Applying for Lithuanian e-resident status is a short procedure with one hard constraint in the middle of it: you have to stand in front of somebody and give fingerprints. Everything else is a web form and a bank transfer.
This page sets out the procedure as the Migration Department and the statute describe it, and is plain about the step that stops most people — whether there is anywhere in your country to do the in-person part. If you have not yet decided whether you want the status at all, read what e-resident status actually is first. It is not residency and it will not let you into the country.
The procedure in six lines:
1. Check whether your country is one of the 21 with an application centre. If it is not, the only route is to be lawfully in Lithuania.
2. Fill in the application in MIGRIS, the Migration Department's online system.
3. Attend in person within 4 months — at the external service provider you chose, or at the Migration Department if you are in Lithuania.
4. Bring a valid travel document, give a facial image and 2 fingerprints.
5. Pay €90 in state fees, plus €80 to the provider if you are abroad.
6. The decision is taken immediately. The status runs 3 years and the card is issued by the same office that took your application.
Table of Contents
- First: can you apply at all?
- Which of the two routes is yours
- The procedure, end to end
- Step 1 — the MIGRIS application
- Step 2 — booking, and the four-month clock
- Step 3 — the appointment
- Step 4 — paying
- Step 5 — the decision
- Step 6 — the card, and using it
- Applying from inside Lithuania
- If you are refused
- After three years
- Where people go wrong
- FAQ
First: Can You Apply At All?
Three questions, and if you fail any of them the rest of the page is academic.
Are you at least 18, and not a Lithuanian citizen? The statute's only eligibility test is that you are an užsienietis — a person who is not a citizen of Lithuania, whether or not you hold any other citizenship. The age floor of 18 comes from the procedure underneath it. Citizens of other EU states qualify; so do stateless people.
Are you free of a Schengen entry-refusal alert and off Lithuania's national entry-ban list? Those are the only two grounds on which Article 140³ allows a refusal. There is no financial test, no business test and no general discretion clause.
Is there somewhere you can physically attend — a centre in one of the 21 countries, or the Migration Department while you are lawfully in Lithuania? This is the one that stops people. Biometrics cannot be given remotely, and the statute offers an alien abroad exactly one route: an external service provider.
If all three are yes, you can apply, and on the published rules you should expect to succeed. The statutory refusal test is two security checks and nothing else.
The 21 countries with an application centre
Australia · Austria · Belgium · Canada · Denmark · Finland · France · Germany · Ireland · Israel · Italy · Japan · Netherlands · Norway · Singapore · South Korea · Sweden · Switzerland · Taiwan · United Kingdom · United States
Read from the Migration Department's own list of e-resident services for persons abroad on 27 August 2026. The list is set by an order of the Minister of the Interior — No. 1V-427 of 17 June 2025, in force from 18 June 2025 — so it can change without any change in the law.
Which of the Two Routes Is Yours
Article 140²(1) of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens is the whole of it: "An alien's application for the grant of e-resident status is submitted to the Migration Department. An alien who is abroad submits the application through a chosen external service provider, and an alien who is lawfully in the Republic of Lithuania — personally to the Migration Department."
| You are abroad | You are lawfully in Lithuania | |
|---|---|---|
| Where you apply | Through an external service provider | In person to the Migration Department |
| Where that is | 21 countries, one operator: VFS Global | The Migration Department, in Lithuania |
| State fee | €90 | €90 |
| Service charge | €80 | None |
| Total | €170 | €90 |
| The catch | No provider in your country means no route from abroad | You must be here lawfully — a lawful basis to be present is part of the route |
If you already hold a residence permit, neither column is really for you: you probably want a bank or mobile e-signature instead, for the reasons set out under applying from inside Lithuania.
There is no third route
No consular route. No postal route. No notary route. No fully online route. The statute names two places an application may be made and the Migration Department publishes addresses for both. If neither applies to you, the answer today is that you cannot apply — not that there is a harder way.
The Procedure, End to End
Step 1 — The MIGRIS Application
The application is filled in through MIGRIS, the Lithuanian migration information system, which lives at migracija.lt. That is a different site from migracija.lrv.lt, which is the Migration Department's institutional site — the one carrying the fee lists, the country pages and the legal acts. Readers routinely land on one expecting the other. MIGRIS is a browser application and will not render at all without JavaScript, so use an ordinary desktop browser rather than a reader mode or a proxy.
