eVisa and Digital Status

Key Takeaways

• An eVisa is the digital record of permission you already hold. Moving to one does not change your immigration status or the conditions attached to it.
• You need a UK Visas and Immigration account to reach your eVisa. It is free, and every person needs their own, including every child and every dependant.
• Every biometric residence permit has expired. An expired card can now only be used to sign in, to create an account and to apply to extend your stay, and it stops doing even those 24 months after the date printed on it or on 31 December 2026, whichever comes first.
• A lost or stolen BRP must still be reported even though it has expired. Failing to report it carries a fine of up to £1,000 and can lead to being made to leave the UK.
• Before you travel, the passport in your hand must be the one linked to your UKVI account, and the details you gave your carrier must match it exactly.
• A wrong date or a wrong status on your record is an error report. A wrong length or condition of permission is an administrative review, and that one has a deadline.
• WorkPermitCloud advises on all of this: getting back into a locked UKVI account, correcting a status that is showing wrongly, sorting out travel and boarding problems, and helping employers check a worker's status properly. Speak to us through our contact page.

Introduction

This page is for anyone who holds permission to be in the UK and needs to set up, use, travel on or correct their digital immigration status. It covers UKVI accounts, expired biometric residence permits, settlement recorded in an old passport, share codes, travel, and what to do when the record itself is wrong. If you are an employer checking somebody else's status rather than proving your own, our guidance on Right to Work Checks is the page you want.

What an eVisa Is and What It Replaced

An eVisa is a digital record of two things. The first is your identity and your immigration status, for example the type of visa you hold or the fact that you have indefinite leave to remain. The second is the conditions of that status, for example whether you are allowed to work or study.

You get an eVisa when you successfully apply for a visa or any other kind of permission to be in the UK. eVisas have replaced physical immigration documents. The important point, and the one that causes most of the worry on this subject, is that the switch changes the proof and not the permission. Updating a physical document to an eVisa does not affect your immigration status or the conditions of your permission to enter or stay.

An eVisa is also not a visa in its own right. It is the record of a decision that has already been made on your application. If you are waiting for that decision, our blog on UK visa processing times and how to track your visa status covers what happens in the meantime, and our guidance on Skilled Worker: Apply, Switch and Extend covers the application itself.

Who Still Holds a Physical Document

A small number of people still have something physical, and the rules differ by document:

• Biometric residence card. If you hold a BRC you may still be able to use it in some situations. Check the position for your own circumstances rather than assuming it works everywhere, because the eVisa is the proof for most purposes.
• Visa vignette. A vignette sticker in a passport remains valid until it expires.
• Home Office travel document. These are still issued as physical documents and you should still carry yours when you travel overseas.
• Biometric residence permit. Every BRP has expired. What an expired card can still do is set out further down this page.

Setting Up Your UKVI Account

Your eVisa sits inside a UK Visas and Immigration account. Without the account you cannot see your status, you cannot generate a share code and you cannot add a new passport before travelling. There is no charge to set up a UKVI account or to access your eVisa, and anyone asking you to pay for either is not acting for the Home Office.

Who Needs an Account and Who Does Not

You need an account if you hold a UK visa, if you have indefinite leave to remain, if you are a partner or child joining someone as a dependant, or if you need a digital record of exemption or a digital certificate of entitlement to the right of abode.

Two groups are the exception, and for them the account is optional. The first is people whose proof of settlement is a physical document carrying no expiry date. The second is people holding a vignette that is still within its validity, who can travel on the sticker until it expires. Optional is not the same as pointless. A vignette runs out, and a paper settlement document is increasingly awkward to use, so both groups are better off with the account in place before they need to prove anything quickly.

What You Need Before You Start

If you do not have a smartphone, or you have neither a valid passport nor an expired BRP, there is a separate route for confirming who you are. You are not shut out, but it takes longer, so start earlier than you think you need to.

