Ryanair boarding pass changes: what is different since November 2025

Three rule changes, all written into Ryanair's own conditions of carriage, and one of them not yet in force.

• 12 November 2025: printed boarding passes are no longer accepted. For flights departing from that date, the pass lives in the Ryanair app, full stop. Printing it at home, at a hotel or at a library no longer gets you through the gate. The only exception is Morocco: at Moroccan airports you show the check-in confirmation from the app and collect a printed pass at the desk.
• 12 November 2025: reissuing a pass at the airport becomes free, a change now recorded as such in Ryanair's own fee position. If you checked in online within the rules but cannot show a valid digital pass, because your phone died or the app will not open, Ryanair reissues an alternative pass at no cost, as long as there is enough time before departure. Many travel sites still quote the old reissue fee; that fee is gone.
• 10 November 2026: check-in desks and bag drop close 60 minutes before departure instead of 40 minutes. This is announced in the conditions of carriage and applies to all flights from that date. Until then, desks close strictly 40 minutes before the scheduled departure time.

What did not change: the online check-in window, the 2 hours cut-off, and the airport check-in fee for anyone who arrives without having checked in online.

Everything happens in the Ryanair app, or on ryanair.com followed by the app for the pass itself.

1. Log in to your myRyanair account, or retrieve the booking with the reservation number and the email address used to book. Check-in without an account is possible, but the pass still has to end up in the app on the phone you will carry.
2. Confirm the details of every passenger exactly as they appear on the passport or identity card.
3. If you are not an EU or EEA citizen, and that now includes British passport holders, complete the travel document verification inside the app during check-in. The details are in the section on document checks below.
4. Choose a seat, or accept the one Ryanair allocates for free at check-in.
5. Add any bag you still need. Ryanair publishes only its airport desk rates for hold bags; the online price varies by route and date.
6. Download the digital boarding pass into the app and make sure it is visible offline before you leave for the airport.

With cabin baggage only, you go straight to security. With a checked bag, the bag drop desk is your next stop, and it closes before the gate does.

Opening. Online check-in opens 24 hours before departure for passengers who have not bought a seat. If you paid for a reserved seat, it opens 60 days before departure, which lets you sort the whole family in one sitting weeks ahead.

Closing. Online check-in closes 2 hours before the scheduled departure time, without exception. During the final 2 hours it is simply impossible, and the airport check-in fee applies.

Desks and bag drop. The desks close strictly 40 minutes before departure, and the bag drop usually opens 2 hours before. From 10 November 2026, airport check-in and bag drop close 60 minutes before departure on every flight, so a habit that works today will fail next winter. Be at the gate well before the scheduled time: the desk deadline above is the one Ryanair publishes, and the gate closes on its own schedule printed on your boarding pass.

UK airports. No British airport requires a desk visit for Ryanair; the online check-in is the rule everywhere and the table above lists Stansted, Luton, Manchester, East Midlands, Edinburgh and Bristol. Two airports offer a twilight bag drop for early flights: Manchester the evening before between 19:00 and 22:00 for flights before 08:00, and Edinburgh for flights before 08:00 with every passenger present. Stansted and Luton do not offer it for Ryanair. Stansted advises arriving 3 hours before an international flight and 2 hours before a domestic one; Bristol and Manchester ask for at least 2 hours.

Early or late? Early. Ryanair allocates a random seat at check-in to anyone who has not paid for one, and a chosen seat costs between 3 and 27.50 EUR or GBP per flight when booked with the ticket, more if you add it later or at the airport, and the pool of free seats shrinks as the flight fills. Checking in the moment the 24 hours window opens gives you the widest choice of what is left, and it removes the risk of forgetting the 2 hours cut-off. Nothing is gained by waiting.

For a comparison with a carrier that closes its desks on a different clock, see our easyJet check-in page.

The pass is tied to the Ryanair app on a smartphone. There is no web version to show from a browser, and no email attachment that counts as a pass.

Before leaving home. Open the pass once in the app so it is stored on the device, take a screenshot as a backup, and charge the phone. Airport wifi is not something to depend on at the gate.

If the phone dies or the app fails. Go to the Ryanair desk before security. Because you checked in online, the reissue is free since 12 November 2025. Get there early: the reissue is only promised where there is sufficient time before departure, and the desk itself closes 40 minutes before the flight.

Morocco. The one place where paper survives. You show the check-in confirmation in the app and the desk hands you a printed pass.

Families and groups. Each traveller needs the pass on the phone they carry through the gate: groups split up at the airport more often than they plan to, and a pass on someone else's phone is no pass at all.

Every passenger who is not a citizen of the EU or the EEA must have their travel documents verified in the myRyanair app during check-in. Since Brexit, a British passport falls into that category, which surprises many UK travellers who had never seen this step.

• Verification succeeds in the app: your boarding pass is valid and you go straight to security, no desk visit.
• Verification fails or cannot be completed: you must go to the Ryanair desk before security to have the documents checked in person. If the online window has closed by then, the airport check-in fee applies on top.

Citizens of around fifty listed countries can use a passport verification rather than a visa check, except on some routes: Morocco, Israel, Serbia, Türkiye and Ireland are treated differently depending on nationality. Do this step the day before, not at the airport, and travel with the physical passport that was verified.

If you did not check in online more than 2 hours before departure, you check in at the Ryanair desk and pay the airport check-in fee. Ryanair's own fee table puts it at 55 EUR or GBP per passenger and per sector, dropping to 30 for flights from Spain and 40 from Austria. The same fee applies to a non-EU passenger whose travel documents are checked in person rather than in the app, a manual check that remains possible until 60 minutes before departure. It is waived for Plus and Flexi Plus fares booked before 14 August 2025.

The desk closes 40 minutes before departure, so arriving late twice, first past the online cut-off and then past the desk closing time, means missing the flight, with no refund on a standard fare.

If you checked in on time but simply cannot show the pass, that is a different case: no fee, as explained above. The fee punishes not checking in, not losing the pass.

Irish routes are also flown by Aer Lingus, whose desk deadlines follow another logic: our Aer Lingus check-in page sets them out. Every other carrier we cover from UK airports can be found through our check-in overview.

Ryanair includes no checked baggage in the fare: every hold bag is bought separately, in two sizes, 10 kg and 20 kg. Bought at the bag drop desk on the day, the 10 kg bag costs between £35.99 and £40, and the 20 kg bag £59.99. The online price is not published: it varies by route and date, which is why only the desk rates appear here.

At the gate, a cabin bag that does not fit the allowed size is either refused or placed in the hold for a charge of £70 to £75. That is the single most expensive mistake in the whole Ryanair journey, and the easiest to avoid: the sizer at the gate is not negotiable.

For infants, two items of equipment travel free per child, a pushchair plus one of a car seat, a booster or a travel cot, each up to 20 kg.

Ryanair's conditions of carriage do not state the cabin bag dimensions; they sit on the baggage pages of ryanair.com and can be updated separately, so measure against the current figures rather than a remembered one.