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The Unit­ed King­dom Gov­ern­ment has an­nounced that, with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, all na­tion­als of Trinidad and To­ba­go will now re­quire a visa to en­ter the UK, in­clud­ing for short vis­its. The de­ci­sion, made pub­lic on 12 March 2025, comes in re­sponse to what the UK Gov­ern­ment de­scribed as a “sig­nif­i­cant in­crease” in T&T na­tion­als ar­riv­ing as vis­i­tors and then claim­ing asy­lum.

Ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial re­lease from the UK Gov­ern­ment, the new visa re­quire­ment is in­tend­ed to ad­dress the mis­use of the Elec­tron­ic Trav­el Au­tho­ri­sa­tion (ETA) sys­tem and to pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of the UK’s im­mi­gra­tion process. “The UK’s re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains a strong and friend­ly one,” the state­ment said, but added that the de­ci­sion “has not been tak­en light­ly.”

A re­quire­ment for tran­sit visas will al­so be in­tro­duced from 00:01 on 13 March. How­ev­er, a six-week tran­si­tion pe­ri­od has been im­ple­ment­ed. Trav­ellers who booked their trav­el and ob­tained an ETA be­fore the changes will be al­lowed to en­ter the UK with­out a visa un­til 15:00 BST on 23 April 2025. Those al­ready in the UK will not be af­fect­ed dur­ing the re­main­der of their stay but will need a visa for fu­ture vis­its.