The Rick Steves Packing List, Item by Item
The Rick Steves packing list is one carry-on bag and nothing else, filled with roughly five shirts, two pairs of pants, one sweater or fleece, one jacket, one pair of shoes, and a week of underwear and socks. Trip length does not change it. You pack for one week whether you are gone for eight days or eight weeks, and you do sink laundry along the way. That single decision is what makes the whole system work.
The list below is that system explained: what goes in, why each cap exists, and the three places the original advice needs a 2026 update.
Build your own version in two minutes: our free packing list generator takes your destination, trip length, and weather, then gives you a checkable list you can trim down to one bag.
Updated September 2026. Rick Steves publishes his own current list and bag dimensions at ricksteves.com, and it gets revised. Treat the version below as the reasoning behind the list, not a reproduction of it.
The One Rule Behind Everything: Pack for a Week
Almost every packing decision people agonize over disappears once you accept the core rule. You pack one week of clothes. That is the maximum, for any trip of any length.
A two-week trip and a two-month trip get identical bags. The difference is not more clothes, it is more laundry. Once you internalize that, the questions get easy. "Do I need a tenth shirt for the extra week?" No, because there is no such thing as an extra week. There is only laundry night.
The second rule follows from the first: everything has to earn its space by doing at least two jobs. A scarf is a layer, a pillow, a modesty cover for churches, and a bag strap wrap. A rain shell is also your windbreaker and your extra layer at 6 a.m. on a train platform. A pair of dark pants is your walking pants and your dinner pants. Anything that does exactly one job, and does it rarely, stays home.
The third rule is a weight target rather than a volume target. Aim for something you can carry up two flights of stairs and run for a train with, roughly 20 pounds all in. Volume gets you past the gate agent. Weight is what you actually experience for the next three weeks.
The Rick Steves Packing List in Full
Here is the shape of the list. Counts are the ceiling, not the goal.
| Category | What goes in | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Shirts | Mix of short and long sleeve, dark, quick-dry or merino blend | About 5 |
| Bottoms | Dark pants that pass as smart casual, plus one more pair | 2 |
| Shorts or skirt | Warm-weather trips only | 1 |
| Sweater or fleece | Thin, layers under the jacket | 1 |
| Jacket | Water resistant shell with a hood, packs small | 1 |
| Underwear | Quick-dry, washes in a sink and dries overnight | 5 |
| Socks | Same rule, plus one wool pair for cold days | 5 |
| Shoes | One pair, broken in, that you walk 8 miles a day in | 1 |
| Sandals or flats | Only if the climate or the itinerary demands it | 0 or 1 |
| Swimsuit | Coastal, lake, or hotel pool trips | 1 |
| Scarf or tie | The one dressy item that weighs nothing | 1 |
| Sleepwear | Doubles as a hostel or overnight train layer | 1 set |
| Toiletry kit | Under the 3-1-1 liquid limit, hung on a hook | 1 |
| Medicines | In original packaging, in your carry-on, never checked | As needed |
| Laundry kit | Travel soap, a braided clothesline, a sink stopper | 1 |
| Documents | Passport, cards, printed backups, insurance details | 1 pouch |
| Electronics | Phone, charger, plug adapter, small battery pack | 1 pouch |
| Daypack | Packable, lives inside the main bag while you fly | 1 |
| Water bottle | Empty through security, filled after | 1 |
That is it. No third pair of shoes, no "in case" outfit, no hair dryer, no full-size anything.
The counts look brutal written down and feel normal by day three. What people report after their first one-bag trip is not that they missed something. It is that they wore about 70 percent of what they brought and could have cut the rest.
The Bag Itself: 21 x 14 x 9 and Why It Matters
The signature bag is a soft-sided convertible carry-on measuring about 21 x 14 x 9 inches, with backpack straps that hide behind a zipped panel. That shape is not sentimental. It is chosen to survive a specific problem.
The standard US carry-on allowance is 22 x 14 x 9 inches. The common European allowance is 55 x 40 x 23 cm, which works out to about 21.7 x 15.7 x 9.1 inches. A 22-inch bag is over the European length limit. A 21-inch bag clears both.
That one inch is the difference between walking onto a Ryanair or Lufthansa flight and arguing at a gate sizer with a line behind you. If you fly a US carrier to Europe and then take three budget flights inside it, your bag has to satisfy the strictest carrier on the itinerary, not the first one.
Soft sides matter for the same reason. A fabric bag that is fractionally over on depth compresses into a sizer. A hard shell that is fractionally over does not compress at all, and the agent can see that from six feet away.
Check your own bag before you buy a ticket: run the numbers through our carry-on size checker with the airlines you are actually flying, wheels and handles included, because nearly every carrier counts them.
If you want the full pre-flight version of this, our guide to packing carry-on only covers the security line and the gate, and how to pack a carry-on for 2 weeks walks through the same math over a longer trip.
