Taiwan entered the Visa Waiver Program in 2012. Holders of a Taiwan e-passport that shows a national identification number can visit the United States for up to 90 days per trip with an approved ESTA.
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
Important for Taiwanese citizens
Only Taiwan e-passports that carry the holder's national identification number qualify for the Visa Waiver Program. Passports issued without an ID number are not eligible, and their holders need a US visa.
Overview
Few places have closer personal ties to the United States than Taiwan. Generations of Taiwanese have studied at American universities, a large community has settled around Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Seattle, Houston and New York, and the semiconductor and electronics industries keep engineers and executives shuttling between Hsinchu and Silicon Valley, Arizona and Texas all year.
Since November 2012 most of that travel has been visa-free. Taiwan's designation into the Visa Waiver Program replaced the interview at the American Institute in Taiwan with the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, an online screening run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. For short visits, the application is now something done at a desk in a quarter of an hour.
There is one condition that applies to Taiwan and to no other member. The passport must be an e-passport that carries the holder's national identification number, the same number found on the identity card. That single line on the photo page decides whether an ESTA is possible at all, and it is worth looking for before filling in anything else.
At a glance
Eligibility
A Taiwanese citizen with household registration in Taiwan, travelling on a chip-enabled passport that shows a national ID number, needs an ESTA and not a visa for trips of up to 90 days. That covers tourism, visiting family, business meetings, trade fairs such as CES in Las Vegas, medical treatment and changing planes on the way to Canada or Latin America.
Nationals without household registration are in a different position. Passports issued to overseas compatriots who have never registered a household in Taiwan leave the ID number field blank, and those passports fall outside the programme however valid they are for other journeys. The holder applies for a visitor visa, normally in the country where they live.
The requirement reaches every way of arriving. Passengers on a cruise calling at Alaska or Hawaii, and travellers who fly into Vancouver and drive south, need the authorisation just as those landing at Los Angeles do; it has been compulsory at land borders with Canada and Mexico since 2022. Children need their own, tied to their own passport and their own ID number.
Past travel can close the visa-free route. Presence in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan or North Korea on or after 1 March 2011, or in Cuba on or after 12 January 2021, makes a traveller ineligible, which occasionally affects Taiwanese trading-company staff, ship's officers and adventurous tour groups. A second nationality of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, North Korea or Cuba has the same result.
Stay & validity
Once granted, the authorisation generally lasts two years and can be used repeatedly, with each stay limited to 90 days. Taiwan's ordinary adult passport runs for ten years and a child's for five, and the ESTA cannot outlive the passport it was issued against. A new passport from the Bureau of Consular Affairs means a new number and therefore a new application.
The 90-day limit is firm. Parents who travel to look after a daughter after childbirth, the months of postpartum care that Taiwanese families take seriously, often want to remain longer than three months, and the waiver cannot be extended or converted once they are in the country. A B-2 visitor visa obtained before departure is the correct tool for a long family stay.
Short excursions out of the United States do not reset anything. A visit to relatives in California followed by a week in Vancouver or a cruise to Mexico and a return to Los Angeles is treated as one continuous period, with the Canadian or Mexican days included. Plan the whole North American itinerary, not just the American part, to fit within 90 days.
Pricing
Live fees for Taiwan passport holders, shown all-in — the US government charge and our service fee together, with nothing added later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as Taiwan
Requirements
Everything Taiwan 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.
Most Taiwanese applicants receive a decision quickly, but the system returns three possible answers and one of them is a pending status that takes time to clear. The recommended minimum is 72 hours before departure. Evening flights from Taoyuan arrive in California on the afternoon of the same day, so there is no slack to be found in the time difference.
Demand rises sharply before Lunar New Year and at the start of the July and August summer vacation, when families fly out to visit relatives and students head to language programmes and campus tours. These are also the periods when fares are highest and alternative seats scarcest, so an application left to the final days carries more risk than at other times.
If the answer is that travel is not authorised, there is no appeal within the ESTA system. The next step is a B-1/B-2 visa application with an interview at the American Institute in Taiwan in Taipei. Appointment availability varies through the year, which is why anyone with a past refusal or an uncertain answer to an eligibility question should apply well before buying a non-refundable ticket.
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
Taoyuan International is one of the best-connected Asian airports for the United States, with EVA Air, China Airlines and STARLUX competing across the Pacific alongside United and Delta. The West Coast has the densest service, and travellers from Kaohsiung and Taichung generally reach Taoyuan by high-speed rail before flying.
