European airports set to see a fall in their Global Airport Ratings

Skytrax have reported that many European airports are likely to see a drop in their 2026 Global Ratings, due to the chaos being caused by the much vaunted EES European Entry/Exit System introduced in October 2025.

Whilst the EU provides the EES (European Entry/Exit System), national governments run it at the borders, and the airport operator has no direct involvement, aside from providing the infrastructure (kiosks, eGates etc) and working with police/immigration control to integrate the system and manage the customer flow.

The grossly mismanaged introduction of the EES for non-EU nationals started in October 2025, and is supposed to be fully implemented by mid-April 2026.

However “distanced” an airport may feel about all of the current EES problems, Skytrax are seeing more and more customers attributing their poor immigration experiences directly to the airport operator, and this will inevitably result in some major falls in the annual Global Airport Ratings, to be announced in March 2026 at the World Airport Awards.

Associated with the totally unacceptable delays that customers are facing at Immigration, many are unable to even apply ratings to the more general parts of the airport experience (such as shopping, food & beverages) because they have insufficient time to visit these. Skytrax added: “it is clear that the EES, which was initially planned for 2022, delayed to 2023, late 2023, and late 2024, before starting in October 2025, is going to cause difficulties for many larger EU airports across Europe for quite a long time. Whilst it clearly appealed to the European bureaucrats, it is proving to be a major turn-off for customers to visit many European cities, where they are made to feel extremely unwelcome with such delays, and despite many years of planning and delays, the EU cannot manage to introduce this in an acceptable manner.”

There is the Travel to Europe mobile application that allows people to pre-register their passport data and facial image before reaching a border crossing point where the EES is in use, but as at December 2025, this can only be used in Sweden, and not in any other European country. Apparently, France, Italy and the Netherlands are planning to pilot it in 2026.

Ongoing operational problems with the EES are forcing many customers to endure three to four hour immigration queues when entering the EU at numerous airports. Airports such as Malaga and Lisbon continue to experience severe disruption, exacerbated by insufficient numbers of police officers and non-operational equipment; issues that have persisted at these airports for many years.

On 30 December 2025, the Portuguese Government announced the suspension of the EES due to prolonged queues, significant delays, and widespread disruption affecting travellers from non-Schengen countries, as well as the consequent impact on tourism and the adverse effect on Portugal’s international reputation. They have decided to increase the number of electronic kiosks by about 30%.

Across Europe, there have been frequent system outages, an insufficient number of self-service kiosks for customer registration, and a shortage, or complete absence, of automated border control gates.

The 2026 World Airport Awards will be announced in London, UK on the 18th March 2026.