Schengen visa statistics, 2025
In 2025, 12,201,026 short-stay Schengen visa applications were filed at consulates around the world. 10,265,942 visas were issued and 15.9% of applications were refused.
The European Commission publishes these figures by consulate, so every number below describes the place an application was filed — which is roughly where the applicant lives. The data contains no information about applicants' nationality.
Published by the European Commission on May 28, 2026Download the source spreadsheet (2025, xlsx)
The 2025 figures at a glance
Uniform short-stay (type C) visas across every reporting Schengen consulate in 2025.
Applications and refusals, 2009–2025
The series peaked in 2013 at 17,285,449 applications.
The collapse in 2020 and 2021 reflects pandemic travel restrictions, not a change in how applications were assessed. Bulgaria and Romania report Schengen visas only from 2024; their 2009 figures are national, pre-accession visas, so the series is not strictly like-for-like across the whole period.
Where applications were filed: 161 countries, 2025
Every country with at least one reporting Schengen consulate in 2025, counted by the consulate that handled the application — not by the applicant's nationality.
Countries with at least 1000 applications in 2025 have their own page; the rest are listed here for completeness.
Which Schengen state issued them: 28 states, 2025
Each state's consulates worldwide, added up. A state's refusal rate reflects the mix of places it staffs consulates in, so these figures are not a ranking of how strict each country is.
Liechtenstein does not appear: it is represented abroad by Switzerland and issues no Schengen visas of its own. Ireland is absent from the dataset entirely — it runs its own visa policy and is not part of the Schengen visa area.
What these numbers show — and what they do not
The European Commission publishes one row per consulate: the Schengen state that runs it, the country and city it sits in, and how many uniform short-stay (type C) visas were applied for, issued and refused there in a calendar year.
The country dimension is where an application was filed, which is roughly where the applicant lives. It is not the applicant's nationality — the dataset contains no nationality information at all. So these figures cannot say how often citizens of a given country are refused, and they cannot predict how any individual application will be decided.
The refusal rate here is recomputed the same way for every year, as applications minus visas issued, divided by applications. The source files calculate their own rate inconsistently between years, so that column is not used. A few consulates report more visas issued than applications filed — the two columns count different events in the same year, so a visa issued in January against an application filed the previous December has no matching application. Those figures show a dash rather than a rate.
Only uniform type C visas are counted. Airport transit visas and visas issued at the border are separate, much smaller datasets and are never added in. Cyprus is excluded because its figures are national rather than Schengen visas.
The Commission publishes once a year, in late May, covering the previous calendar year. Between releases these figures do not change.
Questions about this data
No. These are yearly totals for a consulate, not a prediction for an individual. A consulate's rate reflects the whole mix of people who applied there — business travellers, tourists, people visiting family — and says nothing about how any particular application will be assessed.
No. It is the country the consulate is in, so it reflects where the applicant was living when they applied. The dataset records nothing about nationality, so a figure for a country covers everyone who applied there, whatever passport they hold.
No. Under the EU Visa Code you apply to the country that is your main destination, or your first point of entry when there is no single main destination. Choosing a consulate by its refusal rate is not permitted, and the rates reflect different applicant populations rather than different levels of strictness.
The European Commission publishes once a year, in late May, for the previous calendar year. The figures on this page are for 2025, and they will not change until the next release.
12,201,026 applications were filed in 2025, and 15.9% of them were refused. The table above breaks that down by the country where applications were filed and by the Schengen state that handled them.
Check your passport against all 29 Schengen countries and see what you need before you book anything.