Schengen Visa Approval Rates by Country for India (2024 EU Data)

Denmark and Belgium posted the lowest 2024 refusal rates for Indian Schengen applicants — 8.5% and 8.8% — against an India-wide average of 14.96% across all 28 processing member states, per the European Commission's own consulate-level statistics. No competing page on this query publishes a number: Google's AI Overview names three countries and cites none. This page gives you the Commission's 2024 dataset, broken down for Indian applicants by member state and by consulate inside India, and the legal rule that decides which country you are actually allowed to apply to. Read that rule first — applying anywhere other than your genuine main destination is visa shopping, and the record follows you into every future Schengen application.

This page answers the query "easiest country to get schengen visa from india" with the actual Schengen visa approval rate by country for 2024, not a folk ranking.

The number, first: refusal rates for Indian applicants by member state#

Before the table: you may only apply to the Schengen member state that is your main destination under Article 5 of the Visa Code, covered in full further down this page. The table below tells you the odds for a country that is already legitimately yours to choose — it is not a menu.

In 2024, Indian nationals filed 1,108,239 Schengen visa applications across every processing member state (Liechtenstein issues no visas of its own and is represented by Switzerland for this purpose). Consulates reached a decision on 1,104,963 of them inside the calendar year: 936,748 uniform visas issued, 2,949 limited-territorial-validity visas issued, and 165,266 not issued — a 14.96% refusal rate, against 14.78% for applicants of every nationality worldwide that year. The table breaks that number down by member state, aggregated from the Commission's own consulate-level workbook for every Indian post: New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata and Goa. What follows is a per-member-state comparison built entirely from the 2024 Schengen statistics — the refusal rate for Indian applicants at each consulate, not a global figure repackaged as if it were India-specific.

Source: European Commission, Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs, "2024 Schengen visa statistics for consulates" (dataset file `2024-schengen-visa-statistics-consulates_en.xlsx`, published 2025), filtered to consulates located in India and aggregated across every Indian post for each member state. Verified against the published dataset on 31 July 2026.

Reading the columns: the refusal rate is the Commission's own — visas not issued divided by decisions taken (uniform visas issued + LTVs issued + not issued), which is why it does not equal "not issued ÷ applications". An LTV is a visa valid for one or some member states rather than the whole area; it is an approval, not a refusal. Applications lodged and decisions taken are counted separately, so the two differ slightly — 1,108,239 against 1,104,963 across India — with the balance sitting in files decided outside the calendar year.

† Bulgaria and Romania began issuing Schengen visas on 31 March 2024, so their rows cover roughly nine months of 2024, not twelve. Bulgaria's low rate is also driven by the 2,611 LTVs it issued to Indian applicants — more than half its approvals.

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There is no single easiest Schengen country for Indians in the abstract — Denmark and Belgium sit at one end, Slovenia and Malta at the other, and most of the traffic — Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, the Netherlands — clusters between 11% and 17%, around the India-wide average. None of this is a ranking of "easy" countries in the abstract; it is what happened to real applications in one calendar year, and the next section explains exactly what it does and does not measure.

Where this data comes from, and what it does not measure#

This table comes from a real, dated, government source, not a summary of a summary: EU Commission visa statistics, collected under Article 46 and Annex XII of the Visa Code (Regulation (EC) 810/2009), which require every Schengen state to submit annual figures to the Commission by 1 March, disseminated roughly three to four months later. Every row is a uniform visa issued vs refused count for that member state's Indian caseload — consulate-level refusal data, not a national embassy's own summary of it. The 2024 edition — the one this page uses — was released in 2025 and covers 1 January to 31 December 2024. It is not real-time, and a country's number can move meaningfully within a year (see the Iceland example further down).

Three limits matter more than the headline percentage. First, the Commission's own quality-and-metadata note for this dataset defines the key term for us: "Not issued visas include refused visas and applications where the examination has been discontinued as provided for in Article 8(2) of the Visa Code" — a withdrawn or abandoned application counts the same as an outright refusal in this table. The Commission does not publish the split, so the true refusal share for any country in the table could be a point or two lower than shown, and there is no way to know by how much from the public data alone. Second, the rate is a consulate-level aggregate, not a prediction for any individual file: it says nothing about your income, your travel history, your documents or your ties to India, all of which move an individual outcome far more than which country's booth you sit at. Third, this is self-reported administrative data checked by the Commission for typos and year-on-year consistency, not an independent audit — accurate by design, but a national figure, not a personal one.

The rule that constrains the choice: main destination and first point of entry#

The table above answers "which country's odds are better." It does not answer "which country may I apply to" — that is a separate, binding legal question, and it comes first. Article 5(1) of the Visa Code sets it out in three steps: (a) if your trip has a single destination, you apply there; (b) if it covers more than one Schengen country, you apply to whichever one is your main destination, measured by the length or purpose of your stay; (c) only if no main destination can be determined — genuinely equal days across two or more countries — do you apply to the country of your first point of entry, the one whose external border you cross first.

