Can I Travel to the UK with a Canadian Passport?
Yes, and you still don’t need a traditional visa for a short visit. But since February 2026, the UK is strictly enforcing a new rule that catches out travelers who haven’t flown there since before the pandemic era of paperwork-free hops across the Atlantic.
For decades, flying from Toronto or Vancouver to London meant showing up with a passport and nothing else. That’s the habit a lot of Canadian travelers still carry into 2026, and it’s exactly the habit that now gets people stopped at check-in.
The UK hasn’t reintroduced visas for Canadian tourists. What it has done is add a mandatory pre-authorization step, similar in spirit to the Canadian eTA that visitors to Canada have used for years. It’s a smaller hurdle than a visa, but skipping it has the same practical result: no boarding pass.
The Short Answer
Yes, Canadian citizens can travel to the UK for tourism, business, family visits, or transit without applying for a visa, for stays of up to six months. What changed is that since January 8, 2025, every Canadian passport holder has also needed an Electronic Travel Authorisation, or ETA, approved before departure. The requirement existed on paper for over a year, but enforcement was deliberately lenient while travelers adjusted. That grace period ended on February 25, 2026. From that date, airlines, ferry operators, and Eurostar are legally required to verify an approved ETA before you’re allowed to board, with no exceptions and no leniency for travelers who simply didn’t know.
The ETA applies no matter how you’re arriving, air, sea, rail, or road, and no matter your reason for visiting. It’s linked electronically to your passport rather than stamped or printed, so there’s no physical document to carry, but that also means there’s nothing to show if you forgot to apply. The check happens invisibly when your passport is scanned.
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Applying for the ETA
The application is entirely online, done through the official UK government ETA website or app, and is designed to take only a few minutes. You’ll need the passport you plan to travel with, since the ETA is tied to its number, and any renewal means applying for a fresh ETA even if the old one hasn’t technically expired. Approval typically comes through within minutes to a few hours, though the UK government doesn’t guarantee a processing time, so applying at least several days before departure is the safer habit.
Cost and how long it lasts
The current fee is around £16 to £20, roughly $30 to $34 CAD depending on the exchange rate at the time. Once approved, the ETA is valid for two years, or until your passport expires, whichever comes first, and it covers unlimited trips to the UK during that window, with each individual visit capped at six months.
Every traveler needs their own
There’s no family or group application. Every Canadian passport holder needs an individual ETA, including infants and children, though a parent or guardian can complete the applications for the whole family from one device. Quebec residents applying in French should note the ETA application itself is in English, so having passport details ready in the machine-readable format helps avoid mismatched entries.
Who’s Exempt, and the Dual Citizenship Question
The ETA requirement doesn’t apply to travelers who hold British or Irish citizenship, even alongside Canadian citizenship, though dual citizens need to travel on their British or Irish passport, or another document proving right of abode, rather than their Canadian one. It’s worth checking here specifically: a surprising number of Canadians with a British-born parent or grandparent are eligible for British citizenship and don’t realize it, which would make the entire ETA question moot for them.
The requirement also doesn’t apply to travelers with a valid UK visa already in place, those with settled or pre-settled status, or passengers transiting airside through Heathrow or Manchester without passing through UK border control. If you’ll clear border control during a connection, even briefly, you do need an ETA for that transit.
A government travel advisory tells you the rule exists. It rarely tells you how many otherwise well-prepared travelers still get caught out by it in the first few months.
I’ve tracked a few of these new pre-authorization rollouts as different countries have introduced them, and the UK’s followed a familiar arc: quiet launch, a long grace period nobody quite believes will end, then a hard enforcement date that catches out exactly the travelers who assumed the old rules still applied. My practical takeaway for anyone flying to the UK from Canada now is simple. Apply for the ETA as soon as your travel dates are set, not the week before, and keep the confirmation email somewhere you can find it offline, since an airline check-in agent asking to see it is a normal part of boarding now, not a red flag.
Anyone piecing together a multi-country trip that includes the UK alongside Schengen destinations should also plan ahead for ETIAS, the separate European authorization Canadians will need starting later in 2026. For routing and documentation questions that go beyond a single-country trip, TorontoBook’s travel planning guides are a useful next stop before you finalize connecting flights.
Quick Facts
- Enforcement dateFebruary 25, 2026
- CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)
- Flight time from Toronto~7 hours
- InsuranceNot mandatory, strongly recommended
