The 90/180 rule

What is the 90-day rule?

The 90-day rule, also known as the 90/180 rule, limits travel to the Schengen Area to a maximum of 90 days in any 180-day period. 

This sounds simple enough, but it isn't easy to calculate and keep track of as the 180-day window is always moving. This makes accounting for future trips hard to calculate. 

Here’s an example:

Say you went to Spain for 3 weeks in September, then back to the UK for a month, then off to Berlin for the weekend before spending Christmas in Rome. How many days could you travel in November whilst making sure you still have enough travel allowance to go on your Rome Christmas trip? 

This is why we made the Schengen Simple app; just pop all your past and future trips into the app, and it will instantly calculate exactly how many days you have left of your allowance. It will also tell you when is the soonest date you could next go for a full 90-day stay.

What does a rolling 180-day period mean?

The rolling period is what makes staying within your 90-day Schengen Zone allowance so tricky. 

To recap, the 90/180 rule limits travel to the Schengen Area to a maximum of 90 days in any 180-day period. It's the ANY, in any 180-day period, that means the period is rolling.  

Effectively it means that for each day in your calendar, you need to count backwards 180 days and tally up all the days that you were in the Schengen Area for that 180-day window. This tally can never exceed 90 days. 

If you only had trips in the past, this is fairly straightforward. However, if you have future trips planned, it becomes extremely difficult to know how many days you can travel for now whilst keeping enough days to allow your future trip or trips. 

Being frequent travellers to the Schengen Area ourselves is why we built the Schengen Simple app - a Schengen Calculator App that makes navigating the complexities of the 90/180 rule as simple as possible.  We think it's the best Schengen calculator available, and we hope you do too.

I'm a UK citizen; what is the 90-day rule after Brexit?

Sadly since Brexit, all UK citizens must comply with the 90/180 rule. You can effectively go to the Schengen Area for a full 90 days, and then you'll need to leave the Schengen Zone for a full 90 days before you can come back in.

In life, however, things aren't always as straightforward, and it's likely that you won't only travel for solid 90-day blocks. For example, you may end up going to Spain for three weeks, then back to the UK for a month, and then off to Berlin for the weekend before spending Christmas in Rome. 

It can get quite tricky to keep track of all these trips and know if you're still allowed to go on your next holiday. This is where Schengen calculators like Schengen Simple come in - just pop all your past and future trips in, and the app will tell you exactly how many days you have left in your allowance. It will also tell you when is the soonest you can next go for the full 90 days!