This is the main destination rule, and it is not a courtesy — it is the article that decides, before any refusal rate matters, which consulate is even allowed to examine your application. A trip built as "12 days in Austria" with one overnight layover elsewhere has an obvious main destination; the table's Austria number (22.0% refused, on 43,504 Indian applications in 2024) applies to that trip regardless of what a neighbouring country's rate looks like. Article 6(1) adds a second constraint specific to India: your application is examined by the consulate in whose jurisdiction you legally reside, not the one you happen to prefer — which is the reason the next section's consulate-level numbers describe a real pattern rather than a menu you can order from.

Visa shopping vs a legitimate choice — where the line actually is#

A refusal is not local to the country that issued it: it is recorded and visible to every other Schengen consulate through the shared visa system, and applicants must declare prior refusals on every subsequent application, in every member state, indefinitely. Choosing which genuinely-viable destination to apply to, honestly, is your right under Article 5. Choosing a country you will not visit, to borrow its number, is a documented, cross-border liability with no expiry date.

The audience's two beliefs — "pick the easy one" and "visa shopping will ruin you" — are both partly right, and the resolution is Article 5 itself. A legitimate choice is picking, honestly, which member state is your main destination when you genuinely have more than one candidate and the days are close: a traveller splitting a trip between the Netherlands and Belgium may lawfully end up applying to either, depending on which city gets the extra two nights. Visa shopping is applying to a country you have no real intention of spending most of your trip in, specifically because its number in the table above is lower. Those are different acts, and only the second one is a violation. Community accounts consistent with this describe reviewers treating a mismatched itinerary — a country applied to that does not match the stated travel plan — as its own red flag, independent of income or documents.

Consulate geography inside India: Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore are not the same door#

The same country, applied to at two different Indian consulates, produced measurably different 2024 refusal rates — and the gap runs the same direction in every one of the eight member states that operate more than one Indian post: New Delhi worse than Mumbai or Bangalore in the seven that run either, and worse than Goa in the one that posts there. This is not folklore. It is the Commission's own numbers, and it corroborates a claim that, until now, existed only as a single Reddit comment.

One commenter on r/ForeignTravelIndia put it plainly on 30 May 2026, pointing other applicants at the Commission's dataset rather than at the thread: the Schengen area publishes approval rates by EU country for every consulate abroad, and Delhi — applicants from the north — carries a higher rejection rate than the same country's consulate in Mumbai or Bangalore. The Commission's 2024 workbook confirms the direction and gives it a number, country by country:

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Germany's Bangalore consulate refused 1.2% of Indian applications in 2024 against New Delhi's 12.4% for the same country — a tenfold gap. France's New Delhi post refused one applicant in four (25.2%) while its Bangalore post refused fewer than one in ten (9.0%); Italy's own Bangalore-vs-Delhi gap (8.9% vs 18.6%) runs the same direction. This is real and it is large, but it is not something most applicants can act on: under Article 6(1) of the Visa Code, your application goes to the consulate with jurisdiction over where you legally reside, not the one with the better number. If you genuinely live and work within Bangalore's or Mumbai's jurisdiction, the lower rate is simply a fact about your situation. If you live in Delhi's jurisdiction, it is not a door you can walk through by choosing a different city on a form — doing so is itself a form of misrepresentation, separate from the main-destination question above.

The pattern is not confined to Schengen. A comparable, independently reported observation — extra scrutiny for applicants from northern Indian states — appears in the community's discussion of a different visa regime entirely, the US B1/B2 process, and neither source cites the other. Two regimes, two independent reports, pointing at the same underlying vector: this is worth knowing as context for why your own application might read differently than a friend's identical file filed from another city, not as an instruction to relocate your residency for a form.

The cascade regime: what two lawfully used visas in three years buys you#

Indian nationals with a recent, lawfully used Schengen travel history can now receive a two-year multi-entry visa on their next application, and a five-year visa after that — a rule most of the corpus underexplains. On 18 April 2024, the European Commission adopted this "cascade" regime specifically for Indian nationals residing in India, confirmed by the EU Delegation to India on 22 April 2024: after obtaining and lawfully using two Schengen visas within the previous three years, an applicant can be issued a two-year multi-entry visa; that two-year visa is normally followed by a five-year visa, provided the passport has sufficient remaining validity. Holders travel on the same terms as visa-exempt nationals for the life of the visa.

A separate applicant posted one of the first documented outcomes under it (r/SchengenVisa, 27 June 2024): applying for Switzerland with his wife at VFS New Delhi on 18 June 2024, an early 9:15 a.m. slot, no premium service, passports back on 27 June — nine days. Both had substantial prior Schengen history. His ran to roughly one European trip a year for a decade; hers to three earlier visas. Both were granted a two-year multi-entry visa. As he summarised it for the thread: "the new Cascade regime for Indians is a thing, and it's already implemented by atleast Switzerland."

The cascade regime is worth building into a multi-year strategy, not just a one-off booking. A first-time applicant with no travel history gets none of this; the two qualifying visas have to be genuinely used, not just issued. Switzerland's own refusal rate for India in the table above (12.0%) sits mid-table, which matters less here than the fact that it was, per the community record, an early and consistent adopter of the regime. For the country-specific document checklist this depends on, see Schengen visa documents required from India and, for Switzerland specifically, Switzerland visa from India.

