Greece: visa and entry rules
What you need to get in, how long you may stay, and what an overstay costs
Greece's borders: every crossing point
Greece's land border crossings, listed by the neighbours it shares a border with:
With Turkey: Kipoi - Ipsala on the Istanbul - Thessaloniki road, and Kastanies - Pazarkule near Edirne. This is the key direction: it is where people who have reached Turkey without a visa enter the Schengen area overland.
With Bulgaria: Promachonas - Kulata, the main crossing; the border is inside the Schengen area, but checks do happen.
With North Macedonia: Evzoni - Bogorodica.
With Albania: Kakavia and Krystallopigi.
By sea to Italy there are ferries from Igoumenitsa and Patras to Bari, Brindisi and Ancona.
Kipoi and Kastanies are the working route from Turkey, and they are exactly what travellers heading into Europe overland use.
Bringing a car into Greece
A Green Card is compulsory, and for Greece it has to be arranged separately.
An International Driving Permit is needed only if your licence was issued outside the EU and the EEA; a licence from an EU or EEA country is valid as it is.
The ferries to Italy take cars - that is how the route continues deeper into Europe.
Ask customs how long a car is allowed to stay in Greece. The figure changes, and general information cannot be relied on.
Travelling to Greece with a pet
The rules are the same across the whole EU.
An ISO-standard microchip is compulsory and has to be implanted BEFORE the rabies vaccination.
Rabies vaccination - not before 12 weeks of age, and 21 days must pass after it before entry.
A rabies antibody titre test is required only for pets from a country not on the EU's approved list. The US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK are on the list, so this does not apply to pets travelling from those countries; Russia is one of the countries it does apply to. A three-month wait then applies before entry.
An EU veterinary certificate is required.
No more than five animals per person.
Overstaying your visa in Greece
The violation is recorded across the whole Schengen area.
The main consequence is a refusal of your next visa.
An entry ban for a substantial overstay applies to the entire area.
The count is kept for the whole of Schengen, not for Greece separately.
What else to check before you go
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Entry rules change faster than anything else on this site, and they change without notice. We cross-check every page against several sources and state the date it was verified, but that does not replace the main step: before you travel, check an official source — the country’s consulate, its immigration service or its e-visa portal. Especially if more than a couple of months have passed since our check.