British passport holders can apply for the Indian eVisa entirely online — no visa application centre, no courier, no passport out of your hands. Approval usually arrives by email within 24 to 72 hours.
180 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
The UK sends more visitors to India than any other European country, and the two are linked by a diaspora of nearly two million people. That mix — holidaymakers heading for Goa and Kerala alongside families visiting relatives in Punjab and Gujarat — means British applicants face a slightly different set of pitfalls from most nationalities. Eligibility is almost never the issue; British nationality class and Indian-origin citizenship history are.
Every British citizen needs a visa granted before departure. For tourism, business and medical travel the eVisa handles it online: an electronic authorisation issued by the Government of India, tied to your passport number, with no stamp, no appointment and no visit to a visa application centre.
British citizens sit in India's most generous eVisa tier. Alongside American, Canadian and Japanese nationals, UK passport holders may stay up to 180 days per visit on the long-validity tourist eVisa, where most nationalities are capped at 90. The five-year multiple-entry option is available too, and for anyone who visits family or winters in Goa each year it is by far the best value.
At a glance
Eligibility
Yes. There is no visa-free entry and no visa on arrival for British citizens — India extends Visa on Arrival only to Japanese, South Korean and Emirati nationals, and visa-free access only to Nepal and Bhutan. Your airline will check the visa at the gate at Heathrow, Gatwick or Manchester, because carriers are fined for boarding improperly documented passengers. No visa, no boarding pass.
Choose the visa by purpose. Holidays, sightseeing, weddings, visiting friends and relatives, yoga retreats and short recreational courses all fall under the tourist eVisa — and visiting family counts as tourism, which reassures a lot of first-time applicants. Meetings, trade fairs and supplier visits need the business eVisa. Hospital treatment needs the medical eVisa. Employment, journalism, research, long-term study and missionary work sit outside the eVisa scheme entirely and require a regular visa.
One point specific to the UK: eVisa eligibility follows British citizenship. Other British nationality classes — British National (Overseas), British Overseas Territories Citizen, British Overseas Citizen, British Subject and British Protected Person — are not treated the same way, and holders of those documents should check their position before assuming the eVisa route is open to them.
Stay & validity
The 180-day allowance for British citizens is per visit, not per year, and it applies to the one-year and five-year multiple-entry tourist eVisas. A British traveller on a five-year visa can therefore make repeated six-month stays across the whole term — which is precisely why it suits the long-winter-in-Goa pattern.
The 30-day tourist eVisa is a different product: 30 days, double entry, counted from your arrival date rather than the grant date, so a delayed trip does not cost you days. On the one-year and five-year versions, validity starts the moment the Indian government approves the application. Applying in July for a Christmas trip therefore spends five months of a one-year visa before you have left the UK.
The eVisa is bound to one passport number. A routine British passport renewal between grant and travel invalidates it, and with a five-year visa spanning half a passport cycle this happens more often than people expect. There is no transfer process — you apply again on the new document.
The business eVisa gives British citizens up to 180 days per visit within a one-year multiple-entry window. The medical eVisa runs 60 days from first arrival with triple entry.
Pricing
Live government fees and service charges for British passport holders, shown all-in — nothing further is charged later.
Your nationality is pre-selected as United Kingdom
Requirements
Everything British 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 for UK applications runs 48 to 72 hours; express handling compresses that to 24 to 48 hours. Both are business-day estimates and Indian public holidays extend them — Diwali and Holi are the two most predictable slowdowns in the year.
Apply at least a week before you fly. Not because processing needs a week, but because it leaves room to replace a rejected photograph without paying for express twice. Applications open 120 days before travel, though on one-year and five-year visas applying at the far edge of that window simply throws away validity. Two to three weeks out is the practical target for most British travellers.
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
The UK has the densest nonstop network to India of any country outside the Gulf, with year-round service from Heathrow to seven Indian cities and seasonal charter traffic to Goa. Every one of these arrival airports is a designated eVisa port, so you can fly nonstop and clear immigration on your eVisa without complication.
Best time to go
October to March is India's dry season and it maps neatly onto the British calendar. The October half-term, Christmas and New Year, and the February half-term all sit inside the good-weather window, which is exactly why Heathrow–Delhi and Gatwick–Goa fares peak in those weeks. Goa's charter season runs roughly November to April and is built around British and Russian holidaymakers.
