Bringing your parents to Belgium: the family visit visa, start to finish

We wanted my parents here for three months over the summer, and I assumed the hard part would be convincing them to get on the plane. It was not. A family visit visa is two applications happening in two countries at once — yours in Belgium, theirs at home — and neither half is any use without the other. This is the whole thing, in the order it actually happens.

What this visa actually is

A Schengen short stay, type C, good for up to ninety days. You are not sponsoring a move. You are inviting someone for a defined visit and proving, on paper, two things: that they will be looked after while they are here, and that they will go home afterwards. Almost every document either side asks for is doing one of those two jobs. Once I understood that, the list stopped feeling arbitrary and started feeling like an argument I was assembling.

The shape of it

Two bundles are built in parallel, in two countries, and they meet for the first time at the appointment. Nothing moves until both are complete.

First, settle the 3bis question

The document that caused the most confusion in every group chat I was in is Annex 3bis, the formal commitment to cover costs. Whether you need one depends on what you hold, not on who is visiting.

Your documents, from Belgium

A folder proving you exist here properly and can afford guests.

• Invitation letter — names, your address, the reason, the dates
• Passport and residence card — both sides, all pages
• Six months of payslips and six months of bank statements
• Birth certificates — yours and your partner’s. These are what prove the relationship; the embassy does not take your word for who your mother is
• Family composition certificate — in Brussels I pulled this off Irisbox instead of queuing at the commune
• Rental contract plus the rent registration certificate — the second one is via MyMinfin, and I had never once thought about it before this
• Annex 3bis — only if you are a citizen or permanent resident (see above)

Their documents, from home

• Cover letter, in their own words — my father wrote his
• Passport copies and six months of their bank statements
• Property documents, if they own any — not compulsory, but one more reason to believe they are coming back
• Travel medical insurance meeting the Schengen minimum
• Application form and appointment, both through the VFS Global site
• Photographs to Schengen specification — not the local passport size, which is different and gets rejected
• Pension orders and the account they land in, if your parents are retired. Mine both are

The money question

This is the one everybody asks and nobody answers the same way. The working figure is roughly forty-five euros per person per day, which over a ninety day stay is a meaningful amount.

Do not buy the flights

I cannot say this loudly enough, and I say it as someone who very nearly did. A reservation or an itinerary is enough for the file. If the visa is refused, or is simply slow, you have not spent a fortune on tickets you cannot use. Buy them when the passports come back with the sticker in them, and not one day before.

A timeline that worked

Processing times move around a lot with the season — summer is the crush — so start earlier than feels necessary. Ten weeks felt comfortable rather than heroic.

After they land

There is one more step, and people miss it. Go with them to the commune in the first days and register the visit.

It takes very little time, and it leaves a clean record for the next application — which matters, because a second visit is much easier when there is a well documented first one behind it.

Five things I would tell anyone

1. Settle the 3bis in week one, with your own commune — not with five confident answers from five people online.
2. Move the money early. Two to three weeks, so it looks like savings rather than staging.
3. Courier the original 3bis and give that leg a week of its own.
4. Book nothing until the sticker is in the passport.
5. Carry the folder in hand luggage. A visa is permission to travel to the border, not permission to enter — the officer can still ask what the trip is for and to see the papers behind it. Ours was never opened. I would carry it every time anyway.