Using your passport

Apply for a new rapid or express passport with an expedited delivery time. For more information about these passports, see section Passport delivery.

If a passport cannot be delivered to you in time even with an expedited delivery time, a passport officer may grant you a temporary passport at their discretion. To apply for a temporary passport, you must visit a police station as the passport will be printed out while you wait. Please note that only the largest police stations have the necessary equipment for printing temporary passports. At the police station, you must prove that you are travelling soon for example by showing your travel ticket.

Temporary passports only cover the necessary time period, and a maximum of 12 months. Before applying for a temporary passport, contact the authorities of your country of destination to find out if a temporary passport will grant you entry to the country. Some countries do not accept a temporary passport as a travel document due to its considerably lower security level.

Before travelling abroad, contact the authorities of your country of destination to find out what travel document you will need, if you need to obtain a visa and if your passport needs to be valid for a certain period of time after you have left the country.

You can travel to the EU countries and certain other European countries with an identity card. As a rule, travel documents are not checked at the border in Schengen countries, though you must show it if requested. A travel document is usually not needed when travelling in the Nordic countries, but you must be able to prove your identity if requested.

On all current passports, the first two characters of the passport number are letters and the remaining seven characters are numbers. This information is useful when you are filling in an ESTA form or applying for a visa.

If you notice that your passport has become damaged, visit a police station or contact a Finnish mission if you are abroad. If your passport is broken or damaged, border control may deny you entry into the country.

Store your passport in a secure location and do not make any markings on it. Do not let your passport get wet.

Protect your passport against significant temperature, radiation or humidity changes and continuous sunlight. A strong impact or bending may damage the chip inside your passport or the binding.

Please note that some protective PVC covers may stick to the passport covers and damage them.

Finland is bound by an EU Regulation that stipulates that a facial photograph and fingerprints must be stored on all passport chips. The chip complies with the international standard developed by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a specialised agency of the United Nations.

The chip in your passport contains the same information that can be seen on the identity page: your facial photograph, your personal details and the details of the passport. The chip also contains your fingerprints, which are not shown on the identity page.

New Finnish passports comply with all ICAO and EU safety requirements. Finnish passports also include all voluntary security features enabled by the standard. The data contained on the chip is reliably protected against abuse using the Finnish Government's electronic signature, which ensures that only data stored by the authority that issued the passport is contained on the chip.

The microchip and antenna are embedded inside the laminated identity page. The microchip and antenna enable passports to be scanned wirelessly using a special chip reader. The chip has no independent power source. Instead, it obtains its energy from the reader via the antenna. This is why passport chips can only be read from a very short distance.

You can check your personal data on your passport’s chip at any time. You can check the data at any police station in Finland.

It has been suggested from time to time that the old 10-year passport validity period should be reintroduced. This would not be reasonable, as a longer validity period would make it more difficult to identify individuals from their passport photographs and jeopardise the information security of chips and passport security features.

The facial photograph shown on the identity page of passports is used for the visual identification of passport holders. The same photograph is also stored on the passport's chip to enable computerised facial recognition. The older the photograph is, the more unreliable both visual and computerised facial recognition becomes.

The biometric data and other personal information contained on the passport chip must be encrypted reliably to prevent abuse. The information security of passport chips will remain at a very high level as updates are introduced every few years. If passports were valid for ten or seven years at a time, the information security of the chip could be compromised before the passport expires. The longer the validity period is, the longer it takes for passports featuring more advanced information security to replace older, valid models. This also applies to physical security features that prevent the falsification of passports.

A passport is machine-readable, which means that its data can be read mechanically from the identity page, which contains the key data on the passport in letters, numbers and characters. Apart from emergency passports, all current Finnish passports are machine-readable. Some passports also have a chip containing the data on the passport.

A standard passport is machine-readable and has a chip.
An Åland Islands passport is machine-readable and has a chip.
A temporary passport is machine-readable but it does not have a chip.
A seaman’s passport is machine-readable but it does not have a chip.
An emergency passport is not machine-readable and it does not have a chip.
An alien’s passport is machine-readable and has a chip.
A temporary alien's passport is machine-readable but it does not have a chip.
A refugee’s travel document is machine-readable and has a chip.
A service passport is machine-readable and has a chip.
A diplomatic passport is machine-readable and has a chip.

A QR code is printed on page 3 of passports issued from 13.3.2023. This code contains the most important information on the passport, such as the passport number, expiry date and personal information of the bearer. The main purpose of the code is to facilitate the machine reading of the passport. The QR code is not present on seaman's passports and temporary passports.

• the passport holder loses or renounces their Finnish citizenship.
• the passport holder asks for their passport to be cancelled.
• the passport holder reports that their passport has been lost or stolen.
• the guardian of a minor (or social services) withdraws their consent for the minor in question to obtain a passport.
• social services ask that the passport of a minor who has been taken into care be cancelled.
• the passport must be destroyed under the Lost Property Act.

• the passport contains a clear error.
• the passport has been damaged or altered or contains any unauthorised markings.
• circumstances that would probably have led to the application being rejected come to light after the passport was issued.
• the passport is used by someone other than the passport holder.
• the Population Register Centre has revoked the associated certificate.
• the passport holder is believed to have died in a natural disaster, other major accident or as a victim of a crime.