Create the application in MIGRIS
You are applying for e. rezidento statusas. The state's migration information service describes this as the first act: an alien of at least 18 fills in the application through the migration information system.
Choose where you will attend
Abroad, that means choosing an external service provider from the published list. In Lithuania, it means the Migration Department.
Note the date you completed the form
The 4-month clock in the next section runs from the day the MIGRIS application is filled in, not from the day you book.
The Migration Department publishes no specimen of the form, so start it before you book anything — budget for the possibility that it asks for something you do not have to hand.
Step 2 — Booking, and the Four-Month Clock
Four months, from the form — not from the booking. Lithuania's state migration information service says the applicant must attend the chosen provider, or the Migration Department, within 4 months of the day the MIGRIS application was filled in. That is the only deadline published anywhere in this procedure, and it is the one that catches people who fill the form in on a whim and come back to it half a year later.
The Migration Department's country pages each name one centre and link to the operator's own booking portal. Three examples, read on 27 August 2026:
| Country | Centre | Where it is |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | VF Services (UK) Limited | 66 Wilson Street, London EC2A 2BT |
| United States | VFS Services (USA) Inc. | 128 E 32nd Street, Floor 3, New York, NY 10016 |
| Germany | VFS Global | Zimmerstraße 68, 10117 Berlin |
One address per country is the pattern, not the exception. For an applicant in California or in Bavaria, the honest budget line is a domestic flight rather than a bus fare.
Confirm the address before you travel. These are the addresses the Migration Department published on the date shown. Contracted service networks move, and the operator's booking portal — not this page and not a search result — is the thing to trust on the morning of your appointment.
Step 3 — The Appointment
This is the part that cannot be avoided or outsourced.
What you bring
- A valid travel document — your passport. The state migration information service names galiojantis kelionės dokumentas, a valid travel document, as the first item.
- A document giving you the right to be in Lithuania, where that is required — this applies to the in-country route: the statute lets you apply personally to the Migration Department only if you are lawfully in Lithuania, so the lawful basis has to be evidenced.
- Yourself, for biometrics — Article 140²(2) requires a facial image and 2 fingerprints, taken to confirm identity, save in the cases provided for in Regulation (EC) No 1030/2002. This is why the appointment exists.
That is the published list. Note what is absent from it: no proof of address, no proof of income, no business plan, no criminal record certificate, no legalised or apostilled documents, and no translations. Compared with any Lithuanian residence permit application — see residence permits, where legalisation alone routinely takes weeks — this is a very light file.
The document list is short because the decision is short. The Migration Department is testing two things: that you are who the travel document says you are, which is what the biometrics establish, and that neither of the two Article 140³ security grounds applies to you, which is a database check. Nothing else is being assessed, so nothing else is being asked for.
Step 4 — Paying
| What | How much | To whom | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| State fee — examination of the application and issue of the e-identification and e-signature means | €90 | State Tax Inspectorate, payment code 5740 | Before the application is examined |
| External service provider's service charge, per person | €80 | The provider, if you apply from abroad | At the centre |
| Expedited handling | Not available at any price | — | — |
The Migration Department publishes the state fee with a payment code — 5740 — and names the State Tax Inspectorate accounts it is paid into. The service charge of €80 is the provider's own and is described as uniform across every country where it operates; it is not a state fee and does not go to Lithuania.
There is no fast lane. The Migration Department publishes expedited (skubos tvarka) tiers for several other documents. It publishes none for e-resident status: one line, one price, one speed. If somebody offers to expedite your e-resident application for a fee, they are not buying you anything the Migration Department sells.
The state fee is described as covering examination of the application as well as issue of the card.
Step 5 — The Decision
Lithuania's state migration information service says the decision is taken nedelsiant — immediately. That is a startling sentence next to any other Migration Department procedure, and it is credible for the reason set out above: the decision consists of two database checks.
Status is granted, under Article 140⁴(1), by registering you in the Register of Aliens — the same register that the amending law of 2019 was written to make room for you in. The 2019 act amended Article 142 of the Aliens Law so that e-residents are expressly among the objects of that register.
Registration in the Register of Aliens, and the issue of an electronic identification and electronic signature means carrying an e-resident identification certificate and an e-resident qualified electronic signature certificate. The status runs 3 years.
A Schengen Information System alert entered by another Schengen state for the purpose of refusing you entry, or your presence on Lithuania's national list of aliens prohibited from entering. Article 140³ lists nothing else.
