How to Apply for UK Visa in Nigeria: Fees and Steps (2026)

A Nigerian passport holder needs a visa to visit the UK, and for a holiday, a family visit or a short business trip it is the Standard Visitor visa. The form and the payment are both online, and the only trip you make is a short appointment at a visa application centre. The older version of this page sent readers to Teleperformance for the form and to GTBank to pay, and neither is part of the process today.

Everything below comes from GOV.UK, the Home Office’s fee tool or VFS Global’s own announcements, and each figure says which.

UK visa fees from Nigeria

GOV.UK sets the fee in pounds. The Home Office’s visa fees tool, which GOV.UK links to, prices applications made from Nigeria in US dollars. Neither gives a naira figure, so what leaves your account depends on your card’s exchange rate on the day.

Every traveller applies and pays separately, children included. GOV.UK says the fee is not refunded if the application is refused, and that you may be given a shorter visa than the one you paid for, again with no refund. The two-year visa costs as much as nearly four six-month ones (£506 against £135), so for a first trip the six-month visa is the smaller sum to put at risk.

Who needs it and what it allows

GOV.UK’s “Check if you need a UK visa” tool, set to Nigeria and tourism, answers that you need a visa and points to the Standard Visitor visa. The electronic travel authorisation (ETA) is for nationalities that do not need a visa, so it is not an option here.

The visa covers tourism, seeing family or friends, certain business activities such as meetings and interviews, and study on a course of up to six months. You can usually stay for up to six months. GOV.UK lists what it does not allow: paid or unpaid work for a UK company, claiming public funds, living in the UK through frequent or successive visits, and getting married, which needs a Marriage Visitor visa.

You must be able to show that you will leave at the end of the visit, that you can support yourself during the trip or that someone else is funding you, and that you can pay for the journey home.

How to apply

1. Go to GOV.UK’s Standard Visitor page and click “Apply now”. The earliest you can apply is three months before you travel. You can save the form and finish it later.
2. Fill in the form. GOV.UK says it asks for your travel dates, where you will stay, what you expect the trip to cost, your home address and how long you have lived there, your parents’ names and dates of birth, what you earn in a year, and any criminal, civil or immigration offences. Depending on your answers it may also ask for ten years of travel history, your employer’s address and phone number, and the details of anyone paying for the trip.
3. Pay the fee online. GOV.UK says payment is part of the online application.
4. Book an appointment at a visa application centre, also from inside the application. GOV.UK says you must attend within 240 days of submitting, or start a new application.
5. Attend with your passport. Staff take your fingerprints and photograph, and your supporting documents go in. GOV.UK says you get your passport back the same day.
6. Wait for the email that tells you a decision has been made.

GOV.UK is blunt about timing: do not book travel until you have the decision, because UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) will not repay travel costs if the answer is no or comes late.

Documents GOV.UK lists

The one document every applicant must have is a passport or travel document that is valid for the whole stay. Beyond that, GOV.UK’s guide to supporting documents for visitors suggests the following, and says the list is not exhaustive:

• bank statements that show where the money came from;
• a letter from your employer on headed paper giving your role, salary and length of employment, or business registration documents if you work for yourself;
• a letter from your school on headed paper, if you are a student, confirming enrolment and leave of absence;
• previous passports that show travel to other countries;
• if someone else is paying, evidence of what they are providing, that they can afford it, how you are related and, if they live in the UK, that they are there legally;
• for a child, a birth certificate or similar document showing the link to a parent, and a signed consent letter if the child is not travelling with a parent;
• a certified translation of anything that is not in English or Welsh.

The same guide names documents it rates as less useful evidence: hotel bookings, flight bookings, travel insurance, credit card statements, bank statements more than a year old, personal photographs and business cards among them. Read that list before you pay anyone for a flight reservation to attach.

A tuberculosis test certificate is needed only if you are visiting for more than six months. Nigeria is on GOV.UK’s list of countries where the test applies, so it matters for the 11-month medical visa and the 12-month academic visa, not for an ordinary visit.