Confirming Your Identity and Linking Your eVisa

Creating the account and getting your eVisa are two steps, and people routinely stop after the first one and assume they are finished. After the account exists you confirm your identity, normally using the ID Check app on a smartphone, and then link the account to your eVisa. Linking can happen during setup or later from your account dashboard. Until it is linked, there is nothing to view.

Accounts for Children and for People You Manage an Account For

A parent or guardian can create a child's account using their own phone number and email address. Those contact details have to be changed to the child's own when the child turns 18 or becomes independent, and this is the step families forget. An 18 year old whose account still sends security codes to a parent's old phone cannot sign in and cannot prove their status.

The same applies to anyone managing an account for another adult, for example under a power of attorney or as a carer. Start with your own contact details and hand them over when the arrangement ends. Every dependant needs an account and an eVisa of their own, and our guidance on Dependants and Family covers the wider position for partners and children.

If You Have an Expired BRP

Biometric residence permits were issued to people granted permission to live or work in the UK on or before 31 October 2024. All BRPs have now expired and have been replaced by eVisas. If you hold an expired card and still have permission to stay, the card is not your proof any more and you need a UKVI account to reach the eVisa that is.

What an Expired BRP Can Still Be Used For

For every purpose other than those three, the eVisa is the proof. If there is any problem with the expired card, you cannot use it at all and you must destroy it.

How Long an Expired BRP Still Works

The rule is 24 months after the expiry date printed on the card, or 31 December 2026, whichever comes first. For most people those two limbs land on the same day, because almost every BRP carried an expiry date of 31 December 2024 and 24 months from that is 31 December 2026. If your card expired earlier than that, work from your own card, because the earlier date governs.

After that point the card does nothing at all, including signing in. Set the account up now, not in the week you next need it.

Reporting a Lost or Stolen BRP

This one catches people out, because an expired card feels like rubbish. It is not. You must report a lost or stolen BRP even though it has expired. You can be fined up to £1,000 and made to leave the UK if you do not.

Somebody else can report it for you, including a legal representative, a charity, a family member, an employer, a college or a university. The Home Office will contact you within one working day of the report. If you later find the card, you cannot use it and you must destroy it.

Destroying an Expired BRP

Cut the card into pieces and dispose of it, making sure you cut through your personal details, the royal coat of arms, and the gold biometric chip if your card has one.

If you find somebody else's lost or stolen BRP while you are in the UK, post it to the Returns Unit, PO Box 195, Bristol BS20 1BT, in an envelope without a window, with nothing else enclosed, because anything sent with it will be destroyed. If you are outside the UK, hand it in to the police or to the nearest British embassy or consulate.

If Your Settlement Is Recorded in an Old Passport

Some people who are settled here have never held a BRP at all. Their proof of indefinite leave to enter or remain is a wet ink stamp in an old passport, or a vignette with no expiry date. Those documents still say what they have always said, but they cannot be checked online, and employers, landlords and carriers expect a digital record.

The route across is a free no time limit application, usually shortened to NTL. You will need a phone number, an email address, the passport or travel document you last used to enter the UK, and the physical settlement document itself. It can take up to six months to process, and you can carry on using your physical document while you wait.

Six months is long enough that most people should start before they have a reason to. If you are approaching settlement and do not yet hold it, our guidance on Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) and Settlement covers the qualifying periods and the application itself.

If You Are Applying to Come to the UK

A successful application for permission to come to the UK now produces an eVisa, and that replaces the physical documents that used to be issued. UKVI stopped issuing visa vignette stickers to successful new applicants on 1 July 2026. This applies across the routes, including visit visas.

Where a form for accompanying an eVisa is issued, usually shortened to FAV, you will normally have to return to the visa application centre to collect it. The FAV, once linked to your eVisa, is what allows you to travel to the UK.

If the visa application centre is holding your passport or travel document, it will be returned to you while your application continues to be processed. The centre will contact you when it is ready, and you should not turn up before you are contacted.

