The online application is mandatory for following nationals:
AFRICA: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, South Africa, Togo.
ASIA: China, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam.
AMERICAS: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Haiti, United States, Mexico, Peru.
NORTH AFRICA / MIDDLE EAST: Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates.
EUROPE: Russia, Turkey, United Kingdom.
All others nationals must check the appropriate application process on their consulate or embassy website.
You can’t apply more than 90 days ahead of the intended arrival date and no later than 30 days before it. Please note that you should book a separate appointment for each adult on the application (although appointments can be scheduled consecutively).
Ensure you allocate sufficient time before your departure date to schedule an appointment for the review of your application. The interview can take place very close to the arrival date. While appointments might occur a few days before the arrival date, they should not be offered later than two weeks before the intended arrival date.
You must bring all the supporting documents with you to the appointment including the original of your passport. Remember that they will hold your passport for usually a couple of weeks, and it needs to be valid for the entire duration of the visa plus an additional 3 months.
Most of the time, the process is subcontracted by the consulate to a private service provider. In the UK, the current provider is TLS, and in the US, it’s VFS, for example. They will receive you, review your application, collect the visa fee, capture your biometric data (usually only fingerprints, as you’ve already provided photos as part of your application), and retain your passport and copies of all supporting documents to forward them to the consulate.
The visa application interview will take approximately 20 minutes at the visa centre.