GOV.UK also states that providing any of these documents does not guarantee a visa.

Visa application centres in Nigeria

GOV.UK’s Find a visa application centre page sends applicants in Nigeria to VFS Global. VFS’s media releases say its Nigerian centres for UK visas opened on 19 November 2024, and that it has since added smaller Premium Application Centres inside hotels.

VFS’s launch release gives the hours for the three main centres as 8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, with applications taken until 3pm. The hotel centres open on fewer days. VFS’s Nigerian booking site sits behind a check that blocks automated reading, so this table is built from VFS’s media releases and, for Ibadan, its announcement on X. The list you are offered when you book is the current one.

GOV.UK says most centres offer free appointments within five working days and that some locations charge £76.50 for a standard appointment. VFS also sells extras such as out-of-hours slots, a lounge, SMS updates and courier return. Both GOV.UK and VFS say that paying for them makes no difference to the decision.

Decision times and priority services

GOV.UK gives three weeks as the usual wait for a Standard Visitor decision, counted from your appointment at the centre. It warns that it can take longer if UKVI needs to verify documents, asks for more evidence or calls you for an interview.

The faster services are chosen when you apply, if you are eligible, and every family member applying with you pays the extra fee too. VFS’s page on these services says availability is set by UKVI and varies by centre. We could not find a published list for Nigeria, so the booking screen is where you find out. GOV.UK says the extra fee is not usually refunded if the decision still takes longer.

eVisas and the passport sticker

GOV.UK says eVisas have replaced physical immigration documents. If your application succeeds you get an eVisa, a digital record of your identity and your permission to enter, and you need a UKVI account to see it. Creating the account and viewing the eVisa are free. To set it up you need a phone number, an email address, your passport and your visa application number.

Before you fly, GOV.UK says to check that the passport you will travel with is the one on your UKVI account. The airline checks the eVisa when you check in and may not let you travel if the details are wrong. If anyone asks for more proof, the account can generate a share code that is valid for 90 days. A visa sticker already in a passport stays valid until it expires.

Study and work visas

Those are separate applications with their own rules and fees. Start from GOV.UK’s pages for the Student visa and for work visas. The “Check if you need a UK visa” tool tells you which one fits.

Avoiding visa fraud

The Home Office publishes guidance on the scams it knows about. The points that matter for a visit visa:

• Official UK government websites end in .gov.uk, and the application starts on GOV.UK.
• Be suspicious of anyone who guarantees a visa or offers a quick and easy way to get one.
• UKVI says it will never ask for payment by email, at a visa application centre or into a personal bank account. It says to pay fees and extras online, on GOV.UK and on its commercial partner’s website, which for Nigeria is VFS Global’s.
• An agent who offers forged documents costs you the application. The Home Office says it has ways of identifying forgeries and will refuse.
• Official Home Office email addresses end in @homeoffice.gov.uk.

If you are comparing destinations, we have set out the Canadian visitor visa and the Dubai visa in the same way.

Quick answers

How much is the UK visa fee in Nigeria?

£135 for the six-month Standard Visitor visa on GOV.UK, shown as $186 in the Home Office’s fee tool for Nigeria. The long-term versions are £506 for two years, £903 for five and £1,128 for ten.

How much is the UK visa fee in naira?

Neither GOV.UK nor the fee tool gives a naira price. The tool charges applications from Nigeria in dollars, so the naira cost is $186 at your card’s rate on the day you pay.

Where are the UK visa application centres in Nigeria?

VFS Global runs them. The main centres are in Abuja, Ikeja and Victoria Island, and VFS has announced hotel-based centres in Enugu, Port Harcourt, Kano and Ibadan.

How long does a UK visitor visa take from Nigeria?

GOV.UK says a decision usually comes within three weeks of your appointment. The priority service aims for five working days for an extra £500.

Can I pay the UK visa fee at a bank in Nigeria?

GOV.UK describes one way to pay: online, as part of the application. It says UKVI never asks for payment into a personal bank account.