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Where can you still travel to from the UK? We make a list

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With weekly changes to the UK travel quarantine list, it is difficult to keep track of where you can travel to from the UK. Which countries can you visit from UK without having to quarantine on your return?

For the last few weeks we’ve been running a Friday article featuring the latest changes to the list of countries where you can travel without having to quarantine on your return.

Where can you still travel to from the UK?

What is more useful, of course, is a list of countries where you CAN travel freely from the UK without having to quarantine on your return.

Updates since publication:

Iceland – moved to ‘no’ as Foreign Office does not mention that five days quarantine is needed

Grenada – moved to ‘no’ due to requirement to wear a tracker bracelet and restrictions on your movement

Where can you can currently travel to from the UK?

Here is the list countries which are not on the Foreign Office ‘do not visit’ list. If you are reading this article days or weeks after the date of publication, you will find the latest version on gov.uk here.

Of course, there is no guarantee that these countries will allow you in. Australia and New Zealand are on the list, for example, but they aren’t going to welcome you.

To find out whether you qualify to enter any particular country – and what covid test results may be required – click the link under each country name. This takes you to the relevant page on the Foreign Office website.

We have added a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ by each country. This is a one word summary of whether you could enter if you wished WITHOUT compulsory quarantine on arrival. Obviously seek your own advice if you look to book, because one word summaries never tell the full story.

There are other countries which you can enter freely as a UK resident but which would require you to quarantine when you returned to the UK. The UAE, for example, is not on the list below because whilst you can enter Dubai you need to quarantine when you come home.

Countries you can travel to from the UK without quarantine
Is the German coast your best bet?

Key:

‘Yes’ – you can enter the country without compulsory quarantine or restriction on movement, and will not have to quarantine on your return to the UK

‘No’ – UK arrivals are either banned outright or are forced to quarantine or face a restriction on movement for over 24 hours – although if you could enter you would not need to quarantine on your return to the UK

Countries which are NOT on the Foreign Office ‘do not travel’ list:

Europe

Americas

Asia-Pacific

Africa

Antarctica

Comments (146)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • davef says:

    Iceland has had 5/14 day mandatory quarrantine since 19th August

  • John says:

    Good luck getting to Liechtenstein and St Pierre et Miquelon…. I suppose you could attempt to drive to the former from Germany or Italy without stopping, but there is a chance you’ll get stopped by customs officers.

    Also nonsensical is that some countries have San Marino on their green list but not Italy

    • John says:

      Although actually some countries don’t count being in a country if you merely transit it (even using public transport) for less than a certain number of hours, so San Marino might make sense (anyway, much of it is honour-based especially within Schengen)

  • Lumma says:

    Gibraltar. The place with the highest new cases per capita

    • Philip says:

      The reason that it seems there are more “cases” is because there has been more testing.

      Moreover, the PCR test being used is notorious for false positives, so the number of “cases” will be inflated – https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20080911v3.full.pdf

      But the most important point to note is that there is now longer any correlation between “cases” and deaths.

      In the UK we are told that there has been a massive increases in the number of “cases”, yet we are approaching zero new deaths from/with Covid19.

      The mirror graphs in this tweet illustrate this point very well – https://twitter.com/FatEmperor/status/1295726964733607938

      In short the Pandemic has been replaced by a Casedemic, as explained here – https://twitter.com/FatEmperor/status/1293576086413103109

      • Rob says:

        Hope you’re not suggesting that the 1 death reported yesterday wasn’t worth wrecking the economy for ….

        • The Savage Squirrel says:

          Well it’s actually >41,000 deaths as Covid didn’t just happen yesterday – and for context at a national death rate/month from Mar-Jul higher than the UK casualty rate while World War 2 was raging (and that was with lockdown); so lets not pretend it was trivial…
          But your point is becoming valid given that natural selection appears to have, as you would expect, produced an attenuated virus over time (and just as significantly, lockdown has quietly bought a few months for medics to learn how to treat a new disease far more effectively).

      • Nick_C says:

        Reason cases are rising but deaths are not is because young people are ignoring social distancing.

        Young healthy people don’t die from Covid. Many will not even know they have it.

        In my rural area, all new cases the other week were in the 20 to 30 age group.

        • Peter K says:

          Interesting piece from the BBC here about whether it is time to move on with coronavirus.
          https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53951764
          TLDR:
          Younger people getting it in UK so less hospital admissions and better treatment once there.
          However in France where COVID is really taking off again hospital admissions are also on the up (800 a week now from 500 a week, 6 weeks ago).
          We don’t know what will happen in the autumn/winter but another spike is likely unless everyone remains cautious.

