Dutch passport holders can apply for the Indian eVisa entirely online — no appointment at the Embassy of India in The Hague, no courier, no passport surrendered. Approval usually arrives by email in 24 to 72 hours.
90 days
Maximum stay per visit
24–72 hrs
Typical processing time
Up to 5 years
Longest validity offered
Not eligible
Visa on Arrival
100% online
No embassy visit
Overview
Amsterdam Schiphol is one of Europe's best-connected airports for India, with KLM flying nonstop to four Indian cities, so Dutch travellers have unusually easy access for a country of the Netherlands' size. The travel mix runs from independent backpacking through Rajasthan and Kerala to a substantial volume of corporate travel — Dutch firms in agriculture, water management, electronics and logistics all have significant Indian operations.
Every Dutch citizen needs a visa granted before departure. There is no visa-free entry and no visa on arrival. For tourism, business and medical travel the eVisa covers it online: an electronic authorisation issued by the Government of India, linked to your passport number, with no stamp and no visit to the embassy.
Dutch passport holders receive up to 90 days per visit on the tourist eVisa, and the five-year multiple-entry option is available. For frequent business travellers to Bengaluru, Pune or Mumbai, the five-year business eVisa is generally the better economics than repeat one-year applications.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes. India offers visa-free entry only to Nepal and Bhutan, and Visa on Arrival only to Japanese, South Korean and Emirati nationals. Dutch citizens must hold an approved visa before boarding, and KLM will check it at the gate at Schiphol.
Choose the category by purpose. Tourism, sightseeing, visiting friends, and yoga or wellness retreats fall under the tourist eVisa. Business meetings, trade fairs, supplier visits and technical discussions require the business eVisa. Hospital treatment requires the medical eVisa. Employment, journalism, research and long-term study are outside the eVisa scheme and need a regular visa from the embassy in The Hague.
Residents of the Netherlands who are not Dutch citizens apply on the nationality of their passport, with that country's fees, entitlements and stay limits — not the Dutch ones.
Stay & validity
Dutch citizens are permitted up to 90 days per visit on the tourist eVisa. The 30-day version allows double entry, with its 30 days counted from your arrival date. The one-year and five-year versions are multiple-entry, and their validity starts on the date the Indian government grants the application, not the date you land.
That grant-date rule catches out travellers who apply as soon as they book. If you buy flights in April for an October trip and apply immediately, you have spent six months of a one-year eVisa before leaving. Apply two to three weeks before departure instead.
Ninety days per visit is ample for the extended independent trips Dutch travellers often plan. The eVisa cannot be extended from inside India, so if your itinerary genuinely runs longer, either split it across two entries on a multiple-entry visa or apply for a regular visa.
The business eVisa allows up to 180 days per visit within a one-year multiple-entry window — double the tourist allowance, which suits Dutch project staff on extended assignments. The medical eVisa gives 60 days from first entry with triple entry.
Pricing
Live government fees and service charges for Dutch passport holders, shown all-in — nothing further is charged later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as Netherlands
Requirements
Everything Dutch passport holders need before starting an application. The first five items apply to every applicant; the rest are specific to your nationality or visa type.
Passport bio-data page — a clear colour scan or photo showing your photograph, full name, date of birth, passport number and expiry date
Recent passport-style photograph — square format, plain white background, full face visible, no shadows and no headwear other than for religious reasons
A valid credit or debit card to pay the government fee and service charge
Your return or onward ticket details, or at minimum your intended departure date
The address where you will be staying for your first night in India
Simple process
Four steps, entirely online, with our team checking every field before anything reaches the Indian authorities.
Enter your passport details exactly as printed, choose your visa type and duration, and upload your photo and passport data page.
Our team checks your photo dimensions, passport scan clarity, name spelling and date formats before anything is submitted.
Your application goes to the Government of India on your behalf, and we keep you posted at every status change.
Print it or keep it on your phone, and we explain exactly how to present it at your port of entry in India.
Standard processing takes 48 to 72 hours and express handling 24 to 48 hours. Both are business-day estimates, and Indian public holidays — many of them state-specific — extend them. Diwali and Holi are the two dependable annual slowdowns.
Apply at least a week ahead, ideally two. The margin is there so a rejected photograph can be replaced without paying for express twice. Applications open 120 days before travel, but on one-year and five-year visas applying that far out simply wastes validity.
Separate from your eVisa, every foreign national entering India must complete the digital e-Arrival Card before boarding. It replaces the old paper disembarkation form and is required on every single visit, whatever visa you hold.
Getting there
Schiphol has nonstop KLM service to four Indian cities, all of them designated eVisa ports. That gives Dutch travellers direct access to both North and South India without needing a Gulf connection — a genuine advantage for reaching Bengaluru or Chennai.
Best time to go
October to March is India's dry season and the natural window for Dutch travellers. The Christmas and New Year weeks are the peak on Schiphol–Delhi and Schiphol–Mumbai; the May holiday and the autumn break in October also fall inside good weather. February and March combine excellent conditions with lower fares than December.
The Dutch summer holidays land in the monsoon. Rajasthan and the Golden Triangle are poor value then, but July and August are the best months of the year for Ladakh, the Spiti Valley and Sikkim, and Kerala's monsoon is the traditional Ayurveda season. Change the destination rather than the dates.