Whatever you are issued with, sign in to your UKVI account and look at your eVisa before you book travel. Check that the status shown is the permission you expected, and check the dates. The Home Office publishes updates on the move to eVisas, which sets out what successful applicants are issued with.

Proving Your Status

There is one underlying record and several front doors to it. Using the wrong door is the most common reason a check fails when the status itself is perfectly sound.

Viewing Your eVisa and Generating a Share Code

You reach your eVisa through the view and prove service using your UKVI account sign-in details. That means the document you set the account up with, being a passport, national identity card, biometric residence card, expired BRP or your UKVI customer number, plus access to the phone or email address registered on the account so you can receive the security code.

A share code is how you prove your status to somebody else. The person you give it to also needs your date of birth, and they do not see your eVisa itself, only the information the service discloses to them. The service tells you in advance what they will be shown, and reading that once tells you exactly what you are sharing.

A share code lasts 90 days and you can use it as many times as you need within that period. You can generate a new one whenever you want. Generate a fresh code close to the moment you need it. A code that expires halfway through a recruitment process creates work for everybody.

Proving Your Right to Work

To prove that you can work, use the prove your right to work service. It produces a share code for that specific purpose, and your employer uses it together with your date of birth to run an online check and record the result.

What the employer then has to do, how the check gives them a statutory excuse, what happens when you cannot produce a code, and the rules on follow-up checks are all covered on our guidance page for Right to Work Checks. If you would like to see the mechanics from your own side first, our blog on the right to work share code walks through it, and employers can test a check with our free right to work check tool.

If you are a sponsored worker, your sponsor also has record-keeping duties of its own that depend on your status being visible and correct. Those sit on our guidance page for Sponsor Licence: Compliance and Duties.

Proving Your Right to Rent

Renting has its own service, prove your right to rent in England, and its own share code. The scheme applies in England only. You do not need to prove your right to rent in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

A landlord who asks for a right to work code, or an employer who asks for a right to rent code, will be looking at the wrong thing. Say plainly which one you are sending.

Travelling With an eVisa

Three things have to be right before you go, and they have to be right together:

• Your UKVI account holds your correct personal details and your current passport or travel document.
• Your eVisa shows the correct immigration status.
• Those details exactly match the passenger information you gave your carrier.

The third is the one that fails most often, and it fails for small reasons. A middle name entered on the booking but not on the account, a passport renewed since the visa was granted, a surname recorded differently by an airline. Our blog on why UK-bound passengers are being denied boarding goes through the failure modes in detail, and our blog on how to travel with a UK eVisa covers the practical steps either side of a journey.

Linking the Right Passport

You must travel with a valid passport or travel document that you have added to your UKVI account. Your eVisa is linked to that specific document. Adding a new passport is something you do yourself, online, and the time to do it is the week it arrives.

Dual Nationals, and British and Irish Citizens

If you hold more than one nationality you can add more than one passport to your account, but you must travel on one that has been added. British and Irish citizens do not need an eVisa at all and should travel on a British or Irish passport.

Home Office Travel Documents

Home Office travel documents have been linked automatically to UKVI accounts since 11 March 2026, and the document number appears in the account alongside the eVisa. A new travel document appears there within two working days of your decision. Physical Home Office travel documents are still issued, and you should still carry yours when you travel overseas. Being on the account does not replace carrying it.

If a Carrier Will Not Let You Board

Nothing needs to be printed, although a share code costs nothing to have ready before a long journey. If a carrier will not let you board, ask them to contact the UK Border Force carrier support hub, which exists for exactly this and which front-line staff do not always think of. Read your eVisa yourself at the same time. If the status shown is genuinely wrong, the fix is an error report, and no amount of arguing at the desk will produce one.

Keeping Your UKVI Account Up to Date

Keeping the account current is not framed as a legal duty with a penalty attached. It is simply what makes the eVisa work when it matters, at a border or at a check. The details that count are your passport or travel document, your name, your mobile number, your email address, your home address and your postal address.

