Passport Expire

A person can only hold one valid passport at a time... when you apply for a new passport you are supposed to surrender your existing passport and it gets cancelled. You need to request it to be returned if you want it back, especially if it contains visas.

It is no problem at all to travel with one's old (cancelled) passport and a new one, people do it every day.

Cheers,
William James Woodward, EB Experts Team

As long as you have your old passport with you, it should not be a problem. When you renew your passport, make sure you tell the passport officer that you want to keep your old passport. Also check with your work that you are going to renew your passport but will be carrying your old passport and see what they have to say about this.

James, quite a lot of countries allow you to carry two valid passports. Also in Bahrain and Saudi you should always travel with your old and new passports to avoid problems.

Before sending your passport off for renewal it would be a good idea to photo copy in colour all the stamped pages and your photo page etc just in case you can't get it back.

If you have the facility, go to your local passport office and sit with them while they renew so you can make sure you get old passport back.

We (Brits) always get our old passport back with a corner cut off and it is stamped cancelled on every page.

Sorry, I mis-spoke, I was referring to 2 valid passports of the same nation.... should have made that clearer. Of course all kinds of people with multiple citizenship have 2 or more passports from different nations.  OOPS.... I goofed

When you apply for a new passport, they request that you surrender any old passport, they cancel it and return it to the holder on request. As far as I'm aware there is no way of holding two valid passports from one nation.

Thanks for replies from all ,

In my country , they return old passport stamping that it cannot be used furthermore.

Waqas Arfi wrote:

Thanks for replies from all ,

In my country , they return old passport stamping that it cannot be used furthermore.

Then you will be fine

James my husband has 2 UK passports that are both valid - he can apply for this as he travels a lot and gets too many stamps. My husband uses one for business and one for leisure. This is mainly because if you have certain stamps in your passport it can cause issues with border control.

You can hold two valid passports of same country.

I travel a lot so my pages get used up while the passport is still valid and has valid visas (including UAE residency). So it cannot be cancelled. It is stamped "fresh passport no X issued in lieu of this one" and I get a new one. If travelling on old one; say between Us and UAE, I never carry the new one.  I only carry it if going back home as they need to see both. Speaking of Pakistani one.

For the UK, you can also have two valid passports. My brother has just done it. But for the second you need to apply in UK and there is an interview to explain why you need to do this . Reason is again frequent travel and tricky stamps (Israel, Iran, cuba)

Hi Jo,

Wow, strangest thing I've ever heard of, but you are right. It certainly is not permitted in most countries.

I noticed in the information available online that it not something that can be done by just anyone, and it requires a letter from a senior administrator within the passport holder's company to explain the necessity for the second passport to the UK Passport Office.

This is impossible to do in Canada, once you've filled your passport pages even if it is still valid you must apply for a new one from Passport Canada. The original passport, even though valid is cancelled on every page and the corner clipped rendering it useless.

Makes me wonder.... what the heck would someone do holding 2 passports (presumably with the same passport number) if one was lost or stolen? They'd have to cancel both! Also what would prevent someone from altering the second passport illegally?

Sounds like this certainly would be a goid mine for international terrorists and doesn't sound like a wise thing for any government to be doing. But, they're the government!!!

James you have 2 different passport numbers as per the post above yours, one passport refers to the other passport's issue number. Not complicated at all, in fact it saves a lot of issues.