Lisbon Airport Drops EES Border Checks for Three Months

Portugal has confirmed that Humberto Delgado Airport in Lisbon will suspend the EU Entry-Exit System (EES) for a period of three months. The decision reverts border processing for non-EU nationals to traditional manual passport checks, replacing the biometric kiosk system — fingerprint scanning and facial imaging — that launched across the Schengen area in late 2025.

Why the suspension happened

The EES rollout created severe bottlenecks at Lisbon airport. Queues of up to four hours formed when passenger volumes exceeded kiosk capacity, staff lacked sufficient training, and peak-season traffic compounded the delays. Other Schengen airports across France, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Croatia reported similar problems, but Portugal’s response at Lisbon was the most decisive: a full three-month halt to EES processing.

In some cases before the formal suspension, border authorities at Lisbon were already allowing passengers to pass without full biometric registration during the worst congestion periods — a sign the system was unworkable under current conditions.

What changes during the suspension

Non-EU travelers arriving at or departing from Humberto Delgado Airport will not need to use biometric kiosks. Border officers will process passports manually, as was standard before EES launched. This applies to travelers from the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and all other non-EU nationalities. For EU and Schengen passport holders, the process was never affected by EES and remains the same.

Queues at border control should be meaningfully shorter during the suspension period than they were in the weeks immediately following the EES launch.

Faro and Porto are separate airports

The three-month suspension covers Humberto Delgado specifically. Faro Airport in the Algarve and Porto’s Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport are separate operations. Travelers transiting through those airports should check current EES status independently, as procedures may differ.

Planning ahead

The suspension removes a significant source of uncertainty for summer travel through Lisbon. Even with manual processing, we recommend arriving at the airport with a standard extra buffer during peak periods. Our guide to flights into Portugal has current information on transit times and check-in requirements. Entry rules by nationality are covered in our Portugal visa and entry guide.

Our Lisbon city guide covers transport from the airport to the city centre and onward connections to Porto and the Algarve — useful reference once we are through arrivals.