Punjab, Gujarat and Delhi — the destinations for much of the UK's family travel — reward careful timing. November brings crop-burning haze and severe air pollution across the northern plains, and December and January bring fog that regularly delays flights into Delhi and Amritsar. February and March are the better bet: warm, clear, and ahead of the heat.
Avoid North India in May and June, when temperatures exceed 45°C. The British summer holidays fall in the monsoon, which is fine for Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim — all at their best then — but poor for Rajasthan and the Golden Triangle. India is 4.5 to 5.5 hours ahead of the UK depending on the season, which is a mild enough shift that most British travellers arrive functional.
Avoid these
Refusals are rare, and almost always technical rather than substantive. These are the problems that come up most often on applications from United Kingdom — we check for every one of them before submitting.
This affects British applicants more than almost any other nationality, given the size of the diaspora. India does not permit dual citizenship. If you were born in India or ever held an Indian passport, you must declare it and will generally need a Surrender Certificate or renunciation documentation. If you visit family regularly, an OCI card is usually the better answer than repeat eVisas — it grants lifelong multiple-entry rights.
The eVisa route is built around British Citizen status. Holders of British National (Overseas), British Overseas Territories Citizen or British Overseas Citizen passports are in a different position and should verify their eligibility rather than assume it. This catches out families with mixed nationality documents surprisingly often.
It is 180 days per visit, and only on the one-year and five-year eVisas. On the 30-day visa you get 30 days. Travellers who read '180 days' in a summary and book a long winter in Goa on a 30-day visa create an overstay that carries fines and a potential entry ban.
If your passport shows a hyphenated or spaced double surname, it must appear on the eVisa exactly as printed — and it should match your airline booking too. Dropping half of it, or hyphenating what the passport spaces, produces the kind of mismatch that gets raised at check-in.
The eVisa is valid only at India's designated airports and authorised seaports. British travellers combining India with a Himalayan trek routinely assume they can walk back across the border. Any land crossing from Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh or Pakistan requires a regular paper visa arranged before you leave the UK.
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
None of these are involved in an eVisa application — the process is entirely online, which is why there is no appointment to book. They handle what the eVisa cannot: OCI cards, Surrender Certificates, employment and student visas, and consular services for Indian nationals in the UK. If you are of Indian origin and travel often, the OCI route is worth investigating properly.
FAQs
The questions British passport holders ask most often about applying for an Indian eVisa.
Up to 180 days per visit on the one-year or five-year multiple-entry tourist eVisa — the UK is in the small group of nationalities granted the extended allowance, alongside the US, Canada and Japan. The 30-day tourist eVisa allows 30 days with double entry. The business eVisa gives 180 days per visit within a one-year window, and the medical eVisa 60 days from first entry with triple entry.
Government fees are set by nationality and duration, so the pricing panel on this page loads live figures specifically for British passport holders across every option. You can compare 30-day, one-year and five-year costs side by side, and the amount shown is the complete price including our service fee — nothing further is charged at the airport or on arrival.
No. The India eVisa is fully electronic. You upload a scan of your passport's bio-data page, your passport stays with you throughout, and there is no appointment and no courier. This is a real advantage if you have other travel booked before your India trip.
Usually yes, but you must declare your former Indian nationality and will generally need a Surrender Certificate or proof of renunciation, because India does not allow dual citizenship. If you travel to India regularly, look carefully at an OCI card instead — it gives lifelong multiple-entry rights and ends the need to apply for a visa each trip.
If there is a reasonable chance you will return, yes. It costs considerably less than two separate one-year visas and allows unlimited entries at up to 180 days each. It suits British travellers with family in India, anyone who spends part of the winter in Goa or Kerala, and repeat visitors generally. The one caveat: renewing your passport during the five years invalidates it.
Heathrow serves Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi and Amritsar year-round. Gatwick has Goa and Delhi service, largely seasonal. Manchester flies to Delhi and Mumbai, and Birmingham to Delhi and Amritsar. All of these Indian arrival airports are designated eVisa entry points. From Scotland or the South West you will usually connect via Heathrow, Amsterdam or a Gulf hub, which makes no difference to the eVisa.
No. The eVisa is accepted only at India's designated eVisa airports and authorised seaports. An overland crossing from Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh or Pakistan needs a regular visa from an Indian mission in the UK. If your itinerary includes a land border, arrange that before you travel.
Yes. Every traveller needs an individual eVisa on their own passport, including infants. Children cannot be added to a parent's application, and each application requires its own photograph and passport scan. For a family of four that is four separate applications — worth factoring into both cost and the time you set aside.
Your nationality is already set to United Kingdom. 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.
