Tuesday 13 November 2012

When to apply for the Schengen visa?


This is important.   You must ensure that you give yourself enough time to get the Schengen visa processed and therefore your passport back in time for your trip.

We recommend that you aim to have your Schengen visa application submitted 4-6 weeks before your date of departure.  This actually means you will have to begin preparations earlier to confirm your travel itinerary, book an appointment, and collect supporting documents.  Note that you cannot submit an application more than 3 months before your date of departure. 

Most Schengen country embassies will take between 5-15 working days to process your application.  However, this may take longer depending on how complicated your visa application is and/or if you choose to appeal a rejection.   

Every Embassy has different visa processing rules and processing periods.  From experience, the two most critical factors to consider from a scheduling perspective is the waiting time required for booking an appointment and secondly the visa processing time of the Embassy.  We will discuss this in the next section.   

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