
Avoid these
Refusals are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the problems that come up most often on applications from Slovenia — we check for every one of them before submitting.
Slovenian keyboards make it natural to type Č, Š and Ž, but the passport's machine-readable zone does not contain them. An application reading KRAŠOVEC where the passport data says KRASOVEC will not match. Copy the bottom lines of the photo page.
Parents with ten-year passports often assume the children's run just as long. A three-year or five-year passport can expire between two family trips, taking the ESTA with it. Check every booklet, not only your own.
With visa-free travel so long established, frequent visitors treat the ESTA as permanent. It lasts two years at most. Travellers who last flew before a passport renewal regularly arrive at the airport with nothing valid on record.
The thirteen-digit personal number appears on Slovenian documents and is asked for constantly at home. In the ESTA it does not belong in the passport number field, where it would leave the authorisation unmatched at check-in.
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
The embassy is on Prešernova cesta in the centre of Ljubljana. Applying for an ESTA does not involve it in any way, and no documents are sent or shown there. Slovenian citizens turn to its consular section only for visas, for instance to study or work, or if an ESTA application has been refused.
FAQs
The questions Slovenian passport holders ask most often about travelling to the United States.
No. Slovenian citizens do not need a visa for trips of up to 90 days, because Slovenia has been a Visa Waiver Program member since 1997. They must, however, obtain an ESTA before departure. It allows tourism, business, medical treatment and transit, but not employment or study for credit.
No. The osebna izkaznica is valid for the European Union and some neighbouring states, not for the United States. A biometric passport is mandatory and the ESTA is connected to its number.
As plain C, S and Z, matching the machine-readable lines at the bottom of your passport's photo page. Do not use the special characters and do not replace them with CH, SH or ZH.
Yes. The requirement follows your citizenship and destination, not the airport you leave from. Whichever carrier operates the transatlantic flight will confirm the authorisation before boarding, so have it approved before you set off from Slovenia.
Typically two years, unless the passport expires earlier. Adults with ten-year passports usually receive the full period; children on five-year or three-year passports are more likely to have it shortened.
Up to 90 days on each entry. The period cannot be extended, and time spent in Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean during the same trip is included. Whether to admit you is finally decided by the CBP officer on arrival.
Yes. Every traveller, including an infant, needs an individual ESTA and an individual passport. Passports for children under three are valid for three years, so the authorisation may need renewing sooner than the parents'.
CBP suggests at least 72 hours beforehand. A better rule is to apply when you buy the tickets, and to verify the status again before the drive or feeder flight to your departure hub.
Your nationality is already set to Slovenia. 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.
