Data coverage: October 2023 – 31 March 2026 (provisional) · Last updated: 3 July 2026 · Next update: shortly after the Home Office release on 27 August 2026

This page tracks the official statistics of the United Kingdom’s Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) scheme: how many people apply, how many ETAs are issued, how many applications are refused or rejected, and which nationalities use the scheme most. Every figure on this page comes directly from Home Office publications — primarily the quarterly Electronic travel authorisation detailed datasets (tables ETA_D01 and ETA_D02). Nothing here is estimated, modelled or taken from third parties. Journalists, researchers and editors are welcome to reuse these figures with attribution — see how to cite this page.

Key figures

ETA applications and outcomes by quarter

Application volumes climbed in three clear steps, mirroring the scheme’s phased rollout. Quarterly volumes stayed below about 220,000 through most of 2024, when only Qatar (from November 2023) and six further Middle Eastern nationalities (from February 2024) needed an ETA. The first jump came in Q4 2024, as applications opened to the remaining non-European visa-free nationalities ahead of their mandatory date of 8 January 2025. The decisive shift arrived in Q2 2025 — the first full quarter in which European visitors needed an ETA (mandatory from 2 April 2025) — with 8,032,397 applications, still the busiest quarter on record. Volumes have since settled in a range of roughly 5.2 to 6.3 million per quarter. In the most recent quarter, Q1 2026, the Home Office received 5,634,500 applications and issued 5,608,553 ETAs.

Outcomes in a quarter can relate to applications made in an earlier period, so applications and decisions in the same quarter do not match exactly (Home Office dataset, note 2). Refusal rate = refused decisions ÷ all decisions in the period. Source: ETA_D01 and ETA_D02.

ETAs by nationality, year ending March 2026

United States nationals were by far the largest single group in the year ending March 2026, with 4,725,142 ETAs issued — not far off twice the figure for second-placed Germany (2,682,654). Nationals of the EU’s 27 member states together received 15,071,067 ETAs, or 60.1% of all ETAs issued in the period; adding the EEA states and Switzerland lifts the European share to roughly two-thirds (64%), in line with the Home Office’s own commentary. Refusal rates are low for every major nationality, but not uniform: Romanian applicants faced a 1.06% refusal rate — roughly ten times the scheme-wide average of 0.10% — while Germany, France, Canada and Switzerland all sat at or below 0.06%.

Top 15 nationalities by ETAs issued, year ending March 2026 (2025 Q2 – 2026 Q1). Refusal rate is per nationality: refused ÷ all decisions for that nationality. Source: ETA_D02.

How many ETA applications are refused?

The Home Office reports three outcomes. An application is issued when the ETA is granted. It is refused when it is considered and turned down — there is no appeal against a refusal, and the applicant must apply for a visa instead. It is rejected when the application is not accepted as valid; a rejected applicant is told the reason and can simply apply again. Because rejections are recoverable, we calculate the refusal rate as refused decisions divided by all decisions, and report rejections separately.

Put differently: 99.59% of all decisions in the year ending March 2026 ended with an ETA being issued. Refusals have grown in absolute terms as the scheme expanded — from a few hundred per quarter in 2024 to 7,263 in Q1 2026 — but the refusal rate has stayed close to one in a thousand throughout.

ETA scheme timeline

Methodology and definitions

• Source data: Home Office, Electronic travel authorisation detailed datasets, year ending March 2026 (tables ETA_D01 applications, ETA_D02 outcomes), published 21 May 2026 as part of the Immigration system statistics quarterly release.
• Provisional data: the Home Office marks data up to the end of March 2026 as provisional; small revisions are possible in later editions (dataset note 1).
• Timing: an outcome in a given quarter may relate to an application made in a previous period (dataset note 2), so quarterly applications and decisions differ slightly.
• Nationality: “Other and unknown” includes cases where the applicant’s nationality is not yet known due to incomplete data (dataset note 3).
• Calculations: refusal and rejection rates on this page are calculated by us from the raw dataset (rate = outcome ÷ all decisions in the period, rounded to two decimal places). Totals are sums of the published quarterly rows; no adjustments are applied.
• Licence: contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

How to cite this page

Sources

1. Home Office, “Electronic travel authorisation detailed datasets, year ending March 2026” (tables ETA_D01 and ETA_D02), published 21 May 2026. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a05e24997000cb6073e4e2c/electronic-travel-authorisation-datasets-mar-2026.xlsx. Accessed 3 July 2026.
2. Home Office, Immigration system statistics data tables (landing page for each quarterly edition). https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/immigration-system-statistics-data-tables. Accessed 3 July 2026.
3. Home Office, “Immigration system statistics, year ending March 2026 — How many people come to the UK each year?” (official commentary). https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-march-2026/how-many-people-come-to-the-uk-each-year. Accessed 3 July 2026.
4. Home Office in the media, “Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) factsheet — April 2026”. https://homeofficemedia.blog.gov.uk/electronic-travel-authorisation-eta-factsheet-april-2026/. Accessed 3 July 2026.
5. GOV.UK, “Get an electronic travel authorisation (ETA) to visit the UK” (current fee and rules). https://www.gov.uk/eta. Accessed 3 July 2026.
6. Home Office, Immigration system statistics quarterly release (collection; next edition 27 August 2026). https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/immigration-statistics-quarterly-release. Accessed 3 July 2026.

Update schedule and changelog

The Home Office publishes ETA data four times a year within the Immigration system statistics quarterly release (February, May, August and November). The next edition — covering the year ending June 2026 — is scheduled for 27 August 2026, and this page will be refreshed within days of that release.

• 3 July 2026: page created with data up to 31 March 2026 (Home Office edition published 21 May 2026).