Best time to go
Taiwan's summer vacation in July and August matches the American school summer, so it is the natural time for campus visits, study tours and family trips, and also the most crowded. National parks such as Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon are at their busiest from June to September, and accommodation inside them is typically reserved many months ahead.
The Lunar New Year break, in late January or February, falls in the depth of the American winter. It suits Hawaii, southern California, Las Vegas and Florida, and it is a fine time for skiing, but a first-time visitor expecting to walk around New York or Boston should be ready for snow and temperatures far below anything Taipei experiences.
Spring and autumn give the easiest conditions. April avoids the March spring-break crowds, and the long weekends around Tomb Sweeping Day and the Dragon Boat Festival are enough for a West Coast trip. October brings clear, dry weather in California and autumn colour in the north-east, well before the Thanksgiving rush in the fourth week of November.
Typhoon season at home and hurricane season in the south-eastern United States overlap between June and November, so summer itineraries can be disrupted at either end. California is fifteen hours behind Taipei in summer and sixteen in winter, and New York twelve or thirteen. Most people find the eastbound journey the harder one, so avoid scheduling an important meeting for the morning after arrival.
Avoid these
Refusals are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the problems that come up most often on applications from Taiwan — we check for every one of them before submitting.
This is the error that is specific to Taiwan. Passports issued to nationals without household registration look almost identical but leave the personal ID number blank, and they do not qualify for the waiver. Check the photo page before applying; if the field is empty, the right application is a visa.
Many Taiwanese go by an English given name, or spell their Chinese name in pinyin on business cards, while the passport holds an older Wade-Giles romanisation. The form must follow the passport. HSIEH cannot become XIE, and Kevin belongs in the alias field only if the passport lists it.
Grandparents travelling to help after a birth commonly intend to remain four to six months. The waiver allows 90 days with no extension, and an overstay commonly leads to later applications being refused. Anyone expecting to be needed for longer should obtain a visitor visa through the American Institute in Taiwan beforehand.
Short language camps and campus tours that carry no academic credit sit comfortably within a visit. A semester exchange, a degree programme or any course awarding credit does not, and schools will issue the paperwork for a student visa. Arriving on an ESTA to begin such a course risks being turned back at the airport.
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 United States has no embassy in Taiwan; its interests are represented by the American Institute in Taiwan, whose main office is in the Neihu district of Taipei with a branch in Kaohsiung. Visa interviews take place in Taipei. Travellers who qualify for an ESTA have no reason to visit either office, since the whole process is electronic.
FAQs
The questions Taiwan passport holders ask most often about travelling to the United States.
No, Taiwanese citizens holding an e-passport with a national identification number do not need a visa for visits of up to 90 days; they need an approved ESTA. Taiwan has been in the Visa Waiver Program since 2012. A visa is still required for study, work, longer stays and for passports issued without an ID number.
It is a condition of Taiwan's membership of the Visa Waiver Program. Only e-passports that carry the holder's national identification number are accepted, which in practice means passports issued to people with household registration in Taiwan. If that field on your photo page is blank, you are not eligible and should apply for a visa.
No. A Taiwan passport issued to a national without household registration does not show an ID number and falls outside the programme. You would apply for a B-1/B-2 visitor visa, or, if you also hold citizenship of another Visa Waiver Program country, apply for an ESTA on that country's passport instead.
Copy the romanised spelling from your passport, with the surname in the family name box and the given name in the first name box. Do not convert it to pinyin or replace it with an English name. If the passport prints an "also known as" name, declare that in the section for other names.
Up to 90 days on each visit, for tourism, business, transit or medical treatment. The authorisation is normally valid for two years or until the passport expires, and allows multiple entries. Time spent in Canada, Mexico or nearby Caribbean islands in the middle of a trip is counted within the 90 days.
Yes. Visiting a son or daughter at university, attending orientation or a graduation ceremony, and travelling together afterwards are all ordinary visitor purposes. Each parent needs an individual authorisation. The student is on a student visa, which is a separate matter and does not extend to family members.
Yes. Hawaii is a state and Guam is American territory, and an approved ESTA is accepted for travel to both under the Visa Waiver Program. The same 90-day limit per visit applies, and the authorisation must be linked to the passport you present when you check in at Taoyuan.
Yes. The authorisation is recorded against the old passport number and does not transfer. Taiwanese travellers who renew early to add blank pages or to update a romanised name need a fresh application, and a change in how the name is spelled is itself a reason a new ESTA is required.
Your nationality is already set to Taiwan. 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.
