Do babies and children need their own visa?

The answer is structural and it applies to every nationality at once: a visa or travel authorisation attaches to a <em>travel document</em>, not to a family. If your child holds their own passport, your child needs their own authorisation — including the lap infant who paid no fare. What varies is only the paperwork, the fee and the biometrics.

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One traveller, one authorisation

Every major electronic scheme says this in its own words, and none of them makes an exception for age:

• ESTA (United States) — CBP states that accompanied and unaccompanied children, regardless of age, are required to have their own ESTA approval, and adds that "even non-ticketed infants are required to have an approved travel authorization" if they do not hold a visa.
• UK ETA — GOV.UK is blunt: "Each person travelling needs an ETA, including babies and children."
• Canada eTA — IRCC states that all eTA-required travellers, regardless of their age, need an eTA, and that to apply for your child you must submit a separate application form.
• Australia ETA (subclass 601) — the Department of Home Affairs states you cannot include family members in your application, and that each family member "including those listed on your passport, must submit a separate application".
• ETIAS (Europe) — Article 17(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1240 requires each applicant to submit a completed application form, with a minor's form signed electronically by a person holding parental authority or guardianship.

So the count is simple: passports in the family, authorisations needed.

But you can usually do the paperwork together

A common misreading of the above is that every application must be filed separately, one at a time. That is not right either, and it matters when you are filling in five forms at midnight.

ESTA allows a group submission — CBP states the system "allows for one payment for a group of two or more applications submitted at the same time", and notes the people in the group are not required to travel together. ETIAS expressly permits someone else to file on the applicant's behalf: Article 15(4) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1240 allows applications to be submitted "by the applicant or by a person or a commercial intermediary authorised by the applicant". GOV.UK simply says "You can apply for other people."

Canada is the outlier in the other direction: IRCC states you can only apply and pay for one person at a time.

The distinction to hold on to is this: the paperwork can often be batched, but the outcome never is. No scheme issues one authorisation covering several people. Each traveller still receives their own, tied to their own passport.

If your child is listed on your passport

Older passports sometimes endorsed children on a parent's book. Where that is still the case, it does not help — it actively hurts.

CBP states that children listed on their parents' passports do not qualify for ESTA and must have their own unexpired passport. Australia, as above, requires a separate application from each family member including those listed on your passport.

Within the EU the practice has been legislated away: Regulation (EC) No 444/2009 amended the passport standards so that passports and travel documents "shall be issued as individual documents", a principle its recital calls "one person-one passport" and records as also being recommended by ICAO. If your family travels on EU passports, each child already has their own book.

We have not verified that every country in the world has done the same, so we will not claim it. The practical rule stands regardless: if your child does not have their own passport, that is the first thing to fix.

The trap parents actually hit: shorter passports

This is the one that catches families at the airport, and it is a consequence of a rule nobody thinks to apply to a toddler.

Children's passports are issued for shorter terms. The period is set by the issuing country, not by any international standard:

• United States — 22 CFR 51.4 provides that a passport issued to an applicant under 16 is valid for five years, against ten for applicants 16 or older.
• United Kingdom — GOV.UK: a child passport is valid for five years, with adult procedure from age 16.
• Canada — a child passport is valid for a maximum of five years, and stays valid to its expiry date even after the child turns 16.
• Australia — the Australian Passport Office issues passports valid up to five years for children aged 0 to 15, and up to ten years for those aged 16 or 17.

Now combine that with entry rules. The Schengen Borders Code (Regulation (EU) 2016/399, Article 6) requires a travel document valid at least three months beyond intended departure and issued within the previous ten years — and there is no age exemption anywhere in that article, because the condition attaches to the document. Many other countries apply a six-month rule the same way.

A five-year book runs out of runway far sooner than yours. Check the child's expiry date first, not last — see the six-month passport rule for how the arithmetic works.

Fees: two European schemes discount by age, the rest do not

Age concessions exist, but only in Europe, and only in two places.

ETIAS waives its fee for applicants under 18 and over 70 at the time of application — Article 18(2) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1240. For a Schengen visa, Article 16 of the Visa Code waives the fee for children under six, and sets a reduced rate for children from six to under twelve.

ESTA, the UK ETA, the Canada eTA and the Australian ETA publish no age concession — a baby costs the same as an adult.

We deliberately publish no amounts here. Fees change, and several currently circulating figures are already out of date. Check the official portal for the current price before you pay.

Biometrics: four authorities, four different ages

There is no single children's biometric exemption, and assuming one will surprise you at an appointment:

• EU Entry/Exit System — Regulation (EU) 2017/2226, Article 17(3): "Children under the age of 12 shall be exempt from the requirement to give fingerprints." Note this is a fingerprint exemption only; nothing exempts any age group from the facial image, so an infant is still photographed.
• Schengen visa — Visa Code Article 13(7) exempts children under 12 from giving fingerprints.
• United Kingdom — Home Office guidance states children under five are exempt from fingerprints but must still provide a digitised facial image.
• United States — the long-standing under-14 concession has been withdrawn. US Mission guidance states that since 2 September 2025, applicants under 14 and over 80 are not exempt and must attend in person.

If you are planning around an appointment, check the specific authority's current rule rather than a number you remember.

A checklist before you book

1. Does each child hold their own passport? If not, that comes first.
2. Check each child's expiry date against the destination's validity rule — the five-year book is the usual problem.
3. Count authorisations by passport, not by adult. Infants included.
4. Batch the paperwork where the scheme allows it, but expect a separate approval per child.
5. Check whether the child must attend in person for biometrics before you assume it is a parent-only errand.

Then run the family's actual pairing through the visa checker — the per-destination requirement for a child is the same as the adult's, so one check covers everyone holding that nationality.

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