Visa Waiver Program
program allowing 90-day visa free travel to the United States for citizens of some countries
The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) is a program of the United States government that allows nationals of specific countries to travel to the United States for tourism, business, or while in transit for up to 90 days without having to obtain a visa. It applies to all fifty U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as to Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, which also have an additional program with waivers for more nationalities; American Samoa has a similar but separate program.
The countries selected for the VWP by the U.S. government are generally regarded as developed countries, with high-income economies and a very high Human Development Index.
Other visa waivers exist for citizens of some neighboring or associated countries and territories.
Eligible countries
To be eligible for a visa waiver under the VWP, the traveler seeking admission to the United States must be a national of a country that has been designated by the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State, as a "program country". Permanent residents of designated countries who are not their nationals do not qualify for a visa waiver. The criteria for designation as program countries are specified in Section 217(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. § 1187). The criteria stress passport security, a visitor visa refusal rate below 3%, and a reciprocal visa waiver for U.S. nationals, among other requirements.
As of 2026, nationals of 42 countries are eligible for entry into the United States without a visa under the VWP:
Requirements
Passport
All visitors from VWP countries must hold a biometric passport.
All travelers must have individual passports.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Visa Waiver Program” as program allowing 90-day visa free travel to the United States for citizens of some countries. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as program allowing 90-day visa free travel to the United States for citizens of some countries. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q45177. VIAF identifies the subject as 35158855742244141521. The Library of Congress control number is no2020055384. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1187 and 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “Visa Waiver Program” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.