Visa for Belarus

Visa for Belarus

Every EU citizen (or EU passport holder) can apply for visa in any EU country. Non-EU citizens (or non-EU passport holders) have to apply in their home country.

The are several requirements you have to meet to successfully apply for a (group) visa.

Documents required for the visa application:

• a duly completed visa application form;

• a photograph of yourself - size 35x45mm, full face, against a light background, photos older than 6 months are not accepted!);

• a foreign travel document (passport) - has to be valid for 90 days after the expected departure from Belarus;

• a medical insurance contract - with coverage in Belarus for a minimum of 10 000 EUR (You need a letter/email from your insurance company that states you are covered in Belarus for the dates you will be in the country. It is not enough to simply show your policy coverage. You will need to print this letter and send it with your application.);

• visa support documents (confirming the purpose of the visit);

• a confirmation of the paid consular fee.

To apply for a group visa the group must consist of at least 5 people and not more than 30 people.

The price of a group visa is 10 EUR per person. For an individual visa it's 60 EUR (people of some nationalities have the price lowered to as much as 25 EUR). Consular fees in Euro are listed here (in Russian): http://mfa.gov.by/upload/123/1.pdf

A consular office makes a decision about granting a visa within 5 working days (can be shortened to 2 working days for a higher/double price).

For a short term visa (type C) support documents confirming the purpose of the visit are required. There are 2 kinds of support documents: for tourism or for private purposes.

To get support documents for the purpose of tourism you need to ask:

• a Belarusian tourist company to send to the consulate (and a copy to us) an application with a commitment of the company that we will comply to the rules of stay in Belarus (here is an example: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e1pgnxrreziyqdt/exampleinvitationfromtouristagency.pdf?dl=0 );

• a rural tourist business to send to the consulate an application with a stated purpose, period of stay and the services provided to us and a commitment of the company that we will comply to the rules of stay in Belarus.

To get support documents for the private purposes you need an original invitation issued by the Citizenship and Migration Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Belarus.

For the purpose of tourism you can stay in Belarus for 30 days, for private purposes it is 90 days (but we shoudln't stay there more than 30 days).

Registration

Police registration form

"Within 5 business days after arrival to Belarus visitors are required to visit the local police office (OGIM - Citizenship and Immigration Authority) and register at the apartment they are staying. You must visit it with the host of your apartment. Thereafter, local police authorities will put a registration stamp on the migration form (tiny little paper one half of which was torn out at the border), which will be attached to the visitor’s passport. If the visitor is staying in a hotel, the registration will be carried out directly upon check-in. This is the form that needed to be filled in and taken to the police in 2009."

After we enter Belarus we need to register at a place of our stay (hotel, recreational institution, farmstead) within 5 working days. After that we can roam the country freely for the next 4 days but on the 5th day we have to register again at a new place (or the place we stayed at before), so not only once. The only way to circumvent this is if we get invited by a local, then we need to go to a registration office just once together with the host. So it seems much easier to be invited by a person as we don't have to pay for an accommodation at places just to go through this registration procedure.

An important thing to consider when we enter Belarus as a group is that the same people that enter together must leave together. If someone is planning to stop at Minsk and leave the group, he must get an individual visa.

Links:

http://mfa.gov.by/en/visa/ Page of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus. Contains all the requirements for a visa application.

http://www.minskguide.travel/belarus_travel_tips/belarus_immigration/how_do_i_apply_for_belarus_tourist_visa.html

http://shantidom.by/visa/ Instructions for getting visas.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/belarus/travel-insurance

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g294447-s602/Belarus:Crossing.The.Border.html