Lisbon: Applying for the Portuguese visa in the UK

     by Becky Chen

Please find info at 

http://www.tugas.co.uk/consulado_portugues_em_manchester.html

I also copy here the information from my email communication with the consulado:

Please find attached a file with all the required documents and application form. (Application Form and Information for Visa Schengen) Additionally, you must also bring: - Document issued by the institution where you are going to attend classes under the Erasmus Programme;   - Applicants must also deliver document proving availability of means of subsistence in Portuguese territory or, in case of scholarship-holders, documentary evidence of its existence.

If you are looking for the info of Portuguese Embassies outside UK, please check out:

http://pt.embassyinformation.com/index.php

Personal Experience:

Depending on one’s nationality and sometimes due to unexplained reason, getting a visa could be more complicated than imagined. There are questions from my Mundus colleague who intend to apply for Portuguese visa, and I guess perhaps I could share my experience here.

Before leaving Malaysia, I had got the information from the Portuguese Consulate in Kuala Lumpur regarding what is required in order to obtain a Portuguese student visa. According to the requirement, I should have a Certificate of Good Conduct issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Malaysia. 

Among the 3 countries of my mobility track, this Certificate is not required by the British and French embassy, only by Portuguese. I was relieved to have done it earlier, because even though the Portuguese Consulate in Manchester did not state that I should provide this Certificate, but upon my application, I showed them the certificate and they said they need it- the original copy. They also took the original copy of letter from Universidade Nova de Lisboa. 

My country is not listed as one several weeks are required to process the visa, however upon my application, I was told that at least two weeks are needed because they have to ‘wait until Friday to send all the applications to Lisbon’, and that day was a Tuesday. If in case you need your passport by your side, it is possible to inform them and they would notify you when the visa is ready to be stamped into your passport, as in my case.

NOTE THIS: The one important thing that you may want to check with the Consulate is whether they issue a PORTUGUESE STUDENT VISA, or + SCHENGEN?

Until I happily obtained my Portuguese visa, I was told that even if I am flying to Spain for one day, I need to apply for a Spanish visa! Well, the officer in the Consulate explained to me that for UK-Portugal, Portugal-UK, multiples entries are allowed. But once I step on the soil of Portugal, I need to have a Schengen visa to fly to another EU country. This is once again confirmed by the Portugalia Airlines that even if they allowed me to fly with their company, the Italian frontier will not allow me to enter. Another Mundus colleague from India has mentioned to me his similar experience with the Portuguese Student Visa.

To sum things up:

if you could, get all the information about visa requirements from the embassies at your home country and prepare the documents early.

The Scout motto: Be prepared. 

If you are in Sheffield, the right place to go is the Portuguese Consulate in Manchester, not London.