Should I renew my passport to travel to South America?

Simon Calder on passport renewal, travelling to Turkey and Irish passport cards

A panoramic view of Bogota – the capital of Colombia (Getty/iStock)

Q Another passport question for you, I’m afraid. I am looking forward to a six-week trip at the end of the year to South America – probably early November to mid-December. My passport was issued on 12 December 2013 and expires on 12 May 2024. Should I renew it before I travel? I’d really prefer not to because I have a number of business and family trips in the coming months.

Susie L

A I found researching the answer for you fascinating because of the sharply varied policies across the 13 nations of South America. The “Southern Cone” trio of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, as well as Paraguay, have no minimum validity requirement. If your journey involves only those countries, there is no need to renew. The next half-dozen – Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru and Suriname – require you to have six months remaining on your passport from the date of arrival to the expiry date. That means you could not arrive in any of them with your current passport after 12 November, though you could, for example, be in Peru from 1 to 20 November and then head south to Chile, carefully avoiding Bolivia.