Lost track of your trips? How to rebuild your travel history
Where to get official records of your entries and exits in Australia, Canada, the UK, the EU and the US, and the everyday records that fill the gaps.
Citizenship and settlement applications want exact dates, often for years of travel. If you travel a lot, nobody remembers them all. The good news is that border agencies keep a record of when you crossed, and most will give you a copy. Your inbox and your bank statements can do the rest.
Start with the official record from the country you’re applying to: Australia’s international movement records, Canada’s Travel History Report or a Home Office subject access request in the UK. The Canadian and UK requests are free. Then fill in destinations and gaps from booking emails, card statements and your passport, and where sources disagree, prefer the record made at the border.
What the applications ask for
- Australia: Form 1300t asks you to “list all countries, in date order, that you have lived in or travelled to in the last 10 years”, with dates.
- Canada: every absence in your five-year eligibility period, day trips included. “To use the physical presence calculator, you must enter exact dates.”
- UK settlement: your absences during the qualifying period, with dates, destinations and reasons.
Getting these right matters twice over. Wrong dates can make you look ineligible when you aren’t, or eligible when you aren’t, and an application that doesn’t match the government’s own records invites questions.
Official records, country by country
Australia: international movement records
Home Affairs will send you its record of your movements across the Australian border. In its words, the records “show your entries and exits from Australia. It will not show which countries you travelled to or from.”
- Request them with the online form, Request for International Movement Records.
- One request covers every passport you have held: “We will provide Australian movement records across all of your passports (current and old).”
- For movements before 1981, ask the National Archives of Australia.
Canada: the CBSA Travel History Report
The Canada Border Services Agency’s Travel History Report lists your entries to Canada, and your exits where it has them. Each record includes the date and the port of entry, and any document numbers used.
- It’s free when you ask for your own record under the Privacy Act, through the agency’s online access to information and privacy service. It can take up to 30 days.
- Exit records are fuller for recent years: the agency has collected exit information for travellers leaving by land since July 2019, and by commercial air since June 2020.
- For a citizenship application you don’t have to request it first. IRCC “can collect the report on your behalf”. You still need your own exact dates for the physical presence calculator.
United Kingdom: a subject access request to the Home Office
You can ask the Home Office for the personal information it holds about you. Its Subject Access Request Unit handles requests for information held by “immigration, citizenship and Border Force”.
- “All requests are free of charge”, and the Home Office aims to reply within one month of having everything it needs.
- The basic request covers “all of the digital information recorded about you since the year 2000”.
- The online form needs a UK address. From abroad, email subjectaccessrequest@homeoffice.gov.uk.
The guidance doesn’t promise a complete list of trips, so treat what comes back as one source among several.
The Schengen area: the Entry/Exit System
Since its launch, the EU’s Entry/Exit System has recorded the date and place of each entry and exit for non-EU visitors on short stays, replacing passport stamps from 10 April 2026. You have the right to ask for access to your data, through the data controller or data protection officer in any of the countries using it, and entry and exit records are kept for three years. For older trips, your passport stamps are the record. More in The Entry/Exit System is live.
The United States: I-94 travel history
If you visited the US, US Customs and Border Protection’s I-94 website has a “View Travel History” option showing visitors’ arrivals and departures. As with every record here, check it against your own.
Everyday records that fill the gaps
Official records tell you when you crossed a border, not always where you went or which trip a date belongs to. IRCC’s advice for anyone who doesn’t remember their dates is to check “your passport and other records like: banking records, travel itineraries and receipts”. In practice:
- Email. Search for “e-ticket”, “itinerary”, “boarding pass”, “booking confirmation” and your airlines’ names. Hotel and rental bookings show where you were.
- Airline and booking accounts. Most keep a list of past trips long after the emails are gone.
- Card and bank statements. Foreign-currency charges and overseas cash withdrawals pin you to a country on a date.
- Your passport. Entry and exit stamps, for trips before electronic records replaced them.
- Photos. Your phone’s photo library records the date, and often the place, of every picture.
- Calendars and work records. Leave requests, expense claims and travel approvals carry dates.
Putting it together
- Start from the official record. Take every departure and every arrival from the border agency’s list.
- Pair them up. Each departure should have a matching return. A missing one is a trip to look for in your email.
- Add the destinations from bookings, statements and photos.
- Where sources disagree, prefer the record made at the border. A booking shows a plan; a border record shows what happened.
- Still unsure? Choose the date that counts more days away. An application that slightly overstates absences is safer than one that understates them.
- Keep copies of what you used, in case you’re asked.
Keep a log from now on
The easiest travel history to produce is the one you keep as you go. CitizenDays takes a few seconds per trip, counts it against every rule you’re tracking, and exports your absences in the layout the application asks for. Your trips stay on your phone, and backups are free.
Questions people ask
How far back do I need to go?
For Australia’s Form 1300t, 10 years of travel. For Canada, the 5 years before you sign. For UK settlement, your qualifying period.
Do the records show where I went?
Usually not. Australia’s movement records say so explicitly. Use bookings and statements for destinations.
What if I can’t find an exact date?
Narrow it down as far as your records allow, then use the date that counts more days away. Canada’s calculator needs exact dates, so don’t leave a trip out because a date is uncertain.
Do I need the CBSA report before I apply for Canadian citizenship?
No. IRCC can collect it for you. Many people still request it to check their own dates against it.
Sources
- Home Affairs: Request for international movement records
- Home Affairs: Form 1300t, Application for Australian citizenship (PDF)
- CBSA: Travel History Report
- IRCC: Physical Presence Calculator, frequently asked questions
- Home Office: Request personal information held by UK Visas and Immigration
- Travel to Europe: Data held by the EES
- US Customs and Border Protection: I-94 website
We last checked these sources on 5 October 2026.
Let CitizenDays count it for you
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