Most changes you can make yourself through the update your details service:

The restriction worth knowing in advance is that you cannot change your name or your passport or travel document while a visa application decision is outstanding. If a new passport arrives in the middle of an application, that is a timing problem to plan around, and a bad one to meet by surprise.

When Something Is Wrong

Three different problems here look alike and are fixed in three different ways. One of the three routes has a deadline and the other two do not, so telling them apart comes before doing anything about them.

Reporting an Error With Your eVisa

Use the report an error with your eVisa service where the record itself is wrong or unusable. That covers a wrong date of birth or a wrong immigration status showing on the eVisa, being able to view the eVisa but not generate a share code, a technical fault that stops you viewing it while you are signed in, and the case where the Home Office created your account and you have never managed to sign in at all.

You will need contact details, being an email address or a UK postal address, your name, date of birth and nationality, and one of the following: your passport number, your expired BRP number, your GWF number, your UAN or your UKVI customer number.

It normally takes five working days, and up to 15 working days for complex cases. You will be emailed if it is going to take longer than that or if more information is needed. Somebody else can report on your behalf, including a legal representative, an employer, a friend or a member of staff at your college or university.

When It Is Not an Error but a Wrong Decision

If the record accurately reflects what you were granted, but what you were granted is wrong, that is a different problem. Where there are mistakes in the length or the conditions of your permission and you applied from inside the UK, the route is administrative review, not an error report.

This distinction matters because administrative review has a time limit and the error reporting service does not. Sending a wrong decision to the error service burns days you may not have. If you are not certain which of the two you are looking at, our administrative review service can tell you quickly, and the answer is cheaper before the clock runs than after.

If You Cannot Sign In

Losing access to the phone number or email address on an account you have used before is its own category, and it is neither an error nor a wrong decision. Account recovery handles it. The line between that and an error report is who set the account up: if you have signed in before and have simply lost the phone or the mailbox, that is recovery, and if the Home Office created the account and you have never managed to sign in at all, that is an error report. The error service is also not the place for routine detail updates, for proving pre-settled status where you also hold another status, or for a problem affecting both an eVisa and an accompanying form. Sending any of those there only adds delay.

If you are not sure which service you need, contact UKVI will route you, and we are happy to look at it with you through our contact page.

If You Have EU Settlement Scheme Status

EU Settlement Scheme status has always been digital, so if you applied to the scheme you already have a UKVI account and there is nothing to transition. The part people are least aware of is how much the Home Office does on this route without being asked, in both directions.

Where pre-settled status is approaching expiry and cannot be converted automatically, it is extended by five years without you applying for the extension. Separately, the Home Office checks pre-settled records against government-held information to see whether settled status can be granted without an application, applying the same residence and suitability checks it would apply to an application you made yourself. If you are eligible, you do not need to do anything. From 9 April 2026 the residence test used in that automated check is 30 months of tax and benefit payments in the last 60 months.

Automation does not reach everybody, and the excluded groups are specific: EEA citizens without 30 months of tax or benefit payments in the last 60, anyone granted pre-settled status who later obtained a different UK immigration status, non-EEA national family members, joining family members of any nationality, everyone under 18, and people qualifying on other grounds such as derivative rights. If you are in one of those groups, applying for settled status yourself is open to you as soon as you are eligible, and waiting for a check that cannot reach you achieves nothing. Our EU Settlement Scheme service handles those applications, and the Home Office publishes the detail of EUSS status automation if you want to read the mechanics.

Pre-Settled Status Can Also Be Removed

The automation runs in both directions, and this is the half almost nobody knows about. From 9 April 2026 the Home Office began removing pre-settled status from people who have clearly stopped maintaining continuous residence in the UK. The process runs in two stages. The first checks tax and benefit data and any evidence of criminal conduct, and where it can establish eligibility it converts the status to settled automatically. Where it cannot, the second stage uses Home Office travel data to identify who has not maintained residence. Those who have been outside the UK longest are reviewed first, starting with people absent for the last five years.

