The European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) has finally been priced: the European Commission confirmed on 4 February that the electronic travel authorisation will cost €20 per applicant. Travellers aged 18-70 from more than 60 visa-exempt countries—including the United Kingdom, United States and Canada—will have to obtain ETIAS approval before boarding transport to any of the 29 Schengen members plus Cyprus.
Although ETIAS is often described as a “visa”, it is closer to the U.S. ESTA: applicants complete a short online form, upload passport data and pay the fee by credit card. Their information is automatically run against the Schengen Information System, Interpol and Europol databases; most decisions are returned within minutes, but up to 30 days are permitted where hits require manual review. The authorisation is valid for three years or until the linked passport expires and allows multiple stays of up to 90 days per 180-day period.
For Austrian corporates the pricing clarity ends months of speculation. Mobility managers must now budget €20 per trip for colleagues posted from head-office in Vienna to subsidiaries in Australia or Singapore who routinely route through Dubai and re-enter Schengen at Schwechat. Travel-management companies warn that large assignment programmes could face six-figure cost increases unless policies are updated.
![€20 ETIAS fee confirmed for visa-exempt travellers entering Schengen from late-2026]()
Companies and individual travellers who prefer to outsource the new paperwork can turn to VisaHQ, whose dedicated Austria portal (https://www.visahq.com/austria/) already offers step-by-step ETIAS pre-registration tools, automated passport scans and bulk-application dashboards, making compliance straightforward even for high-volume travel programmes.
Airlines and airports have welcomed the fee decision because they can finalise system upgrades to verify ETIAS status at check-in. Vienna Airport will integrate the check directly into its boarding-pass validation gates; carriers that do not comply face carrier-liability fines of €5 000 per inadmissible passenger.
The Commission reiterated that ETIAS will only become mandatory after the separate Entry/Exit System (EES) is fully operational—now targeted for April 2026. A six-month “soft-launch” is planned during which travellers without an ETIAS will be warned but not denied boarding. Austria’s Interior Ministry said it is recruiting 120 additional border officers for the transition phase and will open an ETIAS call-centre in Linz to handle traveller enquiries.
Although ETIAS is often described as a “visa”, it is closer to the U.S. ESTA: applicants complete a short online form, upload passport data and pay the fee by credit card. Their information is automatically run against the Schengen Information System, Interpol and Europol databases; most decisions are returned within minutes, but up to 30 days are permitted where hits require manual review. The authorisation is valid for three years or until the linked passport expires and allows multiple stays of up to 90 days per 180-day period.
For Austrian corporates the pricing clarity ends months of speculation. Mobility managers must now budget €20 per trip for colleagues posted from head-office in Vienna to subsidiaries in Australia or Singapore who routinely route through Dubai and re-enter Schengen at Schwechat. Travel-management companies warn that large assignment programmes could face six-figure cost increases unless policies are updated.
Companies and individual travellers who prefer to outsource the new paperwork can turn to VisaHQ, whose dedicated Austria portal (https://www.visahq.com/austria/) already offers step-by-step ETIAS pre-registration tools, automated passport scans and bulk-application dashboards, making compliance straightforward even for high-volume travel programmes.
Airlines and airports have welcomed the fee decision because they can finalise system upgrades to verify ETIAS status at check-in. Vienna Airport will integrate the check directly into its boarding-pass validation gates; carriers that do not comply face carrier-liability fines of €5 000 per inadmissible passenger.
The Commission reiterated that ETIAS will only become mandatory after the separate Entry/Exit System (EES) is fully operational—now targeted for April 2026. A six-month “soft-launch” is planned during which travellers without an ETIAS will be warned but not denied boarding. Austria’s Interior Ministry said it is recruiting 120 additional border officers for the transition phase and will open an ETIAS call-centre in Linz to handle traveller enquiries.