Step 6 — The Card, and Using It
Article 140⁴(4) settles the question that most confuses people. The means is prepared by an institution authorised by the Minister of the Interior and issued to the alien by the entities named in Article 140²(1) — which is to say, by the external service provider if you applied abroad, or by the Migration Department if you applied here. The statute does not send you to Lithuania to collect it.
What arrives is a card. The Migration Department's specimen page describes it as made of polycarbonate, or of material with the same or better performance characteristics, carrying two certificates whose validity runs no longer than the status itself. To sign anything you install software from the Ministry of the Interior's certification centre on the computer you are using; the card on its own is a piece of plastic.
What it opens is three things, on the state's published list: the Lithuanian government e-services gateway (Elektroniniai valdžios vartai), MIGRIS through that gateway, and signing documents with a qualified electronic signature. The list of what an e-resident can do is set out in full on the main e-Residency page, along with what the state says it is aiming to add later.
Article 140⁴(4) names who issues the card. It does not say how it reaches you, and the Migration Department publishes nothing on the point either — whether a second appointment at the same centre is required, whether it is posted or couriered, whether a representative may collect it, or how long after the decision it becomes available. Put the question to the centre when you book, and get the answer before you pay the €80.
The card is an identity credential, not a company. If the point of all this is a Lithuanian business, get matched with people who set them up for foreigners.
Applying From Inside Lithuania
The second statutory route is short to describe and easy to misread. An alien who is lawfully in the Republic of Lithuania applies personally — asmeniškai — to the Migration Department.
Two things follow.
Being here lawfully is part of the route, not an afterthought. That means a visa, visa-free entry within its limits, or a residence permit, and the state migration information service lists a document giving the right to be in Lithuania among the things you bring, where one is required. The status will not regularise a stay that is not already lawful, and applying for it is not a basis to remain.
If you already hold a residence permit, this is probably the wrong product. The same state service points permit holders at the ordinary Lithuanian routes to an electronic signature — through a mobile operator, or through your bank. Those attach to the identity you already have, cost less than €90 plus an appointment, and do not expire in 3 years for reasons unconnected with your permit. E-resident status is built for people without a Lithuanian permit.
A short-stay visitor can use this route. Nothing in Article 140²(1) requires the alien in Lithuania to be resident here — only to be here lawfully. Somebody in Vilnius on a Schengen visa or visa-free is, on the face of the statute, within the second route. See Schengen and short-stay visas for what lawful presence means in that context.
If You Are Refused
Refusal comes on one of two grounds and neither is about you as an applicant: a Schengen Information System alert for refusal of entry entered by another Schengen state, or your presence on Lithuania's national list of aliens prohibited from entering. Both are entry bans. If you receive one of them, the e-resident refusal is the smaller of your two problems, because the same alert is what stops you crossing a Schengen border.
Chapter X¹ of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens — Articles 140² to 140⁶, the whole of the e-resident regime — contains no appeal provision, and the Migration Department sets out no appeal route, deadline or forum for an e-resident refusal. Lithuanian administrative law provides general routes for challenging an administrative decision, so anyone refused should take Lithuanian legal advice rather than reason from what other migration procedures do.
Separately, and more usefully for most readers: a refusal is not the only way to lose the status. Article 140⁵ lists eight grounds for revoking one already granted, most of them financial-crime grounds, and the tax-arrears ground bites at anything above one basic social benefit — €74 in 2026. The full list is on the main e-Residency page.
After Three Years
The status is granted for 3 years and the certificates on the card expire with it.
Neither the Migration Department nor the statute publishes a renewal procedure, a renewal fee or a renewal window, so plan on repeating the whole exercise — a fresh application at the full €90, a fresh set of biometrics and a second trip to a centre. Price the card at €170 per 3 years rather than as a one-off.
Where People Go Wrong
Booking before checking the country list. 21 jurisdictions have a centre. If yours is not one of them, the abroad route does not exist for you at all.
Letting the four months run out. The clock starts when the MIGRIS form is filled in, not when you book. It is the only published deadline in the procedure.
Confusing migracija.lt with migracija.lrv.lt. The first is the application system, MIGRIS. The second is the Migration Department's institutional site, where the fees, the country list and the legal acts live.
Expecting a nearby centre. One address per country. For the whole of the United States, that address is in New York.
