The 90/180 day rule, explained for chalet owners — with the 2026 EES changes

No rule generates more anxious email to this desk than 90/180. Most owners understand the headline — non-residents may spend 90 days in any 180 in the Schengen area — and almost nobody is confident about the mechanics. With the EU's Entry/Exit System (EES) reaching full operation at Geneva and the French airports this autumn, the era of the generously smudged passport stamp is closing. Time to get the mechanics right.

How the rule actually works

The 180-day window is rolling, not fixed. On any day you are in Schengen, look back 180 days: the total of your days present in that window — arrival and departure days both count — must not exceed 90. There is no reset date, no "new allowance in January," and the clock is Schengen-wide: a week in Spain spends the same allowance as a week in Megève.

• Half the year is possible — but only in a strict alternating pattern (90 in, 90 out). Real calendars rarely cooperate.
• The classic owner's year — Christmas fortnight, February half-term, three weeks in summer, autumn walking week — totals around 70 days and fits comfortably.
• The trap is the long summer. Ten weeks in the chalet followed by a Christmas booking will breach the window in December, not in August. The overstay surfaces months after the mistake.

What EES changes this autumn

EES replaces passport stamps with a biometric record — face and fingerprints — captured at first entry and reconciled automatically at every crossing. For owners, three practical consequences:

First, the arithmetic becomes the border's, not yours. Overstays that once survived on ambiguous stamps will be flagged at departure, and logged. Second, expect slower first crossings this winter: the registration takes a few minutes per traveller, and Geneva's French sector queues are already honest work. Third, the Swiss wrinkle matters locally: Geneva is a Schengen airport with two exits. Whether you leave by the French or Swiss sector makes no difference to the day count — it is all one zone — but your EES record will be created wherever you first cross an external border.

"The rule hasn't changed. What's changed is that it will now be enforced by a database instead of a squint."

Immigration adviser to several Alpine agencies

The legal routes to more time

The long-stay visitor visa (VLS-T)

France's temporary long-stay visa grants up to six consecutive months, once per rolling year, for visitors who can show means and comprehensive health cover, and who undertake not to work in France. It suits the retired owner wintering in the Alps. Apply from your country of residence, allow eight weeks, and note that VLS-T time does not count against your 90/180 allowance — a full season plus normal visits becomes lawful.

The six-month-plus routes

Owners wanting genuinely to live in France move to the VLS-TS and residence-permit track, which brings French tax residency into play — a different article, and a different accountant.

What does not work

Border-hopping to Switzerland resets nothing (same zone). "They never checked before" retires this autumn. And overstays now carry recorded consequences: fines, and entry bans that make next season's plans academic.

The owner's checklist

• Track days in a proper app or spreadsheet, counting arrival and departure days.
• Before booking a long summer, run the December window backwards.
• If your pattern regularly brushes 90 days, price the VLS-T into your annual costs — it is paperwork, not hardship.
• Allow extra time at Geneva for first EES registration this winter.

Three worked calendars

Abstractions mislead; calendars don't. Here are three owner-years run through the rolling-window arithmetic:

Owner A — the classic pattern (compliant)

Comfortable throughout. Note how the July block's window includes February — but February's days have mostly rolled out of range by mid-summer.

Owner B — the long summer (breach in December)

Same owner, but the summer stay runs 15 June to 5 September: 83 days. Lawful on its own. But arrive on 20 December for Christmas and the 180-day lookback from any late-December day still contains roughly 75 summer days — the tenth day of the Christmas stay breaches. The mistake was made in June; the fine arrives in December.

Owner C — the alternator (maximum legal presence)

In 90, out 90, in 90: about 182 days a year, entirely lawful, socially exhausting. The pattern that actually delivers "half the year in the Alps" without a visa allows almost no flexibility — one funeral, one wedding, one hospital visit on the wrong side of the border and the pattern breaks.

EES first, ETIAS after

Two systems are arriving, and owners persistently conflate them. The Entry/Exit System (EES) is the biometric register described above — it changes enforcement, not entitlement. Following it, the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) adds a pre-travel authorisation for visa-exempt nationals — an online application, a fee of €20 for adults, validity of three years. It is an authorisation to travel, not a visa, and it does not extend the 90/180 allowance by a single day. The EU's official timeline currently points to ETIAS becoming operational in the last quarter of 2026, with a grace period; check the official page rather than the travel press, which has repeatedly jumped the gun on dates.

The tax-residency tripwire

A second rule lives in the shadow of the first, and it is fiscal, not migratory. Spend enough time in France — or keep your principal home, main economic interests or family foyer there — and you may become French tax resident under Article 4B of the tax code, whatever your visa status says. The "183 days" figure that circulates in bar conversations is one test among several, not a safe harbour: a British owner who spends 170 days in Megève, works remotely from the chalet, and whose spouse lives there year-round can be French tax resident at 170 days. The criteria are set out (in English) on the tax administration's international pages at impots.gouv.fr. If your VLS-T ambitions run to a full six-month season every year, take paid advice before, not after — France's exit from the UK double-tax treaty's grey areas is unforgiving of improvisation.

The VLS-T in practice: what applicants report

• Lead time: allow eight to ten weeks from online application at france-visas.gouv.fr to passport return, longer before ski season.
• Means test: consulates commonly look for resources around the French minimum wage per month of stay; pensions and investment income qualify.
• Insurance: comprehensive private cover for the full validity, including mountain activities — see our rescue-costs explainer for why the mountain clauses matter.
• The undertaking not to work includes remote work for a foreign employer only ambiguously; consulates differ, and the safe reading is strict.

Five persistent myths, corrected

• "The 90 days reset in January." No. The window rolls daily; there is no calendar reset of any kind.
• "Days in Switzerland don't count." They count identically — Switzerland is in Schengen. Nor does a night in Geneva "break" a stay.
• "Owning property earns extra days." Ownership confers no immigration status whatsoever. France, unlike some jurisdictions, has no golden-visa route via property purchase.
• "They can't check historical stays." Pre-EES stamps were fallible; EES records are not, and they persist for three years. The system's first winter will retro-illuminate patterns some owners believed private.
• "A UK company posting me here fixes it." Business travel spends the same 90 days. Work performed in France additionally raises work-permit and posted-worker questions — a different, sharper set of teeth.

The rule rewards the one virtue the mountains also reward: counting honestly. Owners who build the habit — a shared spreadsheet, one of the several dedicated apps, a standing check before any booking — report that compliance recedes into background administration within a season. The ones who improvise are the ones writing to this desk in December. Official guidance for UK citizens sits on gov.uk's France travel pages, and the French consular network's own explainers at uk.ambafrance.org are clearer than most of what circulates in owner forums.

Related: the surtax those extra days help justify.

[Preview edition — this article is illustrative while Issue No. 1 is in preparation.]