Avoid the northern plains in May and June, when temperatures exceed 45°C. India is 3.5 to 4.5 hours ahead of Dutch time depending on the season, so jet lag on a 9-hour nonstop from Schiphol is mild and most travellers are functional the next morning.
Avoid these
Refusals are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the problems that come up most often on applications from Netherlands — we check for every one of them before submitting.
The defining Dutch-specific problem. Dutch passports carry particles such as van, van der, van den, de and te as part of the surname, and how they appear on the printed name line differs from how they appear in the machine-readable zone. Enter your surname exactly as printed on the data page, including the particle, and make sure the airline booking matches. Applicants who drop 'van der' or move it to the given-name field create a mismatch that gets raised at check-in.
Dutch citizens receive 90 days per visit, not the 180 days granted to American, British, Canadian and Japanese nationals. Much of the English-language guidance online is written for those audiences, and the eVisa cannot be extended from inside India.
The government fee is charged in US dollars. Maestro cards and Dutch debit cards not enabled for international transactions will fail at the payment step. Use a Visa or Mastercard credit card, or a debit card explicitly enabled for foreign currency.
Eligibility follows citizenship, not residence. If you live in Amsterdam on an Indian, Turkish or Brazilian passport, you apply as a national of that country with that country's fees and entitlements. Selecting the Netherlands because you live here produces an application that does not match your travel document.
The eVisa is accepted only at designated airports and authorised seaports. Dutch backpackers combining India with Nepal frequently plan an overland return, which an eVisa cannot cover. That needs a regular visa from the embassy in The Hague, arranged before you leave.
Photo rejected on technical grounds
By far the most common cause of delay. The photograph must be square, on a plain white background, with your full face visible and no shadow behind your head. Cropped selfies and phone photos taken against a cream wall are routinely bounced back.
Passport scan unreadable
Glare across the machine-readable zone, a cut-off corner, or a scan where the passport number is blurred will stall the application. Photograph the page flat, in daylight, with no flash.
Applying too close to departure
The eVisa must be granted before you fly, and airlines check it at the gate. Applications submitted the night before a flight leave no room for a document re-upload.
Conditions
These conditions are set by the Government of India and do not vary by nationality. They are worth reading before you book, because two of them — the port-of-entry rule and the restricted-areas rule — catch out a lot of otherwise well-planned trips.
Validity is measured from your date of arrival in India, not from the date you apply. You also need at least two blank pages for immigration stamps.
The India eVisa is accepted at India's designated eVisa airports and authorised seaports. It cannot be used to cross a land border, so overland arrivals from Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh or Pakistan need a different visa.
Every person travelling needs their own eVisa and their own passport, including infants and children. Children cannot be added to a parent's application.
An eVisa does not grant access to Protected Areas, Restricted Areas or Cantonment Areas. Parts of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Sikkim, Ladakh, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep require a Protected Area Permit or Restricted Area Permit in addition to your visa.
You cannot extend an eVisa from inside India or convert it into another visa category. If your plans change, you must leave and apply again.
Diplomatic, official and service passports are not eligible for the eVisa route, and neither are international travel documents or refugee travel documents.
Consular services
The embassy in The Hague is not involved in eVisa applications, which are handled entirely online. It deals with what the eVisa cannot cover: employment, journalism, research and long-term student visas, OCI cards and Surrender Certificates, and consular services for Indian nationals in the Netherlands.
FAQs
The questions Dutch passport holders ask most often about applying for an Indian eVisa.
Up to 90 days per visit on the tourist eVisa. The 30-day version allows 30 days with double entry; the one-year and five-year versions are multiple-entry with a 90-day cap per visit. The business eVisa permits up to 180 days per visit within a one-year window, and the medical eVisa 60 days from first entry with triple entry.
Exactly as it appears on the printed name line of your passport data page, particle included. If the passport shows your surname as VAN DER BERG, that whole string belongs in the surname field — do not drop the particle and do not move it into the given-name field. Then check that your airline booking uses the same form, because Indian immigration compares the eVisa against the passport.
Fees are set by nationality and duration, so the pricing panel on this page loads live figures for Dutch passport holders across all options. You can compare 30-day, one-year and five-year prices side by side, and the amount shown is the full cost including our service fee.
No. The eVisa is applied for and issued entirely online, your passport stays with you and there is no appointment to book. The embassy is only relevant for categories the eVisa does not cover, such as employment, journalism, research and long-term study.
KLM serves Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai nonstop from Schiphol, and all four are designated eVisa airports. That covers both North and South India directly. For Kerala, a Gulf routing via Doha or Dubai into Kochi or Thiruvananthapuram is often faster than connecting domestically within India.
No. Indian Visa on Arrival is limited to Japanese, South Korean and Emirati nationals. Dutch citizens need an approved visa before boarding, and KLM will verify it at the gate at Schiphol.
Almost always because the fee is charged in US dollars and the card is not enabled for international transactions. Maestro cards and some Dutch debit cards are domestic-only. Use a Visa or Mastercard credit card, or enable foreign-currency transactions in your banking app first.
No. The eVisa cannot be extended or converted from inside India. If your trip runs longer, either split it into two entries on a multiple-entry visa — leaving India and returning — or apply for a regular visa through the embassy in The Hague before you travel.
Your nationality is already set to Netherlands. Complete the form in under ten minutes, and our team will check every detail before it reaches the Indian authorities.
Other nationalities
Stay limits, fees and requirements differ by passport. Here are the guides for other nationalities.
