All modern passports have chips in them, yes. Can the government track your passport? There will be records of your leaving and entering the country but your passport is not fitted with a tracking device that would enable a government to know its location or by inference your location.

In 2026, governments can track your movements across international borders, but they generally cannot track your "real-time" location through the physical passport booklet itself. Modern ePassports contain a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip and an antenna, which store your biometric data and personal information. These chips are "passive," meaning they do not have a power source and cannot transmit a signal over a long distance like a GPS tracker. Instead, they can only be "read" from a very short distance (usually a few centimeters) by an authorized scanner at an immigration checkpoint. The "tracking" that occurs is administrative: every time your passport is scanned at a border, the entry/exit data is recorded in a central government database. Systems like the Entry/Exit System (EES) in Europe now create a digital record of every non-EU traveler's movements. While your physical passport won't reveal where you are while walking down a street, the "digital breadcrumbs" left behind at airports, hotels (where passports are often scanned), and border crossings allow governments to maintain a very accurate log of which countries you have visited and when you entered or exited their jurisdiction.