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What are the UK’s eGates—and how do they work?
The UK’s eGates—officially called ePassport gates—are automated passport control checkpoints operated by Border Force at airports and international rail terminals across the country. To find them, simply follow the signs in passport control.
Instead of handing your passport to an immigration officer, eligible travelers can scan their passport themselves, step into a gate, and look into a camera that matches their face to the biometric photo stored in their passport chip. If everything checks out, the gates open automatically, and travelers can continue into the airport.
The gates first launched in the late 2000s for British and European travelers, but the program expanded significantly in 2019 when the UK added travelers from countries including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea.
When functioning normally, the process can take less than a minute and dramatically reduce wait times compared to traditional passport control lines. But the system is not flawless: Travelers are occasionally flagged for manual screening, and several nationwide outages in recent years have caused significant delays at UK airports.
Which airports have eGates?
The gates are available at many of the UK’s busiest international airports, including:
- Heathrow Airport
- Gatwick Airport
- Manchester Airport
- Edinburgh Airport
- Birmingham Airport
- Glasgow Airport
- London Stansted Airport
- London Luton Airport
- London City Airport
- Bristol Airport
- East Midlands Airport
- Newcastle Airport
- Cardiff Airport
They’re also available at Eurostar terminals in Paris and Brussels, where UK immigration checks happen before passengers board trains bound for London. All told, the UK now has nearly 300 eGates in operation.
Who can use the UK eGates?
Eligible users currently include citizens of:
- The United Kingdom
- European Union member states
- The United States
- Australia
- Canada
- Iceland
- Japan
- Liechtenstein
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Switzerland
Passengers generally must have a biometric passport—typically identified by the small camera-like chip symbol on the front cover—to use the gates.
Starting July 8, 2026, travelers ages 8 and older will also become eligible, provided they are traveling with an adult and are at least 120 centimeters (about 3 feet 11 inches) tall so the facial-recognition cameras can properly scan them. Children under 8 (and, typically, the parents or guardian they’re traveling with) will still need to use staffed immigration lanes.
