Schengen Visa Application Guide - Download Now -

You have found this site because you want to find out some aspect of obtaining a Schengen visa. Obtaining a Schengen visa can be a nightmare at the best of times – you need to obtain a ton of forms for your application and jump through hoops for the embassy but there is always a nagging feeling that the embassy has not informed you of ALL the requirements. Yes, believe me they deliberately leave things out and if they have outsourced their visa application processing to some another company then good luck to you as these quys won’t be able to answer any questions that you may have.

Back in 2010 I had my travel plans ground to a halt after my Schengen visa was denied and I don’t want this to happen to you so I have developed this guide to help you obtain the Schengen visa the first time you apply.

Fantastic guide. I recently downloaded before I went to Spain and found the guide comprehensive. I honestly believe I would have been refused a Schengen visa if I didn’t follow the advice in this guide. Gary, South African

I wish the embassies will provide this information on their websites. Money well spent considering we would have lost hundreds of pounds if our Schengen visa was refused. Mina, Egypt

My fiancé and I spent weeks planning a holiday to Spain, we spend hours on the  itinerary, researching accommodation, logistics and so on.

We applied for a Schengen visa via VFS Global, the company the Spanish Consulate (one of many) has outsourced its visa application process to. We completed our visa application form and gathered the required documents and paid the non-refundable visa application fee of £75.

Booking our flights and accommodation to Spain was a pre-requisite before applying for a Schengen visa. A week before our departure we went to collect our passports only to find out that our visas had both been refused. Time constraints meant we were unable to reapply and the money spent on the visa application fee and flights (over £350) was money wasted.

Fortunately we were able to cancel our accommodation without incurring further costs. At no point could anyone at the visa processing centre tell us why our application had been refused. After some research and many phone calls later we found out that we had insufficient funds in our accounts at the time of the application. (You need at least £50 in your account per day that you intend to stay in the Schengen country). This information wasn’t displayed anywhere on the Spanish Consulate website or the visa application centre’s website.

It was then that I decided that enough is enough. Schengen countries make one jump through many hoops before granting entry, when face it, many counties (like Spain, Greece, Portugal etc) could do with boosting tourism. It’s not asking too much for applicants to be provided a comprehensive list of requirements on their...