The Embassy of Bangladesh in Berlin quietly updated its homepage at 00:26 CET on 19 September 2026 with a notice stating that every consular service—including e-passports, machine-readable visas, No-Visa-Required (NVR) endorsements and civil certificates—now requires a pre-booked appointment via the embassy’s dedicated web link. Walk-in requests will no longer be accepted. The change affects some 20,000 Bangladeshi nationals and dual-country professionals residing in Germany, many employed in IT, research and the textile supply chain. It also impacts German firms that process bulk business visas for technicians travelling to Dhaka and Chittagong under equipment-installation contracts. HR teams must adapt their lead times: current appointment slots are showing a two-week wait, and incomplete online forms trigger automatic cancellation after 24 hours. The embassy has published new email contacts—consular.berlin@mofa.gov.bd for general visa queries and br.berlin@mofa.gov.bd for birth registrations—to streamline case-specific follow-up. Failure to secure a slot could delay passport renewals that many Bangladeshi engineers need to keep their German residence permits valid. Under § 5 of the Residence Regulation, a passport must be valid for at least six months at the time of permit extension. Employers should therefore audit expiry dates now and, where necessary, budget for courier services to obtain power-of-attorney documents from Bangladesh to expedite processing. The appointment-only policy mirrors similar digitisation moves by the Indian and Pakistani missions and underscores Berlin’s broader push toward paperless, queue-free consular operations. While the change should eventually cut wait times, companies may face short-term disruption and should brief affected staff immediately.
Source: Embassy of Bangladesh – Berlin
