Saudi Arabia visitor visa from India

Indians cannot get the Saudi eVisa on an Indian passport alone. India is not on the Kingdom’s list of eVisa-eligible countries, which runs to 66 nationalities and is published on Saudi Arabia’s own tourism visa portal. An Indian passport holder qualifies for the eVisa only by holding something else: a valid US, UK or Schengen visit visa that has been used at least once, permanent residence in the US, UK or EU, or residence in a Gulf Cooperation Council country for no less than three months. Without one of those, the application goes through the Saudi visa centre in India instead, which is run by Tasheer and has fourteen offices. This is the single most common piece of misinformation about Saudi visas in the Indian market, and it is worth checking your own passport against the list before you believe a page that tells you to apply online.

A Saudi tourist visa costs ₹11,970.60 in fees through the Saudi visa centre in India, made up of a ₹7,980 government visa fee, a ₹1,050 visa platform fee and a ₹2,940.60 service fee including GST. Mandatory health insurance is charged on top of that and is priced only at submission, from your age, gender, marital status and the visa’s validity, which means no one can quote you a complete figure in advance. The fees above were checked at the Ahmedabad centre on 10 September 2026 and move with the exchange rate, so the amount collected on the day of your appointment is the amount in force then. Our own fee for the document checklist, the guidance and the appointment booking is ₹5,000.

The Saudi visitor visa for Indian nationals is single entry. Saudi Arabia suspended one-year multiple-entry visas for fourteen nationalities including India on 1 February 2025 and has not restored them, and the Saudi visa centre states that the number of entries and the duration of the visa are decided by the Saudi mission rather than selected by the applicant. A single-entry visa carries ninety days of validity and permits a stay of up to ninety days, and it is spent the moment you leave the country, even if time is left on it. Plan an itinerary that enters Saudi Arabia once. A trip that hops out to a neighbouring country and back is the most common way people waste a visa they have already paid for.

A Saudi tourist visa application from India needs your original passport with at least two consecutive blank pages, every previous passport you have held in the original, a 2 inch by 2 inch white-background photograph taken within the last three months, hotel confirmation for the whole stay, onward and return flight bookings, three months of original stamped bank statements showing a quarterly balance of USD 750, three months of original stamped salary slips, and a copy of your Aadhaar. Employed applicants add a covering letter from their company with the original seal and signature, addressed to the Royal Consulate General of Saudi Arabia in Mumbai. Students add a bonafide certificate instead, and anyone unemployed, self-employed or retired writes a self-attested letter on plain paper.

Saudi visa applications in India are handled by Tasheer, which runs fourteen visa centres across twelve cities: Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calicut, Chennai, Cochin, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Malappuram, Mumbai and Patna. Most guides claim there are only centres in Delhi and Mumbai, which has not been true for some time. The Ahmedabad centre is at Shree Balaji Agora Mall on the Sardar Patel Ring Road in Motera, open Monday to Friday, with submissions taken between nine and five and passports collected between three and five. Applications lodged in Ahmedabad are decided by the Royal Consulate General of Saudi Arabia in Mumbai, so covering letters must be addressed there rather than to the embassy in Delhi.

Biometrics for a Saudi visa are taken in India, at the visa centre, when you submit your application. Fingerprints and a facial image are captured at the counter after your documents are handed over, which means the applicant has to attend in person rather than sending the file with somebody else. There are two exceptions worth knowing about for a family trip: applicants under 6 and over 80 are exempt from biometrics and do not need to visit the centre at all, so their files can be lodged without them. Applicants who qualify for the eVisa route instead give their biometrics on arrival in Saudi Arabia, at the airport, rather than before they fly.

Nobody publishes a processing time for a Saudi visa applied for in India, including the visa centre that takes the application. Tasheer says only that the likely processing time depends on the completeness and accuracy of the documents you provide, and that once your file reaches the Royal Consulate it has no role in the decision and no responsibility for any delay. The figure of ten to fifteen days that circulates online has no authority behind it, so treat it as somebody’s average rather than a commitment. Two things are published and worth knowing: paying for the lounge appointment changes nothing, because the visa centre states that processing at the consulate has no relationship with the appointment category you choose; and the eVisa route, for those who qualify, is issued in one minute to three working days. Book refundable travel until the passport is back in your hands.

You can perform Umrah on a Saudi tourist visa. Saudi Arabia’s own activity rules for the visit visa list Umrah as permitted and Hajj as not permitted, and the Umrah permit itself is booked free through the Nusuk platform once you hold the visa. Meningococcal ACYW vaccination is required of everyone performing Umrah, from every country, either a conjugate vaccine within the last five years or a polysaccharide one within the last three, given at least ten days before arrival. India is not among the twenty-six countries required to produce a vaccination certificate at the border, though Saudi-approved Umrah operators and airlines commonly ask Indian pilgrims for one regardless, so it is worth carrying.