Child passports: five years, and the trap at sixteen

A child passport runs for half as long as an adult one, which means a family of four rarely has four passports that expire together. The date that catches people out is not usually the child's expiry date. It is the birthday.

Published 14 August 2026. Last checked against GOV.UK on 10 September 2026.

Five years, not ten

HM Passport Office issues child passports for 5 years and adult passports for 10. A child passport covers anyone under 16.

The shorter term exists because the photograph has to stay useful. A face at four does not resemble a face at nine closely enough for a document meant to prove identity for a decade, so the shorter cycle is the trade-off.

The practical effect is that a household's passports drift out of alignment almost immediately. Two adults renewing together and a child renewing on a five year cycle produce three separate expiry dates, and the one nobody has written down is the one that expires first.

What happens at sixteen

This is the part that surprises people. A child passport does not upgrade itself, and a sixteenth birthday does not extend it.

GOV.UK's position is that once a child turns 16, or will be within 3 weeks, they follow the process for renewing or replacing an adult passport, or apply for a first adult passport if they have never held a UK passport. Practically that means a teenager can be sitting on a child passport with two years left to run and still need an adult one, because the document was issued to a child and the applicant is no longer one.

Who applies

An application for a child has to be made by somebody with parental responsibility for that child, and both parents' details are required on the application. A child cannot apply for themselves.

That has consequences for timing in separated families, where gathering details takes longer than filling the form, and for anybody planning to renew during a period when a parent is away.

What it costs

The published fees for a child passport are £66.50 to apply online and £80 on a paper form from the Post Office. The 54 page frequent traveller version costs £80.50 online and £94 on paper.

Compared with an adult passport at £102 online, a child passport is cheaper per document but not per year: five years for £66.50 works out at more per year than ten years for £102. That is worth knowing, but it is not a decision anybody gets to make, because the term is set by age rather than choice.

The European rules apply to children too

A child's passport faces exactly the same tests at a Schengen border as an adult's. It needs a date of issue less than 10 years before the date of arrival, which a five year passport passes automatically, and an expiry date at least 3 months after the date the family plans to leave the Schengen area.

It is the second rule that matters here. A child passport in its final year can easily be inside three months of expiry when the holiday actually happens, and it is the child's document rather than the parents' that fails. Checking every passport in the household against the trip, not just the ones belonging to the people who booked it, takes a couple of minutes. The checker will run each one in turn.

The Entry/Exit System and children

The EU's Entry/Exit System became fully operational on 10 April 2026 and replaced passport stamping for non-EU travellers on short stays. It records travel document data, a facial image and, for those it applies to, fingerprints, along with the date and place of entry and exit.

Registration happens at the border and there is no fee, but it does take time, and doing it for a whole family at once takes longer than doing it for one traveller. If you are crossing an external Schengen border for the first time since the system took effect, build that into the airport timings rather than the taxi timings.

A workable system for a family

• Write down every passport's issue date, expiry date and the holder's date of birth in one place, and keep it where the person who books the holidays will see it.
• Set a reminder nine months before the earliest expiry date in the household, not one month before.
• Flag any sixteenth birthday falling in the next two years as a passport event in its own right.
• Check the child's passport against the trip whenever you check your own, since it will usually be the tighter of the two.
• Allow the standard processing time, which HM Passport Office quotes as usually within 3 weeks from when it receives your documents, and remember school holidays are the busy season for everyone at once.

If you have left it late

The 1 week Fast Track service covers child passports and costs £156.50, or £170.50 for the 54 page version. The earliest appointment is the day after you apply, with the passport couriered a week after the appointment. The 1 day Premium service does not cover children: it can only be used to renew an adult passport.

That asymmetry is worth knowing before a panic sets in. For an adult there is a same-week option. For a child the fastest published route is the Fast Track appointment, and a week after it.