K-ETA Waiver to 31 December 2026: 3-Year Validity, 90-Day Stays
Quinn Moran · Published
The temporary K-ETA waiver for listed countries runs to 31 December 2026. It removes only the requirement to hold a boarding authorization. It does not change how long a traveller can stay. A K-ETA lasts three years from approval, or until the passport expires if that comes first. The stay is granted separately at the border, usually counted per entry: 90 days for US, British citizen and most EU passports, 6 months for Canada, and 30 days for many others.
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On 31 December 2026, the temporary waiver that lets travellers from a published list of countries board flights to South Korea without a K-ETA reaches its current end date. The waiver began in 2023, and the Ministry of Justice has since extended it to the end of 2026. The published rule says nothing about whether it will be extended again. It is clear on the question most people get wrong about the K-ETA: how long the authorization lasts versus how long it lets someone stay.
Those are two different numbers, set by two different mechanisms, and only one of them ends a trip.
Two clocks, not one
The K-ETA (Korea Electronic Travel Authorization) is a pre-boarding screen run by the Ministry of Justice under Korea's Immigration Act. It works much like the US ESTA: it clears a traveller to board a flight, and nothing more. The stay is a separate grant, made at the border under the visa-waiver arrangement for the traveller's nationality.
| K-ETA validity | Permitted stay | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Authorization to board | Admission period granted at entry |
| Length | Three years from approval, or until passport expiry if sooner | Set by nationality: 90 days for US, British citizen and most EU passports; 6 months for Canada; 30 days for many others; some passports are listed as 3 months |
| How it is counted | Calendar time from approval | Per entry, arrival day included (windowed formulas aside) |
| Used up by travel? | No, usable for multiple trips | Each entry gets its own grant |
| Who decides | Online screening at k-eta.go.kr | The immigration officer at admission |
The official K-ETA site says it directly: authorization validity is separate from the visa-free stay period. A three-year K-ETA never means three years in Korea. A traveller with a 90-day allowance gets 90 days per entry, whether their K-ETA was approved last week or still has two years left.
The application costs 10,000 KRW (about USD 7 to 8). The online payment fee is charged separately, and the 10,000 KRW is non-refundable even if the application is denied. Screening typically takes 72 hours or less but can take longer, and there is no expedited service, so apply well before the 72-hour mark. Approvals from before 3 July 2023 carried the older two-year validity, so an authorization from early 2023 runs on a shorter clock than one issued since.
What the waiver changes, and what it does not
Since 2023, Korea has waived the K-ETA requirement for a published list of countries and regions, as a way to stimulate tourism. The list has covered the major visa-waiver countries since then. The waiver affects only one of the two clocks: it removes the need for the boarding authorization. It does nothing to the stay. A waived traveller is still admitted under their nationality's visa-waiver allowance, still counted per entry, and still bound by the officer's grant.
That leaves three positions a passport can be in before 31 December 2026:
- On the waiver list, no K-ETA. The traveller boards without one. The stay allowance is unchanged.
- On the waiver list, with a voluntary K-ETA. The traveller also boards. An approved K-ETA lets the holder skip the paper arrival card, and it does not depend on the waiver continuing.
- Not on the waiver list. An approved K-ETA is needed before boarding, unless the traveller is exempt from applying. Korea exempts people aged 17 or under or 65 or over on the date of entry, transit passengers, registered foreigners and visa holders, ABTC holders, and diplomatic and crew passports.
The end date is what makes the second position matter. If the exemption lapses after 31 December 2026, the K-ETA requirement returns for passports that are currently waived. A traveller with an approved authorization is unaffected for as long as it stays valid. A traveller relying on the waiver is not.
This is also why travel advice on Korea goes stale so quickly. An article from 2022 saying every visitor must have a K-ETA and one from 2024 saying nobody needs one are each wrong for some passports on some dates. The answer depends on which list a passport is on and on the date of travel.
The South Korea K-ETA rule guide collects the per-country stay allowances, what triggers a new application, and the waiver notice in one place, each with its official source.
How the stay is counted
The stay clock is simpler than the authorization's, but it has its own traps.
The arrival day counts. A 90-day grant that starts on 1 March runs to 29 May. Counting from the day after landing gives a deadline one day too late. Some passports, including Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand and Suriname, are listed as 3 months rather than 90 days, so their end date differs. The officer's grant governs.
