UK ETA and entry rules for London: what to arrange before you fly

What to sort out before you land in London

London doesn’t have a single arrivals process. Depending on where you fly from, you’ll land at one of five different airports, go through UK border control, and then need a way to pay for the Tube or a train into the centre — all before you’ve had a chance to look up a single museum or show. Two of those steps have nothing to do with sightseeing and everything to do with paperwork: whether you need a UK Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA), and how you’ll pay for transport once you’re through the gate.

This guide covers the entry side specifically — who needs an ETA, how the application actually works, what it does and doesn’t cover, and the other admin details (passport validity, currency, driving side) that catch first-time visitors out. For neighbourhood-level detail on where to go once you’ve landed, see the pages for central London and greater London; this page stays at the planning level.

The UK ETA, in plain terms

The Electronic Travel Authorisation is a pre-travel permission the UK introduced for visitors who don’t already need a visa. If you’re coming from a country whose citizens could previously enter the UK without a visa for a short tourist or business trip — most of the EU, the US, Canada, Australia, and a long list of others — you likely now need an ETA arranged before you travel, not something you sort out at the airport.

It’s applied for at gov.uk/eta, and nowhere else. That’s the only detail worth memorising from this whole section: government services in the UK don’t charge a “processing fee” through a third-party website, and any site other than gov.uk (or the official UK ETA app it links to) asking for extra money to file the same form is not the official channel. If a search result for “UK ETA” takes you somewhere that isn’t a gov.uk address, close the tab.

What the ETA actually is: an electronic record linked to your passport number, valid for multiple trips over a set period (currently up to two years, or until your passport expires, whichever comes first), that authorises you to travel to the UK for short visits — tourism, visiting family, short business trips — without a full visa. It is not a visa, and it’s not proof you’ll definitely be let in; final entry decisions are still made by a Border Force officer at the border, the same as they always have been. What the ETA does is remove one source of last-minute risk: if you don’t have an approved one when you’re required to, you can be denied boarding by the airline before you even reach the UK.

Who is exempt

Irish citizens don’t need an ETA to enter the UK, under the long-standing Common Travel Area arrangement between the UK and Ireland. If you already hold a UK visa, British citizenship, British National (Overseas) status, or another form of UK immigration permission, you also don’t need an ETA layered on top — check which category applies to you on gov.uk/eta rather than guessing, since the rules distinguish between a visa, a visa waiver and an ETA, and they are not interchangeable.

How to apply

The process is designed to be short: an online form or the UK ETA app, your passport details, a photo, and a payment. Processing is often quick — sometimes within minutes, sometimes a few days — but the government’s own guidance is to apply well before you travel rather than assume the fast case will apply to you. A UK ETA cannot be issued once you’ve already started travelling, so this isn’t something to leave for the departure lounge.

Apply using the same passport you intend to travel on. If you renew your passport after applying, the ETA doesn’t automatically transfer, so keep both documents together and check this before departure if your passport situation has changed since you applied.

ETA vs visa vs visa-free entry: three different things

These three terms get used loosely and it causes real confusion, so it’s worth being precise:

Term	What it is	Who it’s for
UK ETA	Light-touch pre-travel authorisation, applied for online at gov.uk/eta	Nationalities that previously travelled visa-free for short stays
UK visa	Full immigration permission, its own separate and longer application	Longer stays, work, study, or nationalities that need a visa
Visa-free / exempt	No ETA and no visa required	Irish citizens (Common Travel Area); those with existing UK permissions

If your trip is a short holiday and your passport falls into the first category, the ETA is what applies to you. If you’re planning to work, study, or stay for an extended period, the ETA doesn’t cover that and you’ll need to look at the visa route instead, which is a different gov.uk process with its own requirements and timeline.

What the ETA doesn’t replace

It’s easy to treat “I’ve got my ETA” as the end of the entry-planning checklist, but a few other things sit alongside it, unrelated to each other:

• Your passport itself. Some nationalities’ passports need a certain amount of remaining validity to enter the UK. An approved ETA doesn’t fix a passport that’s about to expire — check the passport rule separately.
• Airline check-in requirements. Airlines are increasingly checking ETA status before you board, since they can be fined for carrying passengers who aren’t authorised to enter. Have your approval confirmation accessible, even though you don’t need to print it.
• Currency. The UK uses the pound sterling (GBP), not the euro — worth stating plainly because it trips up visitors arriving from anywhere in the eurozone. Cards and contactless payment are accepted almost everywhere in London, and you don’t need to arrive with a large amount of cash.
• Which side of the road. The UK drives on the left. This has nothing to do with entry rules, but it belongs on the same pre-trip checklist if you’re planning to hire a car for a day trip — most visitors to London itself don’t need one, since the city and its day trips run well on trains.
• How you’ll pay for transport. An ETA gets you through the border; it says nothing about how you get from the airport to your hotel or around the Tube network. That’s a separate system, covered next.

