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British Citizens must hold a valid 10-year passport. Please note that certain destinations insist on at least 6 months validity from the return date. Also, if you're travelling to the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein from 1^st January 2021 your passport must be less than 10 years old and will also need to have at least six months validity on the day of departure.

If you renewed your current passport before the previous one expired, extra months may have been added to its expiry date, meaning it's valid for longer than 10 years. It's important to consider that any extra months on your passport over 10 years may not count towards the minimum period needed to travel.

So, for example, if your passport was issued on 1 December 2011, but has an expiry date of 1 February 2022 - because you renewed it early - countries you're travelling to may view its expiry date as 1 December 2021. This works out as exactly 10 years since its date of issue. So, to work out how many months you had left on your passport, you'd need to count backwards from 1 December 2021.

Visit the HM Passport Office website and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website for more details.

For all other nationalities, you'll need to check the embassy of the country you're planning to travel to, and with the passport office.