How long does a visa take? Start with the appointment

isvisarequired.com · 2026-09-16

Say you've been invited to a wedding in the United States next spring, and you apply for a visitor visa through the US Embassy in Bogotá. Before anyone looks at your application you need an interview slot, and the embassy's page lists the wait for one at 398 days. The wedding will be over before you're through the door.

So how long does a visa take? If yours needs an in-person appointment, it's two waits added together. One is getting in the door. The other is the decision itself, and that's the only half anyone publishes: 15 calendar days for a Schengen visa, 3 weeks for a UK visit visa. Those figures are accurate. They just start later than most people assume.

When the processing clock starts

UK Visas and Immigration puts a heading on it. Its guidance on processing times says processing starts once you've either verified your identity with the UK Immigration: ID Check app or attended a visa application centre for fingerprints and a photograph. Finding a slot and getting to the centre come first, and neither counts.

Schengen gets there through its statute rather than its guidance. The 15 days run from the lodging of an admissible application, and an application isn't admissible until your biometrics and the visa fee have been collected. Both happen at the appointment.

Other countries use the phrase "processing time" for different things, which makes comparisons slippery. Canada publishes the time it took to process 80% of past applications of that type. For a visitor visa from outside Canada, IRCC says its figure covers most complete applications and leaves out the time you need to give your biometrics. New Zealand publishes both a median and an 80th percentile in working days, which is more honest and no easier to plan with. Australia doesn't pretend at all. Its guide, it says, doesn't guarantee a decision within the timeframe.

Bogotá, where the US embassy publishes 398 days just to reach a B1/B2 interview, and 634 for non-residents. Photo: © Steffen Schmitz (Carschten) / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How long a Schengen visa takes

The EU Visa Code gives consulates 15 calendar days to decide. In individual cases it can be extended to 45 — the law gives further scrutiny as the example, not the only ground. Justified urgent cases are supposed to be decided without delay.

If a website tells you a Schengen visa can take 60 days, it's quoting law that no longer exists. That provision was deleted in a 2019 reform.

The more useful rule is about the appointment, and it rarely gets a mention. Article 9(2) of the Visa Code says the appointment "shall, as a rule, take place within a period of two weeks from the date when the appointment was requested". "As a rule" carries a lot of weight there, and the law names no remedy if a consulate misses it. Even so, this is the only system covered here that puts a number on the queue itself, and if you're offered a slot far beyond two weeks, it's a sentence worth quoting politely.

Urgency has its own route. In justified urgent cases the consulate may let you lodge your application without an appointment, or give you one immediately. The consulate decides what counts as urgent, so be ready to explain why yours is.

The window has two edges: no more than six months before you travel, and as a rule no later than 15 calendar days before.

How long a UK visa takes

The Home Office publishes 3 weeks for most visit, study and work visas applied for from outside the UK. Family routes — partner or spouse, parent, child, and adult coming to be cared for by a relative — are 12 weeks, and so is British National (Overseas). The tidiness of those numbers tells you what they are. They're service targets rather than measurements, and how often they're met is published separately, in the Home Office's quarterly transparency data.

The weeks are UK working weeks, Monday to Friday, and they include UK public holidays but not public holidays in other countries. The guidance doesn't say which way a holiday moves your date, so leave slack around them. Applying from inside the UK is a different scheme again, and a slower one. A Standard Visitor application made in-country has an 8-week standard, against 3 weeks from outside.

The UK sells speed openly. Priority services cost £500 for a decision within 5 working days and £1,000 for one by the end of the next working day, counted from the day of your appointment if you prove your identity in person. On a Family visa from outside the UK, priority buys 30 working days rather than 5. If the decision runs late, you won't usually get your money back. The fee shortens the decision but does nothing about the appointment in front of it, so priority is only worth buying once you have a slot.

The US: it depends which embassy

Which building you queue at decides almost everything. Two official embassy pages, as they stood on 15 September 2026:

Same visa, a wait 25 times longer. Bratislava's figures were updated on 8 September 2026 and apply to residents and citizens of Slovakia. Bogotá's carry no visible date, and the page's own modification stamp reads 14 April 2025, so treat them as roughly seventeen months old.

