Do I Need a UK Visa?

This is the first question, and a surprising number of people answer it wrong in the expensive direction: they start assembling bank statements and employment letters for an application they were never going to have to make.

It comes down to one list.

The list

Appendix Visitor: Visa national list names every nationality required to get a visit visa in advance. If your passport is on it, you apply for a Standard Visitor visa before you travel. If it is not, you are a non-visa national and you apply for an Electronic Travel Authorisation instead.

There is no judgement in that list and no ranking. It is not a statement about applicants from those countries. It is a policy list, and the only thing it decides is which process you use.

The two paths, side by side

Fees checked 13 August 2026 against GOV.UK and the ETA guidance. They change. Check the source before relying on a figure.

Which one applies to your passport

Below are the 93 nationalities this site covers, taken from the same list. Find yours.

Two nationalities sit outside both columns. British citizens need neither, and Irish citizens need neither because of the Common Travel Area. If your passport is not listed at all, the official checker on GOV.UK covers every nationality and is the thing to trust over any table, including this one.

Nationality decides the path. Residence decides the evidence.

This is the distinction people miss, and it matters most to expatriates. Your passport puts you on one path or the other. Where you actually live changes what you are expected to show once you are on it.

Applying from a country you are not a national of is completely routine. What it adds is one expectation: that you evidence your lawful residence there, with the expiry date visible. A permit running out shortly after the trip leaves open the question of where you will be living afterwards, which is the question the whole route is built around. It is also, in my experience of the assessment, among the most frequently omitted documents in an otherwise careful application.

If you do need a visa

The visa is the beginning of the work rather than the end of the question. What is being decided is set out at paragraph V 4.2 of Appendix V, and it has five separate limbs, only one of which is about money. The document checklist explains why no official list of documents exists, and the cover letter is the one page where you get to connect the evidence into an account.

If you would rather see how your own circumstances read against the published criteria before spending £135, that is what the free check on this site does.

Common questions

Sources: Appendix Visitor: Visa national list, GOV.UK: check if you need a UK visa, Standard Visitor visa fees and timings, Electronic Travel Authorisation guidance. Checked 2026-08-13. Lists and fees change, so check the date on this page against the date on theirs.

More on the route as a whole is on the UK Standard Visitor hub, and the weights behind the assessment are published on the methodology page.