Wash As You Go: The Part Most People Skip
Sink laundry is the load-bearing wall of this entire list. Skip it and the list collapses, because five shirts genuinely is not enough for 17 days.
The routine takes about eight minutes and looks like this.
- Wash at night, not in the morning. Clothes need the full overnight to dry.
- Plug the sink. A flat rubber travel stopper works in sinks that have no plug or a broken one, which is most budget accommodations.
- Use a small amount of soap. A bar of travel laundry soap or a few sheets of detergent. Too much soap is the main reason things feel stiff and take longer to dry.
- Knead, do not wring. Press the water out against the side of the basin.
- Roll in a towel and stand on it. This is the step that matters. A hard towel-roll press removes more water than 20 minutes of dripping and cuts drying time roughly in half.
- Hang on the clothesline. A braided rubber line needs no clips. Push a corner of fabric into the braid and it grips.
- Move air across it. Near a window, over a heated towel rail, or in front of the AC unit. Still air is what makes things take two days.
Fabric choice decides whether this works. Merino wool and synthetic blends dry overnight and resist smell for days. Cotton, especially a heavy cotton t-shirt or denim, does not dry overnight in a humid room, and one wet pair of jeans can hold up your whole morning.
Real-world cadence: a full sink wash every four or five days, plus a one-item rinse most nights. Two proper laundromat visits on a month-long trip covers the towels, jeans, and anything that needs a real machine.
A Worked Example: 17 Days in Europe, One Bag
Say the trip is Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, and Rome across 17 days in late September, with two budget flights inside Europe. Temperatures run 60 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, with rain likely in Lisbon. For the country specific details on a route like this, see our Portugal packing list and Spain packing list.
What goes in the 21 x 14 x 9 bag: 5 shirts (3 short sleeve, 2 long), 2 pairs of dark pants, 1 pair of shorts, 1 thin merino sweater, 1 packable rain shell, 5 pairs of underwear, 5 pairs of socks, 1 pair of broken-in walking shoes worn on the plane, 1 pair of flat slip-ons, 1 swimsuit, 1 scarf, sleepwear, the quart bag of liquids, a laundry kit, a documents pouch, an electronics pouch, and a packable daypack.
Weight check: about 17 to 19 pounds packed, which sits under most non-US carry-on weight limits. That matters, because outside the US carry-on weight limits are real and enforced. Several major carriers cap cabin bags at 7 kg, which is 15.4 pounds, so a heavy bag is a genuine risk on some itineraries even when the dimensions are fine.
Laundry plan: sink wash on nights 4, 8, and 13, plus a laundromat in Barcelona on day 10 for the pants and the sweater.
Outfit math: 5 shirts x 2 bottoms gives 10 distinct looks before anything repeats, and dark bottoms hide two days of wear. Add the scarf and the sweater and you have enough variation that photos from day 3 and day 14 do not look identical.
What gets left behind: the second jacket, the third pair of shoes, the hair dryer (accommodations have them, and voltage converters for high-wattage devices are a losing battle), the "nice dinner" outfit, the full-size shampoo, and the book you were going to read.
What Has Changed Since the Original Advice
The philosophy has aged extremely well. Three practical details have not, and this is where blindly copying an older version of the list gets you in trouble.
1. Liquids are a hard limit now, not a preference. In carry-on, liquids go in containers of 3.4 ounces or 100 ml or less, all fitting inside one quart-size clear bag, one bag per passenger. That is the TSA 3-1-1 rule, and it is checked at every US checkpoint. Solid toiletries help enormously here: shampoo bars, solid sunscreen sticks, toothpaste tablets, and a bar of soap that also washes clothes. Our TSA liquid rules guide covers the exceptions for medication and baby formula.
2. Electronics now take real space. The original list predates the phone, the laptop, the tablet, the battery pack, and the four cables that come with them. Budget one pouch, cap yourself at one charging brick with multiple ports, and remember that spare lithium batteries and power banks must fly in the cabin, never in a checked bag.
3. Guidebooks got lighter. Paper guidebooks, printed maps, and a phrasebook used to be a pound of the bag. Offline maps and downloaded guides do that job now, though a single paper map of the city you are in is still faster than a phone in a rainstorm.
One thing that has not changed: things people forget to pack are still the small items, not the big ones. Nobody forgets pants.
The Money Belt Question
The money belt is the most argued-about item on the list, and the honest answer is that it depends on how you carry things the rest of the day.
What a money belt is good at: holding your passport, a backup card, and emergency cash flat against your body, out of reach, all day, in crowded places. What it is bad at: being accessed. Digging into your waistband to pay for a gelato in front of the vendor defeats the point entirely and advertises exactly where your valuables live.
The system that works is two-tier. Daily money, one card, and your phone go in a front pocket or a zipped cross-body bag. Passport, backup card, and emergency cash go in the money belt and get touched once a day, in private, at the accommodation. If you never open it in public, it does its job.
