Duty-Free Alcohol & Liquor 2026: Allowance and What Is Cheaper

Alcohol is where duty-free still earns its reputation — but also where the rules are most often misread. The allowance is not one number, the bottle sizes are not the ones you see at home, and on a large share of flights the shop is not duty-free at all.

How much alcohol you can bring

Arriving in an EU country from outside the EU, each traveller aged 17 or over may bring in, free of duty and tax:

• 1 litre of spirits over 22% ABV — whisky, vodka, gin, rum, cognac, tequila — or
• 2 litres of sparkling or fortified wine under 22% ABV — Champagne, prosecco, port, sherry,
• plus 4 litres of still wine,
• plus 16 litres of beer.

The part people get wrong

The first two lines are alternatives. The last two are additions. So you cannot take a full litre of whisky and two full litres of Champagne — but you can take either one of those and four litres of still wine and sixteen litres of beer.

The alternatives split proportionally. Half a litre of gin plus one litre of prosecco is half of each option, which is within the allowance. A litre of gin plus a litre of prosecco is not.

Why duty-free bottles are 1 litre

This is the most useful thing to understand about duty-free spirits, and almost nobody notices it. The allowance is written in litres, so travel retail standardised on a 1 litre bottle that fills it exactly. Most European high-street shops sell 700ml.

That is a 43% difference in volume hiding behind two prices that look comparable. A duty-free litre at €30 and a supermarket 700ml at €24 are not a €6 gap — they are €30/litre against €34/litre. Always compare price per litre, and always check the size on the label before deciding anything.

It cuts the other way too: some airport exclusives come in 1.75L or 2L formats that exceed the 1 litre spirits allowance on their own.

On EU flights there is no duty-free

Duty-free sales for intra-EU travel were abolished in 1999. Flying Vienna to Paris, the airside shop is selling duty-paid goods at local rates, whatever the signage says. Genuine duty-free requires a destination outside the EU.

That does not make the shop pointless — prices for an identical bottle still differ between airports, sometimes considerably, because retail margins and national duty rates differ. It just means the saving comes from where you buy, not from the words over the door.

Where the saving is real

Excise duty is a large share of the domestic price on spirits and Champagne, which is why those are where a genuine duty-free purchase saves most. Still wine carries far less duty, so the duty-free advantage on a bottle of wine is usually small.

Beyond duty, the biggest variable is simply which airport you pass through. The same bottle, same size, same year can differ by a wide margin between two airports on the same continent.

Compare before you fly: whisky, spirits, Champagne, wine, or the biggest current price gaps.

Before you buy

• Check the size, then the price. 1L versus 700ml is the single most common reason a duty-free bottle looks like a bargain when it is not.
• The allowance that counts is your destination's. Not where you bought it, and not where you changed planes.
• Connecting through a non-EU airport? Keep the sealed tamper-evident bag and the receipt, or security on the next leg may remove the bottle.
• Age matters. The EU allowance applies from 17; local purchase ages vary and are sometimes higher.

Related reading: what whisky age statements mean, the EU allowance overview, or country-specific limits for Germany, France, Spain and Austria.