Appointment availability is a second axis, and it moves faster than the rates#

A country's refusal rate and its appointment pressure are not the same thing, and the table above does not measure the second one. No public, per-consulate wait-time dataset for India exists inside the Commission's statistics; VFS Global's own live appointment calendar is the only place to check current wait times, and it changes week to week. What the 2024 dataset does give, honestly, is application volume by member state — a real, sourced proxy for how busy a consulate's Indian operation is, even though it is not the same as a wait-time figure.

Switzerland processed 217,373 Indian applications in 2024, the single busiest Schengen operation in India that year, followed by France (197,959) and Germany (142,955). At the other end, Slovenia (2,787), Romania (1,563), Slovakia (1,394) and Lithuania (681) processed a fraction of that. High volume and a high refusal rate do not automatically travel together: Switzerland's 12.0% sits below the India-wide average despite carrying the most applications, while lightly used Slovenia posted the single worst rate in the table, 50.8%. Busy is not the same as hard, and quiet is not the same as easy — check the live VFS calendar for wait times, and see Schengen visa fee for Indians for what the appointment itself costs before you book it.

Reading the table: three worked examples#

The abstract question — easiest country to get schengen visa from india — only becomes concrete once a real itinerary is attached to it. The three examples below do that.

1. A family splitting a trip across two countries. Ten days in Spain, four days in France, one itinerary. Spain is the main destination by length of stay under Article 5(1)(b), so the family applies to Spain — 15.8% refused on 97,204 Indian applications in 2024 — regardless of France's very similar 15.9%. The rule decided this before either number mattered.

1. A solo traveller with an even split. Five days in the Netherlands, five days in Belgium, no way to call a "main" destination by length of stay. Article 5(1)(c) — the first point of entry rule — then applies: the country of first entry decides. Landing in Amsterdam first means applying to the Netherlands (16.1% refused) even though Belgium's rate (8.8%) is lower on paper — the flight itinerary settles the question, not the table.

1. A business trip fixed by someone else's invitation. A conference in Germany, dates and destination set by the employer, no discretion over where to apply. Germany is the only lawful choice (11.1% refused, on 142,955 Indian applications) regardless of what Denmark or Belgium show above it in the table. When the itinerary is fixed, the table is background reading, not a decision input.

Every example above assumes standard supporting evidence is in order — proof of funds, a stamped bank statement, valid travel insurance and a coherent itinerary. See bank balance required for Schengen visa (INR) and Schengen visa insurance accepted by consulate India for what "in order" means in practice; those documents move an individual outcome more than the country-level number does.

What the table cannot tell you#

The table is real and it is dated, and it still cannot predict any one applicant's outcome. Three limits are worth stating plainly. First, per-applicant variance dominates: two Indian applicants can apply to the same country through the same city and get opposite results in the same month, because documents and ties decide individual files far more than the country's aggregate rate does. Second, a country's own number moves year to year, and it can move hard. Iceland refused 4.0% of Indian applications in 2023 and 16.3% in 2024 — the same consulate, the same nationality, four times the rate in twelve months, per the 2023 and 2024 editions of the same Commission series. Its rate for all nationalities tripled over the same period, from 2.2% to 6.6%. A rate this page reports as "low" for 2024 is not a permanent guarantee for 2027. Third, "not issued" bundles refusals with discontinued applications (Article 8(2), noted above), and consulates likely differ in how often they discontinue a weak file rather than issue a formal refusal on it — a variation the public data cannot separate out. None of that changes the honest answer to easiest country to get schengen visa from india as a question: it depends on where you are genuinely going, and then the odds above apply. Treat every number on this page as this year's odds, not next year's promise, and check ETIAS 2026: what to know for what changes once the new pre-travel authorisation system goes live.

If you were already refused#

A refusal is a data point, not a verdict, but the numbers above are not the place to look for what to do next. One first-time applicant, refused a Swiss visa lodged at VFS Mumbai in August 2025, weighed an appeal and decided against it on two grounds: it is slow, and it costs roughly ₹20,000 — a real cost stated honestly, not a reason to give up. Read the specific ground printed on your own refusal letter and answer that one; this page does not track appeal success rate by country, but the full appeal-versus-reapply decision, including per-country appeal deadlines and two documented cases where an appeal succeeded, lives on Schengen visa refusal appeal India. For refusal patterns across visa types more broadly, see Refusal tips.

VisaGyan is not affiliated with the European Commission, any Schengen consulate or VFS Global; we book nothing and sell nothing.

Refusal rates verified on 31 July 2026 against the European Commission's 2024 Schengen visa statistics for consulates; the main-destination and consular-jurisdiction rules against Articles 5, 6 and 8(2) of Regulation (EC) 810/2009; the cascade regime against the EU Delegation to India's 22 April 2024 announcement.

Sources cited only — expert review pending. This page has not yet been reviewed by a named immigration professional. Every procedural claim on it is paired with the official source that governs it. Refusal rates, fees and portal behaviour change without notice, so verify against home-affairs.ec.europa.eu and the relevant consulate before you act on anything here.