Many countries want 6 months left on your passport, and renewal can take weeks. How to work out your real deadline and set reminders that give you enough time.
If you travel abroad, start renewing your passport about 9 months before it expires. Many countries won't let you in with less than 6 months left on it, and renewal can take 10 weeks or more depending on where you apply. Set your first reminder at that 9-month mark, or earlier if you already have a trip booked.
The date printed in your passport isn't really the deadline. The deadline is the last day it's still valid enough to travel on, minus however long your passport office takes.
The country you're flying to decides how much validity your passport needs, not the country that issued it. Two common rules:
Rules change and they differ by country, so check the entry rules for where you're going before you book. Your own government's travel advice pages usually list them.
This depends a lot on your country and whether anything in your application needs checking. A few examples, checked in September 2026:
One more thing from the UK's renewal page: don't book travel until you have a valid passport, because your new passport will have a different number from the old one.
Count back from the expiry date:
Say your passport expires on 10 June 2027. Six months before that is 10 December 2026, the last day it works for a 6-month country. Ten weeks before that is 1 October 2026. A month's buffer puts your start date at 1 September 2026, about 9 months before the date in the passport.
One reminder on the start date isn't enough, because that's exactly the kind of reminder that goes off on a busy day and gets dismissed. Set these:
If you have a trip booked, work back from the trip date too, and use whichever start date comes first. There's more on spacing reminders out in how to remember something that's weeks or months away.
Visas and residence permits work the same way, with higher stakes. If you live somewhere on a permit, letting it expire can leave you without the right to stay or work.
The rules are specific to each country and each type of permit, so the only reliable source is whoever issued it. As one example, the UK says you must apply to extend a Skilled Worker visa before your current one expires, and you'll usually get a decision within 8 weeks.
Work backwards the same way: expiry date, minus the decision time, minus time to collect what you need. Employer letters, bank statements and translated documents can take weeks on their own. Put a reminder at each step.
Passports are usually the one people remember. These catch people out more often:
Write them all down with their expiry dates, and set a reminder once a year to go through the list.
Nudge is our app, and this is our blog.
Nudge is a reminder app that keeps checking in until it's done. You type or say the reminder the way you'd say it to a person: "my passport expires on 10 June 2027, remind me on 1 September 2026 to start the renewal." Nudge sets up the task with that date and reminds you in the days before it. If the date passes and you haven't marked it done, it keeps checking back instead of dropping it. On the Free plan that's the next day, day 3 and day 7. On Pro, Nudge plans the follow-ups itself for up to 14 days.
You can ask for the other reminders from the list above in the same message: "and remind me on 1 October to apply, and on 10 December that my passport runs out for 6-month countries."
For the one date you can't miss, like a permit that expires or an appointment at the passport office, you can switch the reminder to a real alarm on an iPhone with iOS 26 or later. It rings on the lock screen even with the phone on silent. For the yearly check of everyone's documents, make it a routine that repeats every year.
Reminders, follow-ups, alarms and routines are all on the Free plan. Nudge works on iPhone and on the web, and on Android you use the web app in your browser.
Nudge reads your calendar and learns your patterns, then holds each reminder until a moment you can use.