The 90/180-day rule, explained

What the law says

The rule comes from Article 6 of the Schengen Borders Code (Regulation (EU) 2016/399). A short stay is a stay of "no more than 90 days in any 180-day period, which entails considering the 180-day period preceding each day of stay". The same article adds two details that matter for counting:

• The date of entry is the first day of the stay and the date of exit is the last day. Both count in full.
• Days spent under a residence permit or a long-stay (D) visa are not counted.

How to count, step by step

1. Pick the day you want to check, for example the last day of a planned trip.
2. Go back 179 days from it. Together with the day itself, that is your 180-day window.
3. Add up every day you were (or will be) in any Schengen country inside that window, including entry and exit days.
4. If the total is 90 or less on every day of your stay, you are within the rule.

The last step is the one people miss. It is not enough to check the day you arrive: the count has to stay at 90 or below on each day until you leave. That is exactly what the calculator does for you.

Example 1: one long stay

You arrive in Spain on 1 January 2026 and leave on 31 March 2026. That is 90 days, entry and exit included, and it is allowed. On 1 April you could not come back: the window for 1 April still contains all 90 days.

Your first day (1 January) drops out of the window 180 days later, on 30 June 2026. From then on one day comes back each day. If you wanted to spend another full 90 days, you could enter on 30 June: each new day you spend pushes one old day out.

Example 2: several short trips

On 1 June the window reaches back to 4 December 2025, so both earlier trips are inside it: 45 days used, 45 left. Staying 45 days takes you to 15 July, and you have to leave by then: the Paris days only start to drop out of the window on 9 August, 180 days after 10 February. Had you arrived in Greece on 10 August instead, the Paris days would already be coming back one by one and the possible stay would be longer.

The calculator finds the exact last day for this kind of mix in a second. By hand it is where most mistakes happen.

Example 3: living part of the year in Europe

Many British, American and Canadian second-home owners spend winters in Spain or Portugal. A common safe pattern is three months in, three months out, for example January to March and July to September. Splitting the year differently, such as four months in winter, is not possible without a visa: on the 91st day of any 180-day period you would be over the limit.

If you want to stay longer, look at the national long-stay visas of the country you live in (for example a non-lucrative or digital-nomad visa). Days under such a visa do not count towards the 90.

Common mistakes

• Counting per country. The 90 days are shared by all 29 Schengen countries.
• Counting per calendar half-year. There is no reset date; the window rolls daily.
• Forgetting the entry or exit day. Both count, even a few hours.
• Thinking a short trip out resets the clock. Leaving only stops new days from being added.
• Counting Ireland, Cyprus or the UK. They are not Schengen, so days there do not count; Bulgaria, Romania and Switzerland do.
• Trusting a chatbot. General-purpose AI assistants regularly get the rolling window wrong. Count with dates, not with a summary.

Who checks, and how

Since the Entry/Exit System became fully operational on 10 April 2026, border guards no longer count stamps: the system records every entry and exit and calculates the remaining days automatically. Overstays are flagged automatically too. Read what the EES changes.