The Schengen 90/180-day rule, explained

The short answer: you can spend at most 90 days in the Schengen Area within any 180-day period. The window is rolling — there is no reset date. Your entry day and your exit day both count as full days. Use our calculator to check your own dates.

How the rolling window works

On every single day of your stay, look back 180 days (that day included). Inside that window, your days of presence in the Schengen Area must not exceed 90.

This is why the rule confuses people: it's not "90 days per calendar half-year" and it doesn't reset when a new year starts. Days only stop counting against you when they become older than 180 days. One useful consequence, straight from the European Commission's guidance: after 90 days of uninterrupted absence, you can always stay for up to 90 days again.

What counts as a day

• The day you enter and the day you exit each count as a full day — even if you land at 23:50.
• Days in any Schengen country count toward the same shared limit: hopping from Spain to France doesn't restart anything.
• Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland are not in the EU, but they are in Schengen — days there count.
• Ireland and Cyprus are in the EU but not in the border-free Schengen area — days there do not count. Days in the UK don't count either.
• Days in Bulgaria, Romania or Croatia before those countries joined Schengen don't count. Our calculator handles this automatically when you pick the country (full country data and sources).

A worked example (from the EU's own manual)

A visa-exempt traveller visits for one day on 1 January 2024, then enters again on 1 June 2024 for a long stay. On 14 June, the 180-day window contains 15 days of presence — fine. But staying continuously, they reach 90 days in the window on 29 August 2024, which is their last allowed day. Staying to 20 September, as planned, would mean overstaying from 30 August.

Our engine reproduces this and every other worked example from the official manual in its automated test suite.

Days that don't consume the allowance

Stays under a residence permit or a national long-stay (D) visa are not counted toward the 90/180 limit in the state that issued them. Days a permit holder spends in other Schengen countries do count — a common and expensive misunderstanding, covered in our residence permit holders guide. And if one of your nationalities is an EU country, the rule doesn't apply to you at all — see dual citizens.

What happens if you overstay

Since April 2026 the EU's Entry/Exit System records entries and exits digitally and detects overstays automatically — see what to expect at the border. The EU-wide legal mechanism that follows — a return decision, a window to leave voluntarily, and an entry ban only if you don't — is explained in full, cited to the actual directive, on what actually happens if you overstay.

Sources: European Commission — User Manual for the Short-Stay Schengen Calculator (rule mechanics, worked example); data sources for country membership; update history. Checked against official sources on 2026-07-13. This page is informational only — not legal advice. Cross-check your dates with the official EU calculator.