The Schengen 90/180 rule explained, with worked examples
If you are a non-EU citizen who travels to Europe without a long-stay visa, the number that matters is 90. The Schengen Borders Code (Regulation (EU) 2016/399, article 6) allows a short stay of up to 90 days in any 180-day period.
How the window works
"Any 180-day period" is not a fixed half-year. The European Commission's own calculator puts it this way: you count back 180 days from each day of your stay, and the total must not exceed 90. The window moves one day every day, so days leave it as time passes and you get them back one by one.
- The day you enter counts as your first day of stay and the day you leave counts as your last. A stay from the 1st to the 10th is ten days.
- The rule covers the whole Schengen area at once, not each country separately. See the list of the 29 countries.
- Holders of a residence permit or a long-stay visa are not subject to the 90/180 rule, and the Commission says those periods should not be entered in its calculator. If your short-stay visa sticker shows fewer than 90 days, that shorter period applies.
Example 1: one long stay
You stay from 1 March to 29 May: 31 + 30 + 29 = 90 days. On 29 May you have used all of them. Day by day, 1 March only leaves the window 180 days later, so the first day you can enter again is 28 August. The Swiss State Secretariat for Migration shows the same dates in its own example.
Example 2: two trips
You spend 1 June to 20 July (50 days) and 15 September to 14 October (30 days). On 14 October you have used 80 days of 90. If you stay on and cross back in on 15 October, you can stay at most 10 more days, until 24 October. The June days only start leaving the window at the end of November.
What it is not
The count is a tool, not a permission. Border officers decide at the border, and the penalties for staying too long are set by each country. Since 10 April 2026 the Entry/Exit System records every crossing, so an error is no longer hidden by a missing stamp: see what the EES changes.
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