          • Lady London says:

            The French threw social distancing to the winds once their lockdown ended and masks became mandatory. This is the consequence.

            Winter worries me too @Peter K as the virus seems to survive much longer in the cold. This looks to be what happened in the Melbourne resurgence in the Australian winter.

      • Lady London says:

        it could just mean that as the vulnerable are now sef-isolating those who do get it are pretty much only those who won’t die from it.

        So this might not mean its any less deadly just the people who need to are hiding better.

    • David says:

      You have to be very careful when trying to make comparative stats for very small populations such as Gibraltar.
      – e.g. a single (contained) outbreak can in per capita terms look far worse % terms than a much bigger problem in a larger country.

      To see how silly it gets, look at … say… the number of firefighters per capita. That would suggest Gibraltar has a massive problem with fires (it doesn’t) Rather the true reason, some things just don’t scale down the same way – by the time you have 3 shifts of cover etc, and you don’t get the averaging out effects if larger populations.

      Same here.

  • Darren says:

    Thanks for the article as it gives a useful snapshot of the situation at the moment, unfortunately I can see 3 big players looking very vulnerable. I have an Algarve trip planned in 2 weeks which is looking pretty shaky.

    • Ian says:

      Why? Portugal is pretty safe currently.

      • Brian says:

        Because Portugal cases in recent days have been well over the travel corridor safe threshold and the seven day average will likely soon be over it too meaning quarantine again unfortunately.

        • Paul Hickey says:

          Some of these places may let you in but are very restricted once there. St Lucia for example you need a paid for text and can’t leave your hotel unless on hotel organised excursion, apparently. Cambodia needs a £3k deposit ++….. worth a sub mention.

        • Nick_C says:

          My partner is heading to Portugal on Wednesday for 16 days.

          Whatever the law says at that time, he will be self isolating for a week when he returns. He’ll be in the back of the car with a mask on and the windows open when I collect him from the airport.

          • Rob says:

            Sensible, as it keeps him safe from you and the odds are currently higher that you catch it whilst he is away.

          • Nick_C says:

            Setting aside the uninformed conjecture as to what each of us will be doing while we are apart.

            And the fact that he will be spending 5 hours in a metal tube with around 200 strangers with no social distancing.

            The recorded rate of infection is 60% higher in Portugal than it is in the UK.

          • Stoneman says:

            The idea that there is no social distancing on a plane is a little misleading. You are not actually sat next to each individual passenger for the 15 minutes or so it would take a normally healthy person to catch Covid. Indeed, if you sat in business class next to someone you lived with and wore an N95 mask you would have to be incredibly unlucky to catch Covid. But whatever. It seems that the country is now full of people that are statisticians, epidemiologists, MDs, and hypochondriacs all rolled into one.

      • Darren says:

        I think Harry T hit the sweetspot and managed to get to Portugal while it’s on the list, but as Brian said the numbers have steadily risen over the last week and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it follow France/Spain etc.
        Italy was my alternate but that doesn’t look good either.

        • Harry T says:

          Combination of luck and looking at the numbers, really. Sorry, it really does look like there won’t be anywhere to go within a few weeks without a returning quarantine 😒

  • Sarah says:

    You can get into Iceland but only with a 14 day quarantine, or a test on arrival followed by approx 5 days quarantine and then another test. Only after a second negative test are you allowed to move freely.

  • Patrycja says:

    This is a very helpful article (I appreciate things change weekly).
    Despite travel being “more adventurous” at the moment we’ve had great holidays this summer. We spent a week in Majorca in July (had to quarantine on arrival) and just came back from two weeks in Poland(no quarantine). I am looking for another week away at the end of September so keeping an eye on the travel corridors and cases per 100,000.

    Fo anyone interested, checks at Edinburgh airport have got stricter, they now separate arrivals and check the arrival form of around 30% people. It took forever to get through as many people haven’t filled in it.

  • Vit says:

    Cambodia makes it feeling so welcome but. Please don’t forget your USD3500 deposit in cash! 😉

    • John W says:

      I go to Cambodia each year. Depositing $3000 at the airport is very unlikely for me due to the fact I would not be sure you would get it back promptly on departure !

      • Vit says:

        Hahaha! Welcome to (s)Cammbodia John! To be fair, we are still one of the most friendly people in the world! 😉

        • John W says:

          You sure are VIT , I have cambodian friends, that is the reason for my regular visits! – Even they say not to pay the $3000 !!

  • David Beckett says:

    Cuba is quarantine free on arrival and on return to the U.K.

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