All you need to know about the Saudi Arabia visa

Do I need a visa for Saudi Arabia? If you are going on holiday to Saudi Arabia, making a short business trip, visiting friends or family, making a transfer, or going on umrah, you will need a visa. Travellers with a British or Irish passport are eligible for an e-visa. Minors and infants must also have their own visa. Only if you hold a passport from a country that is exempt from visa requirements will you be able to travel to Saudi Arabia without a visa. All Countries exempt from visa requirements are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This includes: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

How can I apply for a visa for Saudi Arabia? In 2019, Saudi Arabia introduced an e-visa system. Since then, travellers can easily apply for their visa online. It is therefore no longer necessary to make an appointment at the embassy to obtain a physical visa. Please note that only regular passports are eligible for the e-visa. You cannot apply for an e-visa for Saudi Arabia with an emergency passport. If you have a diplomatic or service passport you cannot apply for your visa online. In this case, you will need to make an appointment at the embassy and apply for the physical visa.

The application procedure

You must complete a few simple steps in order to apply for a Saudi Arabia visa:

• Open the application form. Fill in your contact details, including your name, address, email address and telephone number, in the first section. Then, you will need to indicate some important travel details: when you expect to arrive in Saudi Arabia, what your travel destination is and where you will be staying on your first night in the country.
• If you need to obtain your visa urgently, select the “Urgent Delivery” option. Urgent deliveries are subject to a surcharge of € 17,50 per visa. Visa applications for Saudi Arabia are approved within 14 days on average. The average delivery time for urgent applications is 7 days. If you will be travelling to Saudi Arabia shortly, you are advised to submit an urgent application. This will ensure that your trip goes as smoothly as possible.
• After filling in the contact and travel details, you can add travellers to the form. You must always add at least one traveller. Then fill in the personal details of each traveller, like name, date of birth and passport number. Make sure you enter the passport details correctly into the application form. If you make a mistake, your application may be rejected or your visa may be declared invalid.

Submit a group application
You can submit an application for several travellers simultaneously. Once you have entered the first traveller's travel details, click on the “Add a traveller” button. This permits you to add up to 10 travellers to the form. In this way, you save time, since you don't need to enter each traveller's travel and contact details separately.

After filling in all the data, you will need to pay the visa fee. You can do this securely and easily online through one of several common online payment methods, such as credit card, Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal or Trustly. After making the payment, you will be redirected to your personal status page, where you will need to upload an ID to complete your application. It doesn't need to be a professional ID photo taken by a photographer. A selfie is enough. Make sure that the traveller stands in front of a plain background and looks straight into the camera with a neutral expression. Headwear is only permitted for religious reasons.

Visa processing times

As soon as you have completed the payment and submitted an ID photo for each traveller in your application, this will be reviewed by a visa specialist from JBVisas.com. If everything is correct, your data will be forwarded to the Saudi Arabian immigration service, the authority responsible for granting visa applications. Visas are granted on 14 days on average. If you submit an urgent application, the average delivery time for urgent applications is 7 days on average.

Please note that these delivery times are always an average. Applications may always take longer to process, for example in the event of a random check or if there are technical problems at the immigration service or in the JBVisas.com informatic systems. As a consequence of this, delivery times can never be guaranteed. This also applies to urgent requests.

The e-visa includes a health insurance
The visa fee includes Saudi health insurance. This health insurance is valid for one year and only covers emergencies. It is therefore recommended that you also arrange a good travel insurance before travelling. This Saudi health insurance is part of the e-visa, therefore you cannot opt out of it.

Validity period and visa requirements

The Saudi Arabia visa that you can apply for on this website is valid for one year, counting from the date of issue. The maximum length of stay is 90 days. This is a multiple-entry visa, meaning that you can travel to Saudi Arabia multiple times with the same visa. However, you may only stay in the country for a maximum of 90 days per year. If you wish to stay in the country for longer than 90 days, you will need to apply for a different type of visa through the embassy. It is not possible to extend the maximum stay allowed by the e-visa.

The main requirements for the e-visa are:

• Your passport must make you eligible for the e-visa. It must be valid for at least 6 more months on arrival in Saudi Arabia.
• You are travelling to Saudi Arabia for tourism, to visit friends/family, on a short business trip, for a transfer or for Umrah.
• You have an accomodation address for the first night
• You must adhere to the maximum stay of 90 days.

If you meet all these requirements, you can apply for a Saudi Arabia visa at once.