Switzerland’s three main international airports—Zurich, Geneva and Basel–Mulhouse—have won a five-month reprieve after the European Union confirmed on 4 February that the continent-wide switch-over to the biometric Entry/Exit System (EES) will no longer take place on 10 April 2026 but in September, once the busy summer season is over.
The EES replaces manual passport stamping for all non-EU / non-EFTA travellers and requires first-time entrants to have facial images and four fingerprints captured at a self-service kiosk before clearing the border. Although Switzerland is not an EU member, it is bound by the Schengen acquis and therefore has to deploy the same technology and meet the same timelines. The decision follows weeks of mounting evidence—from four-hour waits at Geneva and Lisbon to seven-hour queues in Paris—that airport infrastructure and staffing levels are not yet ready for the steep jump from the current 35 % biometric-enrolment target to 100 % coverage.
For Swiss business-travel managers, the delay removes the immediate risk that incoming executives, clients and project teams would face bottlenecks during the lucrative summer convention and festival calendar. Airlines and ground-handlers at Zurich Kloten had warned of potential missed connections and aircraft-turnaround penalties if the April date had been enforced. Travel-risk teams can now re-sequence employee-communication campaigns and pilot brief on-site enrolment desks later in the year, when border guards have more operational experience.
![EU pushes full biometric Entry/Exit System (EES) rollout to September 2026, giving Swiss airports breathing space]()
VisaHQ’s Swiss portal (https://www.visahq.com/switzerland/) can help organisations and individual travellers stay ahead of the evolving EES rules by providing real-time entry requirement updates, document-check services and customised alerts. Its concierge team can also coordinate group submissions and pre-validate passports, ensuring that employees arrive with all paperwork in order and minimising delays at the new biometric kiosks.
Corporate mobility programmes should nevertheless keep EES on the radar. Border guards will continue to encourage biometric capture on a voluntary basis, meaning that the pool of enrolled travellers—and therefore the speed differential between ‘experienced’ and ‘first-timers’—will keep widening. Companies are advised to build a one-off 30-minute buffer into itineraries for any employee who has not yet registered, to update Traveller Tracking systems so they record the date of EES enrolment (valid for three years) and to revisit 90/180-day Schengen-stay calculators, which will eventually be driven automatically by EES data.
Swiss authorities, for their part, plan to use the additional months to triple the number of kiosks at Geneva and Basel, cross-train customs staff, and roll out multilingual signage explaining the process. The Federal Customs and Border Security Office (BAZG) told local media that a ‘soft-launch’ weekend involving volunteer passengers is scheduled for late June. If the dry-runs go well, Zurich Airport expects to scale up to 70 % enrolment by mid-August—giving Switzerland a fighting chance of hitting the new September deadline without the headlines that dogged the early rollout.
The EES replaces manual passport stamping for all non-EU / non-EFTA travellers and requires first-time entrants to have facial images and four fingerprints captured at a self-service kiosk before clearing the border. Although Switzerland is not an EU member, it is bound by the Schengen acquis and therefore has to deploy the same technology and meet the same timelines. The decision follows weeks of mounting evidence—from four-hour waits at Geneva and Lisbon to seven-hour queues in Paris—that airport infrastructure and staffing levels are not yet ready for the steep jump from the current 35 % biometric-enrolment target to 100 % coverage.
For Swiss business-travel managers, the delay removes the immediate risk that incoming executives, clients and project teams would face bottlenecks during the lucrative summer convention and festival calendar. Airlines and ground-handlers at Zurich Kloten had warned of potential missed connections and aircraft-turnaround penalties if the April date had been enforced. Travel-risk teams can now re-sequence employee-communication campaigns and pilot brief on-site enrolment desks later in the year, when border guards have more operational experience.
VisaHQ’s Swiss portal (https://www.visahq.com/switzerland/) can help organisations and individual travellers stay ahead of the evolving EES rules by providing real-time entry requirement updates, document-check services and customised alerts. Its concierge team can also coordinate group submissions and pre-validate passports, ensuring that employees arrive with all paperwork in order and minimising delays at the new biometric kiosks.
Corporate mobility programmes should nevertheless keep EES on the radar. Border guards will continue to encourage biometric capture on a voluntary basis, meaning that the pool of enrolled travellers—and therefore the speed differential between ‘experienced’ and ‘first-timers’—will keep widening. Companies are advised to build a one-off 30-minute buffer into itineraries for any employee who has not yet registered, to update Traveller Tracking systems so they record the date of EES enrolment (valid for three years) and to revisit 90/180-day Schengen-stay calculators, which will eventually be driven automatically by EES data.
Swiss authorities, for their part, plan to use the additional months to triple the number of kiosks at Geneva and Basel, cross-train customs staff, and roll out multilingual signage explaining the process. The Federal Customs and Border Security Office (BAZG) told local media that a ‘soft-launch’ weekend involving volunteer passengers is scheduled for late June. If the dry-runs go well, Zurich Airport expects to scale up to 70 % enrolment by mid-August—giving Switzerland a fighting chance of hitting the new September deadline without the headlines that dogged the early rollout.
