The 90/180 rule for UK second-home owners
Before Brexit, a house in the Dordogne or on the Costa Blanca meant coming and going as you liked. Now every visit draws on one allowance, and the year has to be planned around it.
Short answer
Under the 90/180 rule, UK second home owners are visitors like any other British traveller: at most 90 days in any 180 in the whole Schengen Area. Owning property in France, Spain or Portugal adds no days. Fitted well, that still allows up to about half the year there. To stay longer, you need a long-stay visa from the country where the home is.
Get Rollbook Plan each stay against your 90 days before you book. Free on Android, no account.
Why the house doesn’t change the count
Since 1 January 2021 British citizens have been third-country nationals in the Schengen Area. The short-stay rule in Regulation (EU) 2016/399 counts days of presence, not where you sleep or what you own, so owning the house is not a reason to stay longer. Two consequences catch owners out:
- Every Schengen country shares the same 90 days. A week driving through France to reach a house in Spain, or a weekend in Barcelona from a house in the south of France, comes out of the same allowance as the time at home.
- Travel days count at both ends. The day the ferry lands in Caen and the day you drive back onto it are both days in the area. A “three-month” stay from 1 January to 1 April is 91 days, one too many.
The count itself is a rolling window over the last 180 days; the 90/180 rule explained works through it with examples.
Two year plans that fit
Three months on, three months off
The most common owner’s pattern is one long stay, a gap of the same length, then another long stay. Worked for 2027:
| Stay | Dates | Days |
|---|---|---|
| Winter | 01/01/2027 – 31/03/2027 | 90 |
| Summer | 30/06/2027 – 27/09/2027 | 90 |
| In 2027 | next arrival from 27/12/2027 | 180 |
Leaving on 31 March, the earliest return is 30 June, after 90 full days in the UK. From then on each new day replaces a winter day that leaves the window, so the summer stay can run to 27 September, and the next one can start on 27 December. Arrive on 29 June instead and the count is 91 on the first day. When you can return to Schengen explains why a split year doesn’t work out this neatly.
A month on, a month off
Owners who prefer shorter, more frequent visits can alternate 30 days in the area with 30 days out. Any 180-day window then holds three 60-day cycles, so the count never goes above 90, however long you keep it up. It suits people who still work in the UK, at the cost of more travel days, each of which counts.
Mixed patterns work too, but they are the ones that go wrong: a long summer stay planned around a count that was right in spring, after a short Easter trip that nobody wrote down.
Staying longer than 90 days
The way to spend more than 90 days in 180 in one country is a national long-stay visa from that country, applied for before you travel. France, Spain and Portugal each have their own visas for people who don’t intend to work, with their own conditions on income, health cover and paperwork, and those conditions change. Their consulates in the UK set them, so start there, not with a forum thread. A long-stay visa also changes how your days are counted, so ask the consulate how it applies to your plans, including time you spend in other Schengen countries.
Proposals to let British owners stay longer under the short-stay rules have been reported in the press over the years. None is something to plan around until it is law and in force.
Keeping a record you can show
Since April 2026 the EU’s Entry/Exit System has recorded each crossing at the external border instead of a passport stamp, and it computes your stay automatically (what EES records). That makes your own record more important, not less: it is how you check your count before the border does, and how you plan the next visit.
That is what Rollbook is built for. It starts with the United Kingdom as your home country, keeps every trip as a line in a ledger, checks a planned stay before you book and shows the date you would have to leave. Its free statement for the border lists each entry and exit of the last 180 days with the total. Your ledger stays on your phone, and you can export it to a file at any time, free.
This guide explains how short-stay days are counted. It is not legal or tax advice. Time spent abroad can also matter for UK tax residence, which follows different rules; ask an adviser about that.
Rollbook: plan the year around your 90 daysWrite in your stays once. Rollbook shows days left today, checks your next trip before you book, and keeps a record you can show at the border. Free on Android, with no account.
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