PivotCNChina-Reiseassistent für Transit und Zwischenstopp

It depends on your passport, how long you stay and whether you leave the airport. If you stay inside the international transit area of the airport and fly out within 24 hours, you normally do not need a visa. If you want to leave the airport, you need either the 24-hour temporary entry permit, the 240-hour visa-free transit (57 nationalities, 10 days), or one of the visa-free entry schemes such as the 30-day unilateral visa-free list or the Hainan regional 30-day scheme. Check your own passport in the checker below — it answers in one screen.

For most transit passengers, yes — and there are two separate regimes. The 24-hour transit rule applies to nationals of all countries as long as you do not leave the port's restricted area. The 240-hour visa-free transit applies to 57 nationalities and lets you actually enter and travel inside the permitted area for up to 10 days. Being able to leave the airport depends on your nationality, not only on your ticket.

Nationals of 57 countries who transit through China to a third country or region can enter visa-free through any of the designated open ports in 24 provincial regions and stay up to 240 hours (10 days). You must hold an ordinary passport and a confirmed onward ticket with a departure date to a third country or region, and you may travel, do business, visit friends or attend exhibitions inside the permitted area. Work, study and news reporting still require a visa.

57 countries: 40 in Europe (including the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia and Ukraine), Canada and the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, Australia and New Zealand, and nine in Asia (Brunei, Indonesia, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, Singapore, South Korea, the UAE and Vietnam). Malaysia and Thailand are NOT on this list — they have their own mutual visa-exemption agreements instead, which are wider (30 days, nationwide).

The 240-hour clock starts at 00:00 on the day after entry, so the remaining hours of your arrival day are effectively free. Arriving on 1 October therefore means you must leave by 00:00 on 12 October. The same next-day-00:00 rule applies to the 30-day visa-free schemes.