Visa application centres in Bengaluru

Before your appointment in Bengaluru

1. 1Read the building on your booking confirmation. Gopalan Innovation Mall in J. P. Nagar takes most VFS countries and Korea; Canada is at Sobha Pearl near Mayo Hall, Italy at Embassy Star Building in Vasanth Nagar, Spain at BLS on Millers Road and Greece at Manipal Center on Dickenson Road.
2. 2Finish any online form your country asks for before you book the slot: IRCC’s online application for Canada, AVATS for Ireland, applyvisa.um.dk for Denmark, Application Portal Norway, and finlandvisa.fi for Finland.
3. 3For France, confirm that you live in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh or Telangana, the states the Bangalore consulate covers. An address in Tamil Nadu or Kerala belongs to the Pondichéry consulate’s district instead.
4. 4For Spain, book on the BLS Spain India portal and check that you have lived in the Mumbai consulate’s district for six months; a trip starting within 15 days needs the signed “Declaration – Short Processing Time”.
5. 5Have the flight reservation and confirmed hotel booking arrive the evening before or the morning of the slot, and check every name against the passports before you print it.
6. 6Print in the sequence of the checklist, and make sure the flight dates, hotel nights, insurance period and the dates on the form are the same everywhere.
7. 7Carry cash and a card for the Japan and Korea counters: the Japan desk lists cash and POS/UPI as payment methods, and KVAC lists cash or POS.

Which Bengaluru centre handles which country

Gopalan Innovation Mall at 22 Bannerghatta Main Road is the address most Bengaluru applicants need. VFS Global runs the UK, Ireland, Japan, UAE and South Africa desks there, along with 14 Schengen countries: Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Czechia, Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. The Korea Visa Application Center (KVAC), which VFS also operates, is in the same mall. Some desks, Poland’s among them, take submissions on selected weekdays only, so read your own country’s centre page.

Four countries break the pattern. Canada’s VFS centre is on the 8th floor of Sobha Pearl on Commissariat Road, Italy’s is on the 3rd floor of Embassy Star Building in Vasanth Nagar, Spain is handled by BLS International at Smartworks Golden Millenium on Millers Road, and Greece by Global Visa Center World (GVCW) at Manipal Center on Dickenson Road. Greece does not use VFS anywhere in India.

The UAE desk is narrower than its name suggests. It processes Dubai visas only, in tourist and transit categories, not work or residence, and the traveller has to enter and leave through Dubai airport. Bengaluru is also the only city among Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Puducherry with a South Africa centre.

Getting to the visa centres in Bengaluru

Gopalan Innovation Mall is in J. P. Nagar 3rd Phase in south Bengaluru, on Bannerghatta Main Road in the Sarakki Industrial Layout. The other four buildings are all in central Bengaluru, a long way from J. P. Nagar: Sobha Pearl stands near Mayo Hall, next to Bangalore Central Mall in Ashok Nagar, while the Italian, Spanish and Greek desks are in Vasanth Nagar, on Millers Road and on Dickenson Road.

Kempegowda International Airport (BLR) is at Devanahalli on the city’s northern edge, so someone landing there for a J. P. Nagar slot has to cross the whole city. Peak-hour traffic in Bengaluru is slow, and applicants coming in from Mysuru, Mangaluru, Hubballi or Kalaburagi remove most of that risk by arriving the day before. Save the exact address of your centre in a maps app before you set out, because the mall and the central buildings lie in opposite parts of town.

Which consulate decides a Karnataka file

Where you submit and who decides are separate questions. For France, Karnataka is in the district of the Consulate General in Bangalore, which also covers Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and runs a Bureau de France in Hyderabad. It is a busy post: EU statistics record 54,046 applications there in 2025, with 7.8 per cent not issued.

Italy’s Consulate General in Bengaluru takes Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Pondicherry; the Italian VFS page for Mumbai describes these states as no longer part of Mumbai’s jurisdiction and points applicants to the Bangalore consulate. Japan’s Bengaluru consulate covers Karnataka alone. Spain is different again, because BLS files from Karnataka go to the Consulate General in Mumbai, which also handles Belgian and Hungarian visas for the South.

Germany keeps a consulate general in Bengaluru, yet every German Schengen file lodged at an Indian centre is decided in Mumbai, and Schengen slots can be booked at any centre in India whatever your address. That freedom does not extend to national D visas. Swiss files are processed by the Embassy in New Delhi for people “legally residing and working in India for at least six months”, and Dutch decisions also come from New Delhi.

Countries you cannot apply for in Bengaluru, and where to go instead

A few destinations that Karnataka travellers ask about have no working counter in the city. Sort these out before you book flights or leave:

• United States: the US Embassy’s visa page lists interview posts in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata, with none in Bengaluru. Chennai and Hyderabad are the closest.
• Singapore: Karnataka sits in the Chennai consulate’s district, and the VFS Singapore centre at Ramee Mall, Chennai, is one of only two in India.
• New Zealand: the Bengaluru centre is listed as temporarily closed. Open centres are in Mumbai, New Delhi and Chandigarh.
• Australia: the Home Affairs list of biometrics collection centres includes none in India, so no Bengaluru building handles Australian visas.

Who applies in Bengaluru

Bengaluru is India’s best-known technology city, and many of its applicants travel for work: client meetings, conferences, training and short assignments in Europe, the UK and Ireland. A business file normally pairs an invitation from the company abroad with a letter from the employer in India, and the dates in both letters should agree with the flight reservation and the hotel nights to the day.

North Karnataka is far from J. P. Nagar. For the UK, where any Indian centre is accepted, and for a German Schengen visa, which can be booked at any centre in the country, an applicant in Belagavi or Dharwad may find the VFS centres at Patto Plaza in Panaji, Goa, nearer. For France, Italy and Japan the consulate is fixed by where you live, so check those rules before booking a slot outside Karnataka.

Timing your flight reservation and hotel booking for a Bengaluru appointment

A flight reservation is an airline booking held without payment, and the airline, not the desk, decides how long that hold survives, which differs between airlines. For a Bengaluru slot, ask for it on the day of the appointment, or the evening before if the slot is early or you are travelling in from another district. Read the names and dates the moment it arrives, then print it with the rest of the file.

Korea needs the most patience: KVAC lists a standard minimum of 27 working days for Bengaluru files, so lodge well ahead of travel, while still ordering the reservation for the submission day itself. Where a Schengen checklist asks for proof of accommodation, the desk’s confirmed hotel booking names the property, the dates and every guest, and its nights should run from the arrival date on the flight reservation to the departure date. A PDF altered to show a booking that was never made is document fraud.

Visa centres in Bengaluru

Bengaluru questions, answered