Starting from 1 January 2025, most of the applicants from around the world will be able to apply for national visas in Germany through the dedicated online portal. The digitalization of the system will help the federal country tackle issues that occur during important long-term visa applications.
The Consular Services Portal officially launched January 1, 2025, allowing individuals worldwide to submit German visa applications online. This transformation began over two years ago, starting with a single visa application and three pilot visa sections.
Now, this digital initiative has expanded to encompass all 167 visa sections at German missions across the globe. Applicants can now apply online for 28 different categories of national visas. The online visa portal will help foreign nationals from non-EU countries to apply for national visas such as:
The German foreign minister announced on this occasion:
And that is exactly what the Consular Services Portal is. From now on, it will be available at all 167 of Germany’s visa sections worldwide, providing digital services. Over the last two and a half years, in a comprehensive and long overdue structural reform, we have paved the way and entirely revamped the old visa process. We are now at last bringing Europe’s most modern immigration law into the digital era.
Why the digitalization of the German visa system?
Germany was badly in need of modifying its immigration system on an online basis such as many other immigration-friendly countries. This helps save time and increase the working potential of a counselor or embassy section in a third country.
Hundreds and thousands of applicants from around the world apply for German visas every year for all D-types long-term national visas and the German foreign missions have to work a lot in order to issue the visa and run the system. Digitalization will help handle this burden in good manners.
The country needs 400,000 skilled workers each year and the conventional system would not work as efficiently as the modern day’s online platforms. Germany is also trying to cooperate with many countries to recruit skilled workers such as India. The German government has already issued as per unofficial records more than 200,000 work visas in 2024.
The German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said the foreign workers needed in the country are in high numbers:
Every year, Germany is short of at least 400,000 skilled workers. 400,000 clever minds and even more agile hands to keep our country running – in the skilled crafts sector, in the care sector, in tech companies. Our national economy is also in a global competition to attract trainees, apprentices and students.