The British Consulate General in Madrid have moved to brand new premises. The new offices will provide customers with a more modern, customer-friendly environment, with improved facilities. At the same time, they will be introducing an upgraded IT system to help provide you with a more efficient service.

Visa processing

Visa applications that are submitted in Lisbon are sent to Madrid, Spain for processing. During the period of changeover of IT systems, we anticipate some disruption to our passport and visa issuing service. Consequently, if you are thinking of travelling to the UK over the Summer, we strongly advise you to apply for a visa now or after July 27 to ensure that you have it when you need it.

Remember that it may take up to 15 working days for your visa to be processed from the date on which you have your finger-prints taken at the visa section in Lisbon. Applicants are reminded that visa applications that are submitted in Lisbon are then sent to Madrid, Spain, which is where they are processed. More about visa applications in Portugal

Passport expiry dates

If you are concerned that by renewing your passport before it has expired you’ll miss out on the full 10 years validity of your current passport, you needn’t be. Any passport that you send to us to be renewed which still has up to 9 months validity remaining, will have the still-valid time added as an extension. So for example if you’ve got a passport that expires in October 2009 but decide to renew it in May 2009, we will issue a new passport that would be valid up to October 2019 (so 10 years plus 5 months). Read general passport advice.