The Schengen Visa: What the Statistics Actually Show

You will have seen the posts. A screenshot of a refusal, a caption saying do not even try, the story of a friend of a friend who was turned down. What you will never have seen is a post from somebody whose visa came through in eleven days, because nobody writes those.

The result is a picture assembled entirely from the people who were refused. They are six per cent of applicants. The other ninety-four say nothing.

Here is what the figures show, and more to the point why the feeling diverges from them so sharply. The divergence is real and it has an exact cause.

What the Figures Show

The data below was published by the European Commission in May 2026 for the 2025 reference year. It is primary statistics rather than estimates.

In 2025 Russian citizens filed 679,400 Schengen visa applications, 12 per cent more than the 606,600 filed in 2024. Some 618,800 visas were issued. Around 43,000 applications were refused.

The refusal rate was 6.3 per cent, and it has now fallen three years running: 10.6 per cent in 2023, 7.5 in 2024, about six in 2025.

Now the figure that settles the argument. The global Schengen refusal rate in 2025 was 14.6 per cent. Russian applicants are therefore refused at less than half the world average. For comparison: Senegal 51.9 per cent, Burundi 53.4, Algeria 31.

And one more fact that never appears in the feed. By volume of applications, Russia ranked fourth in the world in 2025, behind only China, Turkey and India.

Italy in That Picture

Italy has held a reputation for decades as the consulate most welcoming to Russian applicants, and the statistics bear it out.

On 2024 figures, the refusal rate in Italy's Moscow consular district was 4.3 per cent, against 5.4 the year before. For comparison in the same city: France refused 7.1 per cent of applicants, Spain 8.5.

On multiple-entry visas the number is starker still. Seventy-six per cent of the visas issued by the Italian consulate in Moscow in 2024 were multiple-entry. At the French consulate that year only one visa in three was, 32.6 per cent.

Italy was also among the top five Moscow consulates by volume of applications received, alongside France, Spain, Greece and Germany.

What Changed on 6 November 2025

This is where the real change sits, and it is not about refusals.

On 6 November 2025 the European Commission adopted an implementing decision on the issuing of multiple-entry visas to Russian nationals. It was announced on the seventh, signed by the Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration, taken after a joint assessment by member states under local Schengen cooperation and approved by all of them in the Visa Committee. The Commission gave increased migratory and security risk as its reason.

The substance is this. Russian nationals living in Russia and applying from inside the country are no longer granted multiple-entry visas. A single-entry visa is the default, and a fresh application is required for each trip.

Exceptions exist but are narrow. A multiple-entry visa valid for up to a year may go to close relatives of Russian citizens lawfully resident in the EU and to family members of EU citizens, provided the applicant has obtained and correctly used three Schengen visas in the preceding two years. Professional drivers and transport workers may receive up to nine months. And in exceptional cases a multiple-entry visa may be issued to people whose reliability is not in doubt; the Commission named independent journalists, human rights defenders and civil society representatives.

The decision is not retroactive. It applies only to new applications. A multiple-entry visa obtained before November 2025 remains valid until it expires.

Why the Feeling Diverges From the Figures

Put the two halves together and it resolves.

Refusals have become less frequent. But the product you receive for the same money and the same wait has changed completely. One application used to buy two, three, sometimes five years of unrestricted travel. One application now buys one trip.

From which follows the whole thing: somebody who used to apply once every three years now applies before every trip. The same person, the same population of travellers, and several times as many applications in the system. That is why applications rose 12 per cent without any sudden influx of new travellers.

And that is where the feeling comes from. The pain is real, but it lies in frequency rather than refusal: eighty euros of consular fee, the visa centre's service fee, the appointment, the paperwork and the wait now repeat every time. Multiply that by three trips a year and you have precisely the mood you see online.

The sum is countable, incidentally. An industry association estimated that refused applicants lost around €3.6 million in consular fees alone in 2025, and more than €4.5 million once visa centre service charges are added.

The Main Destination Rule and the New Border

Two technical points that trip people up most often, both of them solvable in advance.

The main country of stay. You apply to the consulate of the country where you will spend the most time, or, where the time is equal, the one you enter first. A visa obtained through Italy sensibly means flying into Italy first. This is not a formality: a mismatch between the declared itinerary and the actual one is recorded and can complicate a later application.

Biometrics at the border. Since October 2025 the EU's entry and exit system has operated at the external borders, with the transition completed by April 2026. Passports are no longer stamped. On a first crossing, fingerprints and a facial image are taken at the checkpoint; the data is held for three years and later trips are checked automatically. Children under twelve are exempt from fingerprinting. Holding a visa does not exempt anyone: the procedure applies to all third-country nationals.

And a correction to the commonest misunderstanding. ETIAS does not apply to Russian citizens. It is an authorisation for nationals of visa-exempt countries, meaning people who need no Schengen visa at all. If you are obtaining a visa, ETIAS is not required of you now or later, and material explaining otherwise has confused two separate systems.

What Follows in Practice

Five things, if the above is turned into a plan.

First, assume a single-entry visa tied to specific dates. Planning now starts with the booking and the itinerary rather than ending with them, because that is what you will be applying against.

Second, budget the application into every trip rather than into every few years. That is the central change, and it is administrative rather than prohibitive.

Third, do not cancel bookings after applying. Consulates check confirmations, and a cancelled reservation is among the most galling grounds for refusal precisely because it is entirely within your control.

Fourth, check the insurance separately. The requirements are formal ones, but they are exactly what catches people who bought the cheapest policy without reading it.

Fifth, and this matters more than the rest. A six per cent refusal rate means that in the overwhelming majority of cases the decision turns on the quality of the file rather than on the passport. The file is assembled carefully once and reused thereafter.

Rules in this area change faster than articles are published, so we keep the current position in Pulse.

Rome and Venice are waiting for the visa to reach the passport. Open City map of Rome or the City map of Venice.