Know before you go: Czechia
Verified essentials for Czechia: connectivity, transport, tickets, money and etiquette — every fact checked by humans, with dates.
Last verified: 2026-08-12
Before you book3
Check your passport and entry rules first.
Before booking anything, check your passport's validity and the entry rules for your nationality — visa or visa-waiver, allowed stay, and any pre-registration your destination asks for. Rules differ by passport, not by airline.
DocumentsSort travel insurance while flights are refundable. Travel insurance for this trip
Medical care abroad is paid care — a short hospital visit can cost more than the trip. Buy a policy that covers medical treatment and trip interruption when you book, not the week you fly.
HealthEurope's border rules changed — know EES and ETIAS.
Non-EU visitors now register biometrics (photo + fingerprints) at the border under the EU's Entry/Exit System (EES), fully live since April 2026 — no pre-registration, just expect a kiosk on first entry to Czechia, which is a full Schengen member. The separate ETIAS travel authorization (€20, online, valid 3 years) is still targeted for Q4 2026 but has slipped before — check its live status before you book flights, since a grace period follows once it does start.
Documents
Plan a Czechia trip with these facts built in
2–4 weeks before1
Set up an eSIM before you land. Get an eSIM before you land
Install a travel eSIM at home over Wi-Fi and it activates when you land — no airport SIM counters, no roaming surprises. Keep your home SIM active for bank SMS codes.
Connectivity
A few days before6
Download offline maps and the language pack.
Before you fly, download your destination's offline map area and the offline language pack in Google Translate or Apple Translate. The camera/Lens mode reads menus and signs instantly — it works best with the pack already on your phone.
AppsPrep your cards, skip the worst exchange rates.
Tell your bank you're traveling, carry a second card in a different bag, and when a terminal offers to charge you in your home currency, always choose the local currency — "dynamic currency conversion" is a built-in bad rate.
MoneyThe currency is the Czech koruna, not the euro.
Czechia has not adopted the euro and has set no target date to do so — prices, and this guide's own price bands, are always in Czech koruna (CZK, sometimes written Kč), never EUR. Some tourist-facing shops and restaurants in central Prague post prices in euros or advertise "we accept euros," but that's a signal of a bad exchange rate, not proof the country runs on euros. Pay and compare prices in koruna, and treat a euro price tag as a reason to look elsewhere.
MoneySkip the "0% commission" exchange booths — and decline currency conversion at the machine.
Street exchange kiosks around Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square advertise a bold "0% commission," but the large-print rate is usually the one for selling koruna back, not the one you get when buying it — the real buying rate is in the small print, and it's poor. At any card terminal or ATM that offers to charge or dispense in your home currency, always choose to be charged in CZK instead; that "convenience" conversion carries its own hidden markup on top.
MoneyCards work almost everywhere now — cash is the backup, not the default.
Prague has moved closer to a card-first city than the Central European norm: the large majority of Czech cards are contactless, and debit/credit cards are now the most common way to pay, with cash running a close second rather than being the default. Visa and Mastercard are accepted almost everywhere; carry some koruna anyway for small neighbourhood pivnice (a local beer pub), market stalls, and the occasional venue away from the tourist center that's still cash-only.
MoneyThere's no Sunday shutdown here — but big stores do close on some holidays.
Unlike neighbouring Austria, Czechia has no weekly Sunday-closing law — supermarkets, malls and pharmacies open seven days a week as a matter of course. What Czechia has instead is narrower: a law that requires only large stores (over 200 m² of sales area) to close on a defined set of state holidays, among them 1 January, Easter Monday, 8 May, 28 September, 28 October and 25 December. Small shops under that size, petrol stations, pharmacies, and stores inside airports and railway stations stay open regardless, and restaurants and cafés aren't covered by the law at all — so don't assume either a Sunday closure or a holiday one without checking the venue.
Money
Daily on the ground7
Buy a time-based ticket, validate it yourself, and check step-free access ahead.
Prague's DPP tickets aren't per-ride — they're valid for a set window of time across the metro, tram and bus network, bought from a station machine, a kiosk, or the Lítačka app before you travel. You then validate it yourself at the yellow machine the moment you board your first vehicle; plainclothes inspectors do check, and travelling unvalidated risks a fine. Step-free access is real but partial: DPP's own accessibility data puts 48 of the network's 61 metro stations as step-free via lift, with Line C generally having the easiest platform-to-train gap for wheelchair users — check DPP's station-by-station pages for your specific stop before relying on it.
TransportTipping is informal rounding, not a fixed percentage.
Czech tipping is casual: round the bill up to a nearby figure, or add roughly 5–10% at a sit-down restaurant for good service — there's no strict rule the way there is in the US. State the total you want to pay, including the tip, when the server comes to collect rather than leaving coins on the table afterward; many pubs run a table tally rather than billing round by round, so you settle everything, tip included, at the very end.
EtiquetteTap water is safe to drink — skip the bottled water.
Prague's municipal tap water is treated to EU drinking-water standards and is safe straight from the tap, in restaurants, hotels and public fountains alike. There's no need to buy bottled water for safety reasons; if a restaurant only serves bottled water and doesn't offer tap water, that's a tourist-pricing signal worth noticing rather than a safety one.
HealthThe old town is genuinely cobbled — plan for wheels, prams and bad shoes.
Central Prague's historic paving (dlažba) is real cobblestone, not a smoothed imitation, and it's UNESCO-listed rather than something the city can simply repave. The main tourist spine — Old Town Square, Wenceslas Square, and the Na Příkopě pedestrian street — is reported as smoothed and manageable, but side streets in Malá Strana, Josefov and the Hradčany approach stay rougher. If you're using a wheelchair, a stroller, or shoes without real support, route around the side streets rather than assume the center is uniformly flat.
HealthA pivnice doesn't work like a bar elsewhere — here's how ordering actually goes.
At a traditional pivnice or hospoda (a Czech beer pub), you usually don't order at a counter and pay per round — you sit down, a server brings the house beer without being asked, and your drinks and food get marked on a running paper or electronic tally per table, settled all at once at the end. An unattended glass will simply be refilled next time the server passes, so put a coaster on top of it when you want to stop. The pour itself is a specialty too — ask for hladinka (a classic smooth-headed pour) if you want the standard style rather than whatever comes by default.
EtiquetteA menu translated into six languages is a tell, not a reassurance.
Around Old Town Square, both approaches to Charles Bridge, and Wenceslas Square, a restaurant with a laminated menu printed in six or more languages and a host stationed outside to wave you in is usually optimized for one-time tourist traffic, not for the food. A more reliable sign of quality is a short, Czech-first menu and a room with actual locals in it. The same tourist-price pattern shows up at the street stands selling roasted ham or meat off the bone near these squares — they typically price by weight (per 100 g) rather than by the piece, so a serving that looks modest can ring up far more than expected; ask the total price before it's cut, not after.
guide.topic.foodTrdelník isn't a traditional Czech pastry — be honest with yourself about it.
Trdelník — the sugar-and-cinnamon spiral pastry sold from nearly every stall in the old town — is actually Slovak and Hungarian in origin (also known there as kürtőskalács), and it was introduced to Prague's tourist streets only in the 2000s under an "Old Bohemian" label. No historical Czech cookbook carries it, and it isn't a food most locals eat. It's a fine treat to have — just don't mistake a stall selling it as evidence you've found something authentically Czech.
guide.topic.food
Plan a Czechia trip with these facts built in
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