How to Apply for a UK Visa in Nigeria (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. Teleperformance for the form and GTBank for the payment are not part of the process today.

Applying on GOV.UK, step by step

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. 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, as part of the application. That is the one way to pay GOV.UK describes.
4. Book an appointment at a visa application centre, also from inside the application. 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.

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 the cost in naira is the dollar fee at your card’s exchange rate on the day you pay.

Every traveller applies and pays separately, children included. The fee is not refunded if the application is refused, and 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.

What the Standard Visitor visa 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 this one. 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. It does not allow paid or unpaid work for a UK company, claiming public funds, living in the UK through frequent or successive visits, or 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.

Study and work visas are separate applications with their own rules and fees. GOV.UK has pages for the Student visa and for work visas, and the “Check if you need a UK visa” tool tells you which one fits.

Supporting documents GOV.UK suggests

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

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.

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.

These addresses are from VFS’s media releases and, for Ibadan, its announcement on X. The list you are offered when you book is the current one. 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.

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.

Priority usually brings a decision in 5 working days for an extra £500, shown as $689 in the fee tool for Nigeria. Super priority usually means the end of the next working day, for an extra £1,000, or $1,378.

You choose these 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, so the booking screen is where you find out for Nigeria. GOV.UK says the extra fee is not usually refunded if the decision still takes longer.

eVisas and the passport sticker

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, 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.

Spotting a visa scam

Official UK government websites end in .gov.uk, official Home Office email addresses end in @homeoffice.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, as the Home Office’s guidance on scams warns.

UKVI says it will never ask for payment by email, at a visa application centre or into a personal bank account. Fees and extras are paid 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.

For other destinations, we have set out the Canadian visitor visa and the Dubai visa.