On 1st January 2021 a new biometric passport was released in Estonia. The new passport contains several new security features and has a stunning design that seems to come to life under UV light. The new passport design is inspired by Estonian national motifs of flora and fauna. The inner passport pages are decorated with illustrations of national symbols of Estonia: including the wolf, the swallow and the oak tree. Take a closer look and you will see microprinted Estonian poetic phrases with the animals. For example, on the page with the wolf it says "Listen, dear, how the trees rustle", and the page with the bear says "The Estonian forest is beautiful". Since June 2009, all Estonian passport holders are required to have their fingerprints stored on the biometric chip in their passports.
Estonian passports have a validity of ten years. In 2017 the law was changed extending passport life from five years to ten.
