Standard Visitor visa and ETA

Visa nationals

Standard Visitor visa, £115, up to 6 months

Non-visa nationals

Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA), £16, valid 2 years

Decision time

About 3 weeks for a visa; ETAs usually within 3 working days, often minutes

Work

Not allowed, apart from the permitted business activities

Most people who come to the UK come as visitors: tourists, people seeing family, business travellers and short-course students. Whether you need a visa in advance depends on your nationality. Visa nationals apply for a Standard Visitor visa; everyone else, including Americans, Europeans, Australians and Canadians, now needs an Electronic Travel Authorisation before travelling. Irish citizens need neither.

The Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA)

The ETA is a digital permission linked to your passport, not a visa. It was rolled out from late 2023 and has applied to all non-visa nationals, including EU citizens, since April 2025. You apply through the UK ETA app or on gov.uk, pay £16, and most decisions arrive within minutes, though the official timescale is three working days. It lasts two years or until your passport expires and allows unlimited visits of up to six months each. Airlines check for it before boarding. Children and babies need their own.

Who needs a Standard Visitor visa

Nationals of the countries listed in Appendix Visitor: Visa national list, which includes India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey, Russia and most of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. You apply online, pay £115, and attend a visa application centre for fingerprints and a photo. Long-term visit visas for two, five or ten years cost more and are worth it if you visit often; each individual stay is still limited to six months.

What visitors can and cannot do

Permitted: tourism, visiting family and friends, attending meetings, conferences and interviews, negotiating contracts, short recreational courses, up to six months of study at an accredited institution, medical treatment, and a limited list of paid engagements such as guest lectures or performances at festivals when invited in advance.

Not permitted: taking a job, doing work for a UK company (the January 2024 rules do allow you to work remotely for your overseas employer while here, as long as that is not the main reason for the visit), marrying or registering a civil partnership (you need a Marriage Visitor visa), receiving public funds, or living in the UK through repeated visits.

The six-month limit and "living in the UK by frequent visits"

There is no written rule that you can only spend six months in any twelve in the UK. The actual test is whether you are a genuine visitor who will leave at the end of each visit and who is not making the UK your home. Someone who spends eight or nine months a year here on back-to-back visits will eventually be refused entry on that basis, and the refusal then follows them. Keep a clear home, job or business and family ties outside the UK.

Why visitor applications are refused

Visitor visas have the highest refusal rate of any route, in some countries over 30%, and almost all refusals come down to the genuine-visitor test. Caseworkers look for:

• Ties to your home country: a job with approved leave, a business, property, dependants, studies you will return to.
• Funds that make sense: bank statements showing regular income and savings that cover the trip without large unexplained deposits in the weeks before applying.
• A coherent plan: dates, where you will stay, who you are visiting and how it fits your leave.
• Immigration history: previous refusals (yours or your sponsor's) and overstays anywhere.

A sponsor's letter and funds help but do not replace your own ties. There is no appeal against a visitor refusal; you can only reapply, so address the reasons given in the refusal letter directly.