An electronic visa cannot really be lost or stolen. It is a record in a government database, written against your passport number, not the PDF sitting on your phone. Delete the file, lose the phone, wipe the email account, and the authorisation carries on existing exactly as it did before. What travelers actually lose is one of three things: the approval document, the passport the record is tied to, or access to the account and reference number that let them retrieve it. Each has a different fix, and only one of the three is genuinely serious.
So the first job is working out which one you are dealing with. The ten steps below are grouped that way, and most people only ever need one group.
If you have only lost the approval document
- Search your email before assuming it is gone. Approval messages are routinely filed as promotions or caught by spam filters, and they rarely carry the wording people search for. Look for the destination name, the word visa, the name of the site you applied on, and your passport number, and search the spam and deleted folders as well as the inbox. If someone else booked the trip, the approval may have landed in their mailbox.
- Sign back into the portal you applied on and download it again. Government e-visa systems and the services that file into them keep the issued document available for retrieval, usually behind the application reference number together with your passport number and date of birth. This costs nothing. A copy retrieved this way is the same document you were originally sent, because both are printouts of the same underlying record.
- Ask whoever filed the application on your behalf. An agency, airline or booking site that submitted for you holds the reference number, the approved document and the correspondence with the issuing authority, and can send the whole lot again. Tell them the passport number and the approximate application date. Our guide on how you receive your e-visa covers the formats different schemes send, which helps if you are unsure what you are looking for.
If your passport has been lost or stolen
This is the case that costs time and money, because the visa record is attached to a passport number that is about to be cancelled.
- Report the theft to the local police and keep the report. A written report is what your consulate, your insurer and in some countries the border authorities will ask for. Get it in the country where the passport went missing, before you move on, and photograph it as soon as it is in your hand.
- Contact your embassy or consulate for a replacement. They issue either a full replacement passport or an emergency travel document, and the choice affects what happens next: emergency documents have short validity and limited acceptance, and many e-visa schemes will not attach to one. Ask that question directly when you call, naming the country you are traveling to.
- Report the old passport to your own passport authority as well. This is the step people skip. Reporting it cancels the number in international databases so it cannot be used by whoever took it, and the visa record sitting against that number stops being worth anything to them. Cancelling also prevents the awkward situation where the old passport resurfaces later and two live numbers exist.
- Apply again on the new passport number. Most schemes bind the authorisation to the passport it was issued against, so the existing approval dies with the cancelled document and the fee is not usually refunded. A handful of countries run a transfer or association procedure instead. Our guide on transferring an e-visa to a new passport sets out which route applies and what each one takes.
If your account or reference number has been exposed
- Change the password on the email account first, then on the visa portal. Email is the master key, since the portal password can be reset through it. Use a password you have not used elsewhere and turn on two-factor authentication while you are there.
- Treat any follow-up message about your application as suspect. Someone holding your reference number can write a convincing email quoting your name, destination and application number, asking for a small extra payment or a document upload. Verify by signing into the portal directly rather than through a link you were sent. Our guide on common electronic visa scams covers the patterns these messages follow.
- Do not pay to have an approved visa reissued. Retrieving a copy of an authorisation you already hold is a download, and any request for a fee to release it is a sign you are dealing with the wrong party. A real cost only arises where a fresh application is required, which is the lost-passport case above.
What makes the next trip easier
Store the reference number somewhere separate from the document itself, in your phone notes or your booking record. It is the small piece of information that turns every retrieval above into a two-minute job, and it is the one thing that is genuinely gone if it only ever existed inside a PDF you no longer have.