The Schengen Area lets you cross much of Europe without a border check — but “much of Europe” is not the same as “the EU.”
Schengen is not the EU
It is the most common mix-up, and it quietly changes how long you can stay. The Schengen Area is a zone of countries that have abolished checks at their shared internal borders. Some are in the European Union and some are not — and two EU countries are not in Schengen at all.
According to the European Commission, the area is made up of 25 EU member states plus four non-EU associated countries: Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. That is why you can fly from Oslo to Lisbon without showing a passport, even though Norway has never joined the EU.
The 29 members
Here is the full list, grouped by how each country relates to the EU.
| Group | Countries |
|---|---|
| EU states in Schengen (25) | Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden |
| Non-EU associated (4) | Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein |
| EU but not in Schengen | Ireland (opt-out), Cyprus (joining) |
The European microstates — Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City — are not on the Commission’s list of members, though in practice they keep open borders with the Schengen countries that surround them.
Bulgaria and Romania: the newest members
The list grew in 2025. The European Commission confirms that Bulgaria and Romania became full Schengen members on 1 January 2025, when checks at their internal land borders were lifted. Controls at their air and sea borders had already been removed on 31 March 2024.
This matters for anyone counting days. Before 2025, a stop in Bulgaria or Romania sat outside the Schengen count, and some travellers used it as breathing room. Now it does not: days spent in Bulgaria and Romania draw from the same 90/180 allowance as days in France or Italy.
The two EU countries that stay outside
Two EU members are deliberately not in the Schengen Area, and travellers confuse both:
- Ireland has an opt-out. The Commission notes it is “exceptionally allowed by the Schengen Protocol not to apply the Schengen rules,” so it runs its own visa and border policy. Time in Ireland does not count toward Schengen.
- Cyprus “participates in the Schengen cooperation,” but the Commission says its internal border controls “have not yet been abolished,” and its integration is still under way. For now it operates its own short-stay rules.
Because these are separate regimes, a day in Dublin and a day in Berlin are counted under different rulebooks.
Why the list matters for your 90/180 budget
The reason the membership list is worth knowing is that the 29 countries share a single clock. Under the short-stay rule, most non-EU visitors may spend 90 days in any rolling 180-day period across the whole area — not 90 days per country. A week in Spain, a week in Germany and a weekend in Croatia all come out of the same 90. (We work through the arithmetic in The Schengen 90/180 rule, explained, and what it means for Britons in How long can a UK citizen stay in Europe?.)
That is where a country-by-country list turns into an arithmetic problem. To know how much of your 90 days is left, you have to know which trips were inside the area — a Schengen hop counts, an Irish or Cypriot one does not — and add up every entry and exit across all 29 states. The EU’s new Entry/Exit System now records those crossings at the border, but it logs the official stamp, not your running total.
That total is easy to lose track of and easy to get wrong from memory. Countly keeps it for you automatically and privately on your phone: it recognises which country you are in, counts only the days that fall inside the Schengen Area, and shows how many of your 90 days remain — no account, no passport-stamp archaeology.
This article is general information, not legal or immigration advice. Membership and border rules change; always check the official European Commission and national sources for your situation.