US law requires an in-person interview for applicants aged 14 to 79 unless it's waived, and for applicants of any age who are applying in a country where they're neither a national nor a resident, or who were previously refused a visa (unless that refusal was overcome or a waiver of ineligibility obtained). The non-resident figures therefore aren't an accident of demand — Congress built that queue into the statute.

A State Department notice effective 1 October 2025 narrowed interview waivers sharply. All applicants, including those under 14 and over 79, now generally need an interview, and the exceptions are mainly diplomatic categories and B1/B2 or H-2A renewals within 12 months of expiry. Anyone who would once have skipped the interview now joins the queue Bogotá measures in hundreds of days. Embassy websites copy these notices and don't always keep up, and Manila's still showed the superseded July version months later.

If you do qualify for a waiver, it's the thing that genuinely collapses a US wait, which is why Bogotá shows 4 days against 398. Even that isn't guaranteed. The US Mission in Spain says waiver processing takes about three weeks and that "we may still require you to attend an interview".

You can ask for an expedited appointment, but the US Embassy in Santo Domingo, for one, only takes requests after you've paid the non-refundable MRV fee and booked a regular slot, which it warns may be more than a year in the future. Expedited appointments are at the consular section's discretion, the qualifying grounds are narrow and set post by post, and a refusal can't be appealed.

Why is my US visa taking so long?

If your case has gone into administrative processing, the unwelcome answer is that no deadline exists. The US law behind administrative processing letters is a refusal rule, and nothing in it sets a time limit for a decision.

The US Embassy in Panama doesn't pretend otherwise. Its page on administrative processing says "there is no estimate how long it may take". In rare cases it runs beyond a year, and after a year a case may be administratively closed unless you ask for it to stay open. If you're getting close to that mark and still want the visa, ask.

The US Embassy in Ankara asks applicants to wait at least 180 days from the interview, or from when they submitted supplemental documents if that's later, before enquiring about status. Emergency travel is the exception, which it defines as serious illnesses, injuries or deaths in the immediate family. That 180 days is when the embassy will take your question, not when you'll get an answer.

You'll see "most cases resolve within 60 days" repeated on commercial visa sites. Panama's embassy won't give any estimate at all, so don't book anything around that number.

A visa file spends most of its life like this: numbered, closed, and indistinguishable from thousands of others, which is why published processing times are averages rather than promises. Photo: © Frank Schulenburg / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How to plan around the wait

Start by checking whether you need a visa at all. The checker covers 195 passports and answers that in one screen. If you do need one, look up the appointment wait at the specific embassy or consulate you'll use, add the published processing time, and treat the total as your minimum. For US visas the State Department's wait-times tool at travel.state.gov is the main source, but check the date on whatever page you're reading.

For Schengen, the six-month limit on how early you can apply means the window at a slow post is genuinely tight. Our guide to how early to apply works through the sums route by route. If you're visiting the UK without needing a visa, the UK ETA page explains the much faster authorisation you may need instead.

The US Embassy in Bratislava offers the one planning rule that survives all of this: no flights until the visa is in the passport.

Common questions

How long does a visa take after biometrics?

That's when the published clock starts. For the UK, the 3 weeks (or 12 for family routes) run from your biometrics appointment, and for Schengen the 15 calendar days run from lodging an application whose biometrics have been collected. If you've applied for a Schengen visa before, fingerprints first entered in the Visa Information System less than 59 months earlier are copied across, so you may not need to give them again.

What does a 221(g) letter mean?

Section 221(g) of the US Immigration and Nationality Act lets a consular officer refuse a visa where the applicant appears ineligible or the application is incomplete. A 221(g) letter means your application is refused for now, though that may be overcome if administrative processing ends in your favour. The law sets no time limit on it.

How long does an ETA take?

The UK ETA costs £20 and you'll usually get a decision by email within a day, though it can take up to 3 working days. Australia's ETA is granted immediately in most cases, and the NZeTA averages 24 hours. They're quick because they're automated, with no interview or biometrics appointment.

Will reapplying or calling speed up my visa?

Not according to the governments that address it. The US Embassy in Panama says submitting a new application won't expedite a case that's in administrative processing, and Canada's immigration department says calling won't get an application processed faster.

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