Arriving: airport, then transport, then payment

London’s lack of one main airport is a genuine planning variable, not a footnote. Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City are five separate airports on different sides of the city, and each has its own dedicated rail link — Heathrow’s Elizabeth line, Piccadilly line and Heathrow Express, Gatwick Express, Stansted Express, Luton’s DART shuttle plus Thameslink, and the DLR for London City. Knowing which one you’re flying into changes your route into town before you’ve even landed; see London airport transfers and, for Heathrow specifically, from Heathrow to central London for the practical routing.

If you have a long layover or an early landing with hours to spare before check-in, a lounge can be worth the price for somewhere to sit, eat and shower rather than waiting at the gate. At Heathrow, an airport premium lounge entry covers exactly that, and the equivalent premium lounge entry at Gatwick does the same on that side of the city.

Once you’re through the airport, transport payment in London runs on Oyster or contactless cards, both usable on the Tube, buses, the DLR, the Overground, the Elizabeth line, and most trains within London, with fares capped automatically per day and week. This is unrelated to the ETA — one is a border document, the other is how you tap through a ticket barrier — but travellers regularly conflate the two, assuming a travel card is somehow part of the entry process. It isn’t. For the detail on which of the two payment methods suits your trip, see Oyster card vs contactless payment, and for the wider network, getting around London by Tube, bus and boat.

Money, weather and other admin that sits next to entry rules

A few more facts worth locking in before you travel, since they’re the kind of thing people assume incorrectly by analogy with other trips:

• Currency stays GBP throughout your stay — never convert prices to euros in your head as a shortcut, since the exchange rate moves and mental conversion is a common source of overspending. See money, tipping and costs in London for what things actually cost.
• Tipping isn’t obligatory. Many restaurants already add a service charge (commonly around 12.5%) to the bill, so check before adding more; pubs don’t expect a tip at the bar.
• Weather is temperate and changeable year-round, roughly 8°C in January up to 23°C in July, with cloud cover common even in summer. Pack layers rather than one heavy coat regardless of season; see best time to visit London if you’re still choosing dates.
• Electrical sockets are 230V, type G — bring an adapter if you’re travelling from outside the UK/Ireland plug standard.
• The clocks change. London runs on GMT in winter and British Summer Time (UTC+1) from late March to late October — a detail worth checking against your flight times if you’re booking connections.

None of these are entry requirements in the immigration sense, but they belong in the same pre-departure checklist, since getting any one of them wrong causes friction on day one.

A first-day checklist

Putting the pieces together, here’s a reasonable order of operations for the first 24 hours:

1. Confirm your ETA approval is linked to the passport you’re actually travelling with.
2. Check your airline’s own boarding requirements — some ask to see ETA confirmation at check-in.
3. Know which of the five airports you’re landing at and its specific rail link into town.
4. Set up contactless payment (or buy an Oyster card) for Tube and bus travel before you reach the barrier — see driving in London and the UK if you’re instead planning to hire a car for a day trip and want the left-hand-driving basics first.
5. Budget in pounds sterling from the start, not euros.

If your trip includes day trips by train once you’re settled, day trips by train from London stations covers which station serves which direction, and how many days in London is useful if you’re still deciding how to split your time between the city and excursions.

While you’re settling in

Once the paperwork is behind you, the first day or two in London is usually spent close to wherever you’re staying rather than crossing the whole city. A few low-commitment stops that work well for a jet-lagged first afternoon: an entry ticket to Apsley House, the Duke of Wellington’s former townhouse near Hyde Park Corner, or, for something lighter, the Museum of Illusions if you’re travelling with kids and want an hour of easy entertainment rather than a full museum visit. When you’re ready for the classic river-and-castle introduction to the city, a guided walking tour combined with a Thames cruise and Tower of London entry covers a lot of the must-see ground in a single organised day, which takes some of the planning load off a first visit.

For mistakes beyond the ETA itself — the kind that trip up visitors after they’ve already cleared the border — see London travel mistakes to avoid.

Bottom line

If you’re not Irish and don’t already hold a UK visa or immigration status, assume you need an ETA, apply at gov.uk/eta only, and do it as soon as your flight is booked rather than the week before. Treat the ETA as separate from your passport validity, your airline’s boarding checks, and how you’ll pay for transport once you land — four different things that all need sorting, none of which substitutes for another. Get those right, and the border stops being the hard part of the trip.