# How the counting actually works.

> Plain explanations of the rules that decide how long you can stay — rolling windows, per-entry allowances, which days count, and where the long stays are.

Source: https://doastretch.com/guides/

Guides · 2026

Plain explanations of the rules that decide how long you can stay — rolling windows, per-entry allowances, which days count, and where the long stays are.

- [Do arrival and departure days count towards your visa days? \[2026\]](https://doastretch.com/guides/do-entry-and-exit-days-count/) Both the day you arrive and the day you leave count as days of presence under the Schengen rule and most visitor allowances. A trip that lands on the 1st and departs on the 10th costs ten days, not nine. It is the most common off-by-one in visa-day counting, and it always errs in the direction that produces an overstay.
- [EES 2026: how Schengen days are counted \[2026\]](https://doastretch.com/guides/ees-2026-how-schengen-days-are-counted/) EES records external-border entries and exits with passport and biometric data; it does not change the Schengen rule of 90 days in any rolling 180. Entry and exit calendar dates still count across the area.
- [The hardest visa counting rules to get right \[2026\]](https://doastretch.com/guides/hardest-visa-counting-rules/) The visa rules people get wrong are the ones whose clock is not the clock in front of you. A rolling window where nobody expects one, a window that is not 90 days in 180, an annual cap sitting on top of the per-visit allowance, and a regional clock shared with three neighbours. Stretch publishes 1,160 passport-to-destination routes carrying a day count, 322 of them rolling, across 30 destinations of which 13 sit outside the Schengen area. Two of those four shapes our arithmetic implements. Two it does not, and this page says which.
- [Where can you stay visa-free the longest? The published maximums \[2026\]](https://doastretch.com/guides/longest-visa-free-stays/) The longest visa-free stay Stretch publishes is 365 days, reached at Albania, Georgia. But the headline number is the least useful thing about a destination. A long allowance you cannot restart is worth less than a shorter one you can, and across the 72 destinations where we publish a day count the figure usually depends on which passport you hold — so the maximum is one route, not the country.
- [Per-entry or rolling window? The two ways countries count your days \[2026\]](https://doastretch.com/guides/per-entry-vs-rolling-window/) A per-entry allowance restarts when you leave. A rolling window does not — days age out on the calendar instead, so a border run buys you nothing. Of the 1,160 passport-to-destination routes Stretch publishes that carry a day count, 838 are per-entry and 322 are rolling — and 13 of the 30 rolling destinations sit outside the Schengen area entirely. Which kind you are under decides whether stepping across a border resets anything.
- [Visa-free days by passport: what your passport actually gets \[2026\]](https://doastretch.com/guides/visa-free-days-by-passport/) Of the 1,555 passport-to-destination routes Stretch publishes, 1,160 carry a day count and 167 are free-movement rights with no day count at all. Read down the table by passport and the surprise is how little the reach past 90 days moves between passports. A passport with fewer counted routes is not getting fewer days — it has fewer clocks running on it, and for an EU passport that is free movement, which has no day count because there is nothing to count.

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