Budgeting only the state fee. €90 is the state's share. From abroad, add €80 to the provider, then add the travel.
Paying somebody to expedite it. There is no expedited tier. Nobody can sell you a speed the Migration Department does not offer.
Applying while unlawfully in Lithuania. The in-country route requires lawful presence. The status regularises nothing and is not a basis to remain.
Buying it as a route to a company. Company formation is on the state's list of intentions, not on its list of live e-resident services.
Assuming the card will simply arrive. Nothing published says how it reaches you. Ask the centre before you pay, not after.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do I actually submit the application?
To the Migration Department, but through one of two channels. If you are abroad you submit it through a chosen external service provider — VFS Global, in one of the 21 countries the Migration Department lists. If you are lawfully in Lithuania you submit it in person to the Migration Department. Article 140-2(1) of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens names those two channels and no others.
Do I have to travel to Lithuania?
Not if your country is one of the 21 with an application centre. If it is not, then yes — the only remaining statutory route requires you to be lawfully in Lithuania and to attend the Migration Department in person. In every case you must attend somewhere in person, because a facial image and two fingerprints have to be taken.
How long do I have between filling in the form and attending?
Four months from the day the MIGRIS application is filled in, according to Lithuania's state migration information service. That is the only deadline published anywhere in the procedure, and it runs from the form, not from the booking.
What do I bring to the appointment?
A valid travel document; where required, a document giving you the right to be in Lithuania; and yourself, for biometrics. That is the published list. No proof of income, no business plan, no criminal record certificate, no apostilles and no certified translations.
What does it cost in total?
Ninety euros in state fees, paid to the State Tax Inspectorate under payment code 5740. Applying from abroad adds an eighty euro service charge to the external service provider, which the Migration Department describes as uniform across all countries. That is 170 euros in total, before travel.
Can I pay to have it processed faster?
No. The Migration Department publishes exactly one e-resident fee line and no expedited tier, unlike several of its other documents. The decision itself is described by the state migration information service as taken immediately, which is consistent with what it consists of: two database checks.
How do I get the card once I am approved?
Article 140-4(4) says the means is prepared by an institution authorised by the Minister of the Interior and issued to you by the same entities that took your application — the external service provider abroad, or the Migration Department in Lithuania. How it physically reaches you is not published: no authority states whether a second appointment is needed, whether it is posted, or how long it takes. Ask the centre when you book.
Can I apply while in Lithuania on a tourist visa?
On the face of the statute, yes. Article 140-2(1) requires the alien in Lithuania to be there lawfully, not to be resident there, so somebody present on a Schengen visa or visa-free within its limits falls inside the second route. The status will not extend your stay or give you any right to remain.
What happens if I am refused?
Refusal comes only on the two grounds in Article 140-3: a Schengen Information System alert entered against you by another Schengen state for refusal of entry, or your presence on Lithuania's national list of aliens prohibited from entering. Whether the fees are returned is not published, and neither is any appeal route specific to e-resident decisions — Chapter 10-1 of the statute contains no appeal provision. Take Lithuanian legal advice rather than assuming.
What happens after three years?
Nobody publishes the answer. The Migration Department's fee pages in both languages, its index of e-resident legal acts, its services pages for persons abroad, the state migration information service and the statute itself — all read on 27 August 2026 — contain no renewal procedure, fee or window. Assume a fresh application at the full fee, with fresh biometrics.
Will it let me register a Lithuanian company?
Not on any published Lithuanian statement. The state's list of live e-resident services has three items on it and company formation is not one of them; establishing and managing a company is described as something the programme aims to enable. If a company is the objective, treat this card as unproven for that purpose.
I live in Lithuania on a residence permit. Should I apply?
Probably not. Lithuania's state migration information service points permit holders at the ordinary electronic signature routes instead — through a mobile operator or through your bank. Those attach to the identity you already hold and cost less than ninety euros plus an appointment. E-resident status is designed for people without a Lithuanian permit.
Related Guides
Know what the card opens before you book the appointment
Before you pay and travel, check what the card is actually accepted for. Whether it lets you register and run a Lithuanian company is the question most applicants arrive with, and the answer is not a clean yes.
Disclaimer
General guidance, not legal advice. E-resident status is administered by the Migration Department under the Ministry of the Interior. Fees, the country list, the service list and the procedure change without notice, and the country list in particular is set by a ministerial order that can be amended at any time. Confirm everything with the Migration Department before you pay or travel.