Quarterly Report · Issue 01 · H1 2026
The Digital Borders Report
How the world's borders are going digital. And where.
Key findings
138 countries now run some form of digital entry. 108 issue an eVisa. Africa leads the map with 48.
Borders opened and hardened in equal measure: of 56 policy changes in H1 2026, 23 expanded access and 23 tightened it.
The EU's EES and ETIAS went live, the single biggest digital-border shift of the year.
Entry is fast and modest in cost: 68 countries process in a day or less, at a median starting fee near $32.
Discovery is moving to AI. 1 in 5 EntryCheck sessions already arrive cited from ChatGPT.
Part I
The state of digital entry
The eVisa is the default. The eTA and the digital arrival card are the fast-growing edges of the shift.
Digital entry by region
Africa leads the digital-entry map with 48 countries, almost all eVisa. Europe skews to eTAs, the ETIAS effect.
Where a flat fee is published (34 of 138 countries).
Speed is now the norm, not the exception.
Part II
The shift, H1 2026
Opening and hardening, at once.
A dead heat across 56 official entry-policy changes. Travel is accelerating, but so is the digital transformation of border control. As countries modernize entry policies, crossing borders is becoming increasingly digital.
Selected movements
Part III
Who went digital
- Portal
- gov.uk/eta
- Cost
- £20*
- Processing
- 1 to 30 days
- Portal
- etakenya.go.ke
- Cost
- $30 to $100*
- Processing
- 1 to 3 days
- Portal
- ksavisa.sa
- Cost
- from $90*
- Processing
- Instant to 3 days
- Portal
- canada.ca/eta
- Cost
- ~$5*
- Processing
- 2 days
- Portal
- thaievisa.go.th
- Cost
- Varies*
- Processing
- 1 to 10 days
- Portal
- nzeta.immigration.govt.nz
- Cost
- Varies*
- Processing
- 1 to 10 days
*Government fees. EntryCheck does not charge or process applications.
Part IV
The new front door is AI
AI models go stale within months and cannot query real-time government databases. In 2025, travelers were stranded at borders and missed flights after chatbots gave wrong visa advice, one paid a $250 emergency fee after being told, incorrectly, she could get a visa on arrival.
As discovery moves to AI, value shifts from ranking on a search page to being the source machines trust. That layer must be verified, independent and machine-readable.
Methodology & sourcing
Registry figures come from EntryCheck's directory of official government entry portals for 138 countries. Each link is verified against the EntryCheck standard, checking the government domain, SSL, directness and ownership, and carries the date it was last checked. Policy-change figures are drawn from 56 tracked entry-policy changes across 48 news outlets and 32 countries. Third-party statistics are cited to their source.
How to cite
entrycheck.org/reports/digital-borders-report-h1-2026
Data as of 30 June 2026.
Build on this data
Everything here comes from a live API. Send travelers to the real official portal, give AI a verified source of truth, or get your destination's portal featured.