Legalisation of a document is undertaken in order for official documents issued in one country to be recognised when presented in another country. It is a verification of the signature, the position of the signatory and the stamp in the document in cases of bearing the stamp applied on the document, and is carried out by the Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania and Diplomatic Missions of the Republic of Lithuania abroad. The documents issued by countries being non-member states of the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents are to be legalized.

Documents for legalisation at Lithuanian MFA are to be submitted directly to the Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania (Vilnius, J. Tumo-Vaižganto str. 2). Documents may be presented either in person or via your representative (proof of representation is not required). Documents presented for legalisation using courier services are not accepted.

 Following official documents are legalisable:

• Issued by government or municipal institutions or officials, also by prosecutor, court official or person implementing court decisions
• Administrative documents
• Notarial acts
• Official confirmations of documents signed by natural persons
• Notarial transcripts of official documents

Legalisation of documents is not required when the documents are drawn up and / or issued by diplomatic representations of foreign states resident in the Republic of Lithuania.

For document presentation you have to book an appointment time registering for the document legalisation service.

 Please be informed that additional confirmation of your reservation is required.

When submitting documents for legalisation, a person must present:

• valid passport or other identity document of the person submitting the document for legalisation;
• the document (original or a notarised copy [in case of documents originating from Lithuania]) to be legalised. 

During a single visit, when representing another person, no more than 3 documents can be submitted for legalization. When submitting documents in person, no more than 5 documents belonging to the individual can be submitted for legalization. If more documents need to be legalized, a corresponding number of visits must be scheduled. Please pay attention that registration for a corresponding visit is available only after the visit, for which you have registered, is completed. To prevent artificial reservation of visit times, automated registrations, and other system abuses, software measures are applied to limit the maximum number of possible registrations.

Documents have to be orderly and readable. If the document consists of few pages, they have to be affixed or sewn together. 

Each document is approved separately (e. g. diploma and its appendix are two (2) separate documents).

Only the documents that are submitted in original form (a hard copy of), bearing physical legalisation entries could be legalized. Electronic (scanned or photocopied) documents cannot be legalised in Lithuania.

Consular fee for legalisation of one document - 20 EUR. Payment is payable using applicant’s banking card.

Due to the extremely high number of people waiting to register for a visit, we kindly ask you to cancel the visit if you are unable to attend. If you do not show up for a visit and do not cancel it 24 hours before the start of the visit, you will not be allowed to register for another visit for 30 calendar days.

 Legalization of the documents submitted might take up to 5 working days.

 Legalized documents might be collected Monday to Friday 2pm–3pm (except the last Friday of the month)

REGISTRATION FOR THE LEGALISATION OF A DOCUMENT ISSUED IN LITHUANIA 

If you choose this service, legalisation of the document will be carried out only for documents issued in Lithuania. If you will register for this service and submit documents not issued in Lithuania your visit will be canceled.

Document approval Certificate (Apostille) for documents emanating from Lithuania is undertaken by notaries of Lithuania, so in order to certify a document with an Apostille Certificate, you need to contact any notary office operating in the Republic of Lithuania.

IMPORTANT! Documents issued before 11 of March of 1990 with symbols of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic are not legalisable. The latter documents must be presented in their renewed contemporary issue.

LEGALISATION OF DOCUMENTS FOLLOWING PRE-REVIEW BY THE MIGRATION DEPARTMENT UNDER THE MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR IN REGARD OF THE APPLICATION FOR TRP ISSUANCE 

After choosing this service, document legalisation will be undertaken only for documents issued abroad, which are submitted for the issuance of a temporary residence permit in Lithuania – Police Clearance Certificates (PCC). Marriage and birth certificates can be submitted for legalisation through this service only together with PCC. If PCC will not be submitted for legalisation, “Registration for the document legalisation service” must be chosen for the legalisation of the marriage and birth certificates.

