The Norwegian government announced some significant changes to its travel and entry restrictions when unveiling the third step of its reopening plan at a press conference on Friday. 

This comes after the Norwegian border has been effectively closed to anybody who isn’t a Norwegian citizen or resident for almost six months. 

Soon, family, partners, and EU citizens with a valid Covid certificate will be able to visit Norway. In addition to this, there will also be some important changes, for arrivals from the UK especially, to the quarantine hotel rules.

Below we will look at the rule changes, what they mean for you and when they will come into effect. 

EU Citizens with a valid vaccine passport

From June 24th, EU citizens who have either had Covid in the past six months or are fully vaccinated will be able to travel to Norway with a valid Covid-certificate. 

“We now see that we will be able to check the corona certificate from other EEA countries as early as June 24th,” Education Minister Guri Melby said at a government press conference.

The certificate must have been designed in line with the European framework and be presented as a QR code at the border. 

Travellers from countries where the QR code is not currently available will not be admitted. 

In Norway, you are only classed as fully vaccinated one week after your final vaccine jab. 

Current entry requirements such as registration prior to entry and testing at the border will still apply. 

EU citizens with the Covid certificate will not be required to quarantine

Partners and family can travel to Norway 

From June 19th, entry is open to family and partners from the EU/EEA and UK to visit citizens and residents of Norway.

Children and stepchildren (regardless of age), parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be able to visit. 

Visiting family and partners will have to undergo a ten day quarantine period, unless they are arriving from a “green country’s”. Green countries have less than 25 Covid-19 cases per 100,000.

Family and partners from the UK will need to enter into a quarantine hotel for a minimum of three days and be released on the fourth if they test negative for Covid-19.

Only partners over the age of 18 will also be able to visit. You will have to have been together for at least nine months, and the parties must have met in person before. 

Partners will have to complete a free application with the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) before travelling. You can take a look at the application page here. 

You can take a look for the new entry requirements for family and partners here. 

Travel advice

On July 5th, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will scrap the travel advice that advises against travel to the EEA/Schengen and countries on the EU’s safe travel list. 

This is important because it means that insurers will pay out if you run into any trouble on trips to these areas. 

Insurers will not pay out for claims made in countries the government advised against travel too. 

The foreign ministry may change the advice if infections rise or any variants of concern are detected. 

Thresholds for entry quarantine to change

From June 21st, Norway will begin the process of adopting the EU’s traffic light scheme. However, the thresholds for exemption will not change until July 5th. 

In the meantime Norway will be loosening the requirements for its own traffic light system. 

From Monday, Norway will introduce green countries to its traffic light scheme. Countries with less than 25 cases of coronavirus per 100,000 will now be green rather than yellow. 

From the July 5th, though, this will change and the threshold will be raised to 50 cases per 100,000 for green countries. 

You can take a look at the list of the soon to be green countries here.

Fewer people will need to enter quarantine hotels 

From June 19th less people will need to enter quarantine hotels as the threshold for quarantine hotels is being doubled from 250 Covid-19 cases per 100,000 to 500 per 100,000 over a 14 day period. 

According to the ECDC, all countries in Europe are below this incidence rate. 

If you are due to arrive in Norway from a country now exempt from hotel quarantine, it is worth documenting proof of exemption as in the past, travellers that were exempt under rule changes were funneled into quarantine hotels anyway. 

Children under 18 will no longer be required to enter quarantine hotels, and arrivals from outside the EEA/ Schengen will be able to test out of hotels with a free PCR test three days after arrival. 

The ten-day quarantine period will still need to be undertaken at home once released from a hotel. 

You can read about the new quarantine hotel rules in more detail here. 

Arrivals from the UK will need to enter a quarantine hotel for a minimum of three days 

From June 21st, passengers who were in the UK for more than ten days before travelling to Norway will need to be quarantined at a hotel for three days after entering Norway due to the prevalence of the Delta variant, which is believed to have originated in India, in Britain. 

They will be released after returning a negative PCR test.