A new design was put into circulation in May 1987. It featured a dark blue cover, laser-printed pages, and a laminated information page. The first machine-readable Icelandic passports were introduced on 1 June 1999, having a blue cover, a machine-readable strip and improved security features. A hard-plastic page with a biometric chip was added in May 2006, and the validity was temporarily shortened from ten years to five. In June 2013, the chip was relocated to the back cover and the validity restored to ten years. A new Icelandic passport design was introduced on 1 February 2019, featuring a slightly enlarged Icelandic coat of arms and sans-serif wording on the front cover.
Physical Appearance
Icelandic passports are blue, with the Icelandic coat of arms emblazoned in the centre of the front cover. The words "ÍSLAND", "ICELAND" and "ISLANDE" are inscribed above the coat of arms and the words "VEGABRÉF", "PASSPORT" and "PASSEPORT" are inscribed below the coat of arms. Icelandic passports have the standard biometric symbol at the bottom. Vegabréf literally means "road letter", a word historically used in Scandinavia meaning internal passport.
Identity Information Page
The Icelandic passport includes the following data:
Personal names containing the special Icelandic letters are spelled the correct way in the non-machine-readable zone, but are mapped in the machine-readable zone. ð becomes D, þ becomes TH, æ becomes AE, and ö becomes OE.
Letters with accents are replaced by simple letters. This follows the standard for machine-readable passports.
Languages
The data page/information page is printed in Icelandic, English and French.
Visa free travel
Visa requirements for Icelandic citizens are administrative entry restrictions by the authorities of other states placed on citizens of Iceland. As of 3 April 2020, Icelandic citizens had visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 180 countries and territories, ranking the Icelandic passport 11th in the world in terms of travel freedom according to the Henley Passport Index. Moreover, by virtue of Iceland's membership of the European Economic Area, they can travel to 28 European Union member states, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland to live and work as long as they wish.