 The main conditions for the provision of this service are as follows:

• the person submitting documents for legalisation must have registered his / her’s application for the issuance of a temporary residence permit in the MIGRIS information system of the Migration Department of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Lithuania and the status of this application must be - “Provided to the external service provider”, “Application accepted”, “A decision is made”, “Application examination suspended”.
• when registering at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to receive the legalization service, it is mandatory to indicate the number of the application submitted to MIGRIS, name and surname.

The legalization of Police Clearance Certificates for foreign citizens who intend to study in Lithuania is done at MFA of the Republic of Lithuania through the educational institutions. The students should contact the educational institutions in Lithuania, in which they plan to study and to clarify the process of legalization of documents.

If you register for this service and do not meet the basic conditions for providing this legalisation service, your visit will not be approved or may be cancelled.

REGISTRATION FOR THE DOCUMENT LEGALISATION SERVICE

A prerequisite for registering for this service is that your documents for legalisation have to be submitted for a purpose other than the issuance of a temporary residence permit in Lithuania (if you submitted the documents to the Migration Department under the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Lithuania through an external service provider or directly to a division of the Migration Department regarding the issuance of a temporary residence permit), you must register for the service "Legalisation of documents following pre-review by the Migration Department under the Ministry of the Interior in regard of the application for TRP issuance").

IMPORTANT! Lithuania‘s MFA requires additional attestation for documents provided from certain countries. In such cases, before providing these documents to the Lithuanian MFA they need to be additionally attested in the diplomatic missions, which are accredited to Lithuania:

•     Algeria, Qatar, Iran – at the respective countries‘ diplomatic missions in Poland
•     United Arab Emirates – at the diplomatic mission of UAE in Latvia
•     Egypt, Nepal, Côte d‘Ivoire – at the respective countries‘ diplomatic missions in Denmark
•     Sri Lanka – at the diplomatic mission of Sri Lanka in Sweden
•     Kuwait - at the diplomatic mission of Kuwait in the Federal Republic of Germany
•     Nigeria – at the Nigerian Embassy in Lithuania

(For contact information of Lithuanian and Foreign Embassies follow the link Find us abroad | Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania (urm.lt))

When registering, please fill in all registration card fields carefully. Your visit may be cancelled:

1.  When registering for an appointment you selected the service “Registration for the legalisation of a document issued in Lithuania” but indicated, that you intend to legalise a document issued abroad.

2.  When registering for an appointment you indicated, that you intended to legalise a document issued in Lithuania, but you will submit it to a country that accepts apostilled documents. Such documents are not legalized but are certified with an apostille instead. Documents issued in Lithuania are certified with an apostille by notaries of Lithuania.

3.  When registering for an appointment you selected the service “Document legalisation after the pre-assessment process by the Migration Department under the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Lithuania (further - Migration Department) regarding the request to issue a TRP”, however an appointment with the indicated MIGRIS number already exists and is confirmed by the Ministry (if the same persons’ MIGRIS number is used for registering multiple appointments indicating different representatives, such behaviour will be treated as unfair behaviour, denying other people the possibility to obtain our service).

4.  When registering for an appointment you selected the service “Document legalisation after the pre-assessment process by the Migration Department regarding the request to issue a TRP” and your provided MIGRIS number for document legalisation does not have the proper status in the MIGRIS system which prove that the documents are being reviewed in the Migration Department and a pre-assessment process has been completed – statuses, such as “Provided to the external service provider”, “Application accepted”, “A decision is made”, “Application examination suspended”.

5.  Incorrect information (name, surname, or MIGRIS number) was provided when registering for the appointment.

THE LEGALIZATION OF DOCUMENTS AND APPROVAL CERTIFICATE (APOSTILLE) AT DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA ABROAD

The information concerning the requirements and procedure of the legalisation of documents and approval certificate (Apostille) at Diplomatic Missions of the Republic of Lithuania abroad can be found at the webpages of the latter: Lietuvos ir užsienio atstovybės, garbės konsulai | Užsienio reikalų ministerija).

In case you did not get an answer to your question, please fill out the e-inquiry form.