The electron surface mode dispersion relation, including Landau damping, is obtained for a vacuum–plasma interface. Unlike previous work, the interface is permitted to have a finite width and no wall boundary conditions are assumed. When the density gradient scale lengthLnis large compared with a Debye lengthk−1Dand small compared with a surface mode wavelength 2&pgr;k−1, then the mode frequency is &ohgr;=(&ohgr;p/21/2) (1+kLn/6), and the Landau damping rate is &ggr; =−[6/(2&pgr;)1/2]&ohgr;p/(kDLn). These expressions are much different than the comparable expressions for a wall‐confined plasma.