Brazil Visa Application
As of April 10, 2025, all travelers headed to Brazil on a USA passport are required to get an eVisa before entering to the country. This was originally slated to be implemented in April of 2024 before it was pushed back to 2025. It is finally upon us and there is no postponement this time around! It feels like a money grab, and it probably is, but it is also a response to the US requiring something similar when Brazilians visit America. However, since all American passport holders are now required to have this in advance for travel on or after April 10, 2025, it is good to understand the process. I am traveling to Brazil in April, so recently completed my Brazil Visa application. I'll outline my experience with this very new requirement below.
Related: Easier Than Expected: My UK ETA Application Experience
What Is The Brazil eVisa?
The Brazil electronic visa application is an online request to travel to Brazil. If you transit through Brazil, you will be required to hold a visa if you need to leave the transit zone. According to Brazil's guidance, if you have separate tickets transiting through Brazil; you will need a visa. If you have a single ticket stating both the origin and final destination, you will not need a visa. Clear as mud? If you do not exit the secured area of the airport you will not need a Brazilian visa.
The semi-good news is that the Brazilian visa is valid for 10 years from date of approval. It also allows the permit holder to visit or transit Brazil as many times as you wish and to stay in Brazil for up to 3 months at a time for tourism, family visits, and other things. This is much better than having to fill one out for each trip.
The cost of this visa application is $80.90 and is nonrefundable.
The Brazil Visa Application Process
The easiest way to fill out the Brazil eVisa application is to access the VFS eVisa website. Here is what you will need to have handy when going through the process:
- Passport (you must submit a picture of your passport page)
- A valid credit card
- Access to your email
- Travel details
- Be prepared for a passport-style selfie photo, with no smiles, no visible shadows and a plain, white background.
Once you submit your information and pay your application fee, your submission goes into a quality control review. The quality control review takes 1-2 days while they review your documents to ensure they are adequate. Once your documents clear the first level of approval, they then go to immigration review which can take a further 3-4 days. Just sit back, relax, and wait your your decision. Remember the timeline and that you will need to apply in advance of your trip to be safe. This isn't something you will want to do on your flight or the night before etc. like you can with some other entry form requirements.
My Experience Applying
Since this requirement was postponed a year, I completely forgot about it. About a month before my travel, I started to hear rumblings about the requirement. I procrastinated about another week before finally hunkering down and submitting my application. Overall, it was less than seamless. Firstly, the website did not like many file types and most images were too large for submittal. In that case, I had to screenshot my images of my passport twice to get them to condense in size to meet the requirement.
Like many applications, the most difficult piece of the puzzle was the passport-style photo. I had a difficult time with the lighting in my office. I kept trying different angles and walking around for different lighting. This was quite difficult, since the photo also requires a clean, neutral backdrop. After a few minutes, I got a picture to work and I was on my way.
I paid for the Brazil eVisa with my Venture X Business card, so I would earn 2x on the expense. My total charge was $161.80 for two applications.
Application Processing Time
I clicked submit on 3/22 and my visa application was pending. Unfortunately, this was not the end of the application process. One day later, on 3/23 I received an email that my image was not acceptable as I was looking down. Additionally, my partners application was denied for “fingers” on the passport image. I promptly went in and provided new images, and it went back into review. Then, yet another 3 days later on 3/26 I received another email. This time, my passport was rejected for “fingers” on the passport image (my fingers were barely on the page, simply holding it open to take the image), further my selfie was denied for having teeth showing. No smiling allowed! Finally, I uploaded the images again – and later that day received an email that my quality control was completed and was now under immigration review.
Lastly, another 6 days passed since I completed quality control before I received the final email stating that my / my partners eVisa was approved and ready for retrieval. In total, it took me 10 days to get my visas with all of the back and forth.
Gathering Other Data Points
I decided to gather some data points from other friends who are going on this trip and also applied for visas. See below a summary of our times below:
In total, our average processing time was almost a week at 6.2 days.
Brazil eVisa Application: ToP Thoughts
While I am glad that this process can be completed online from the comfort of your home, it feels like a money grab and a bit of a waste of time. Further, the processing time seemed absurdly long for an electronic visa; by contrast the UK ETA processing time was just minutes in several ToP Team Members experiences. Lastly, excessive pushback seemed to be common as multiple of us got feedback such as our images were not compliant. A bit of a frustrating experience, but we were approved in the end!
Have you complete a Brazil Visa application yet? How was your experience? Let us know over in our ToP Facebook group.