Each entry gets a fresh count. Leaving Korea ends the stay, and the next admission grants a new one. For plain per-entry grants there is no rolling total, so a spring trip does not reduce the allowance for an autumn one. Windowed passports are the exception.
The officer's grant governs. The usual figure for a passport is only a starting point. The real deadline is whatever is recorded at admission.
Some formulas are windowed. The per-country list includes special cases, quoted here as the official list words them. Portugal: 90 days in a row, not exceeding 90 days within 180 days. Russia: 60 days in a row, not exceeding 90 days within 180 days. Kazakhstan: 30 days in a row, not exceeding 60 days within 180 days. On a formula like that, the per-entry count is only half the calculation, and two trips within 180 days share one allowance.
Canada is the outlier. Its 6-month allowance is the longest among major passports. Most of the list sits at 90 days or fewer.
A trip that combines Korea with Japan runs two separate clocks, one for each country, and neither borrows days from the other. How Japan treats repeat visits is covered in its own post.
What carries over between trips
The per-entry reset can make repeat visits look unlimited. Neither clock is used up by repeat trips: the K-ETA does not run down with use, and each entry starts its own stay (windowed formulas aside). What does carry over is the entry history.
Officers weigh that history when a passport starts showing back-to-back Korea stays. A K-ETA approval is not a guarantee of entry. Admission and the length of stay are decided at the border, and a K-ETA combined with a suspicious entry pattern still ends in secondary inspection.
The history is complete on the Korean side. Foreign entries and exits are recorded with fingerprints and photographs, and airlines send passenger data before boarding. Both an overstay and a later attempt to return are visible to the system.
The purpose of a trip matters too. The K-ETA covers tourism, family visits, events and non-commercial business activities. Employment or long-term study needs a visa, and misrepresenting the purpose risks refusal and future bans.
What forces a new K-ETA
The three-year validity is a maximum, not a promise. A new authorization is needed when:
- The passport is reissued. This applies even if the old K-ETA has not expired, so a passport renewal the week before a trip invalidates it.
- Personal circumstances change. This means changes to criminal record or infectious disease information.
- The authorization expires. That happens three years after approval, or earlier if the passport expires first.
Changes to travel details such as address and itinerary do not need a new application, but they must be updated on the existing K-ETA before travel. The official guidance warns that skipping the update can lead to entry denial. Each traveller who is not exempt needs their own K-ETA. Korea exempts people aged 17 or under or 65 or over on the date of entry, transit passengers, registered foreigners and visa holders, ABTC holders, and diplomatic and crew passports.
The Ministry of Justice warns about lookalike sites that charge inflated fees, some of them fraudulent. The official channels are k-eta.go.kr and the official app, and the real fee is 10,000 KRW.
Overstays and extensions
An overstay breaches Korea's Immigration Act. The consequences scale with how long it lasts:
- Administrative fines that grow with the length of the overstay, settled with immigration before or at departure.
- Departure orders and deportation for longer or aggravated overstays.
- Entry bans that cause future K-ETA and visa applications to fail screening.
Extensions of a visa-free stay are exceptional. They are handled by Korea Immigration (HiKorea) and reserved for situations such as medical emergencies, not tourism. In practice, the stay granted at the border is the stay.
What a day record answers, and what it does not
How many days a traveller has used on the current Korea entry is a pure day count: the arrival date, today's date, and the grant. iReside records which country you were in on each calendar day, from your iPhone's location, in the background. The day counts for each rule you track are worked out from that record continuously, so the arrival day is captured when it happens rather than reconstructed later. The record exports as CSV or PDF, with each day labelled by where it came from: GPS, manual entry, or a planned future day. A trip planned around the 31 December date appears in that record as planned days, kept distinct from days actually spent.
That record is the traveller's own copy of what the Korean border already holds in biometric form. Passport stamps alone are a weaker source than they used to be; proving where you were without them is covered separately.
Some questions are not day counts at all. Whether a passport is on the waiver list, whether a K-ETA is still valid after a passport renewal, and what an officer grants at admission are matters of documents and decisions, not arithmetic. Tax is another. The 90-day figure is an immigration allowance, not a tax residency threshold. Whether long stays in Korea matter for tax is a separate test with its own rules, and many countries do not use 183 days as their threshold in the first place.