The safeguards matter as much as the process. Before any decision to remove status, you are contacted using the email address and telephone number held on your UKVI account, and given the chance to provide evidence of your residence or your reasons for being away. More time is normally allowed where it is needed. Status is removed only where doing so is proportionate, and caseworkers have to weigh the circumstances of the absence, its length, why you did not return sooner, and other factors such as age, health and integration. Where removal would be disproportionate you keep your pre-settled status and can apply for settled status once you have been resident for 30 months in the last 60. Any decision to remove carries a right of appeal.

This is the one place on this page where out of date contact details are not an inconvenience but a risk. If the email address or phone number on your account is one you no longer use, you will not see the letter asking for your evidence, and the first you will know of it is the decision. The Home Office sets out the full process in its EUSS status automation update.

An eVisa Is Not an Electronic Travel Authorisation

These two get confused constantly, and the confusion is a real cause of people being turned away.

An eVisa is the digital record of permission you have already been granted. An electronic travel authorisation, or ETA, is a travel permission for people who do not need a visa at all. It lets someone travel to the UK, Jersey, Guernsey or the Isle of Man for up to six months, it costs £20, and every traveller needs their own, including babies and children. It does not guarantee entry.

If you already have permission to live, work or study in the UK, you do not need an ETA. Your eVisa is your permission, and buying an ETA on top of it achieves nothing. The reverse also holds: an ETA is not a substitute for a visa, and it will not get somebody in who needed one.

If you are looking at the ETA scheme itself rather than the distinction, our blogs on the UK ETA scheme and the full country list and the ETA scheme for travellers, employers and visitors cover eligibility, the application and who is caught.

Detailed Guides on This Topic

These pages go further on single parts of this subject and stay live alongside this guidance.

• Why UK-bound passengers are being denied boarding, and how to fix it. The failure modes at check-in and what to do about each one.
• How to travel with a UK eVisa. Step by step for journeys out of and back into the UK.
• The right to work share code, in full. Generating a code and what your employer does with it.
• UK visa processing times and how to track your status. What happens between applying and holding an eVisa.
• The UK ETA scheme and the full country list. For visitors rather than status holders.

How Can WorkPermitCloud Help?

Most of this page is something you can do yourself, and where that is true we would rather you did. The work people actually bring us falls into four groups.

Getting back into a locked account. A changed phone number, an old email address, an account somebody else set up years ago, a child's account still routed to a parent. These are fixable, but the route through depends on which piece is missing, and trying the wrong service first costs weeks.

Correcting a status that is showing wrongly. We work out whether you are looking at a record error or a wrong decision, which decides everything else, and then run the right one. Where it is a decision, the administrative review deadline is usually the reason this cannot wait a fortnight.

Travel and boarding problems. Someone stuck abroad who cannot show status, a carrier refusing to board, a passport that was never linked. There is normally a way through, and it is faster when somebody has seen it before.

Employers and sponsors. Checking a worker's status properly, keeping the evidence that protects you, and knowing what to do when a check will not return a result. That work sits alongside our guidance on Right to Work Checks and Sponsor Licence: Compliance and Duties.

We are regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority, registration number F202100311.

Conclusion

Digital status is simpler than the physical documents it replaced, once the account is set up and the right passport is attached to it. Almost every problem on this page comes from one of three things: an account that was created but never linked to an eVisa, contact details that nobody updated, or a passport that was renewed and never added.

None of those takes long to fix at a kitchen table, and all of them are expensive to meet at a departure gate or in the middle of a job offer. Sign in, check what your eVisa actually says, and make sure the passport you will travel on is the one your account knows about. If something is wrong, work out first whether it is the record or the decision, because that answer decides which route you take and whether you are working to a deadline.

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