Anti-theft crossbody bags with locking zips do most of the same work and are easier to live with, especially in cities where pickpocketing is opportunistic rather than aggressive. Our guide to common travel scams covers the specific setups these things protect against, which is more useful than a generic warning about crowds.
Where the List Needs Adjusting
The core list assumes temperate Europe in shoulder season. Push outside that and a few counts change.
| Trip type | What changes |
|---|---|
| Hot and humid | Swap two shirts for linen or technical fabric, add a second swimsuit so one dries, add a sun hat, drop the sweater to a thin long sleeve |
| Cold weather city | Add thermal base layers and a warm hat and gloves, wear the bulkiest layer on the plane, keep the shoe count at one but make it waterproof |
| Business mixed in | Add a blazer packed with the folded-shoulder method and one pair of dress shoes, and see how to pack a suit |
| Hiking days | Boots get worn on the plane, not packed, and trekking poles have to go in a checked bag |
| Conservative dress codes | Add a long skirt or long pants and a scarf that covers shoulders, since many religious sites enforce this |
| Traveling with kids | The one-week rule holds, but double the laundry frequency and add one full backup outfit per child in your own bag |
For a Europe-specific version of the whole thing, our Europe packing list has the plug types, the shoulder-season temperature ranges, and the church dress code details.
How to Test Your Bag Before You Fly
Do this the weekend before, not the night before.
The pile test. Lay everything out on the bed before it goes in the bag. Look at the pile. Remove the least useful third. You will not miss it, and this is the single highest-value five minutes in the whole process.
The stairs test. Pack the bag fully, put it on your back, and walk up and down two flights of stairs at pace. If you are winded or shifting the straps, it is too heavy. Take out two pounds.
The eight-block test. Walk to a coffee shop and back wearing it. Cobblestones, transit stairs, and a hot afternoon are the real conditions, and eight blocks tells you what a photo of a neatly packed bag never will.
The sizer test. Measure the packed bag at its widest points, including wheels, handles, and any outside pocket you actually filled. Compare it to the strictest airline on your itinerary. A bag that measures fine empty and bulges an inch when packed is the most common way people get caught.
Packing cubes help with all of this by turning a bag into drawers, though they add a small amount of weight and do not create space on their own. Our guide to using packing cubes covers the compression versions and when they are worth it.
Common Mistakes People Make With This List
Copying the counts without the laundry. Five shirts and no sink washing means you are wearing a dirty shirt on day six. The two halves are one system.
Bringing cotton. It is comfortable and it does not dry. One cotton hoodie can undo an otherwise perfect bag.
Three pairs of shoes. Shoes are the single biggest space and weight offender. Two pairs maximum, one of them worn.
Full-size toiletries. They fail the liquids rule, they weigh a lot, and hotel supplies plus one refillable bottle covers the same need.
Packing a "just in case" outfit. The trip where you unexpectedly need a formal outfit basically never happens, and if it does, you can buy or rent something there.
Filling the space because it exists. A bag that is 80 percent full leaves room for a sweater you buy in Ireland. A bag that is 100 percent full on the way out is a checked bag on the way home.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Rick Steves packing list work for a month-long trip?
Yes, and that is the whole point of it. The list does not scale with trip length because laundry does the scaling instead. A month-long trip uses the same bag as a nine-day trip, with a sink wash roughly every four or five days and a couple of laundromat visits for the heavier items.
What size is the Rick Steves carry-on bag?
The classic convertible carry-on is about 21 x 14 x 9 inches, soft sided, with hideaway backpack straps. That 21-inch length is deliberate: it clears the common European cabin limit of 55 x 40 x 23 cm, which a standard 22-inch American bag exceeds on the longest side.
Do I really only need one pair of shoes?
One pair works if that pair is genuinely broken in and comfortable for long walking days. Most people are happier with two: the walking shoes worn on the plane, plus a flat slip-on or sandal that weighs almost nothing. What you should not do is bring a third pair for one dinner.
Is a money belt still worth carrying?
It depends how you use it. As a place for your passport, a backup card, and emergency cash that you open once a day in private, it works well. As your everyday wallet, it is worse than a zipped front pocket and defeats its own purpose by showing thieves exactly where your valuables are.
How much should a one-bag trip weigh?
Around 20 pounds total is the target most one-bag travelers land on. That is comfortable to carry up stairs and stays under most international carry-on weight limits, several of which are 7 kg (15.4 pounds) and are genuinely weighed at the gate outside the US.
What is the biggest thing people get wrong when they try this?
Treating the list as a shopping list instead of a discipline. Buying the exact bag and the exact number of shirts, then adding a hair dryer, a second jacket, and a backup pair of jeans, gets you a heavy bag with a nice logo on it. The cutting is the method.
Can I use this list for a family trip?
Yes, with one change. Each person still packs one week, but you consolidate: one shared toiletry kit, one first aid kit, one set of chargers, and one laundry kit for the whole family instead of one each. That alone saves several pounds. Our family vacation packing list has the per-age adjustments.
