India’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has approved a sweeping rationalisation of the country’s visa regime, cutting the number of visa categories from 26 to just nine and shrinking the online application form by roughly 70 per cent. Announced late on 11 November and confirmed in Gazette notifications and press briefings on 12 November 2026, the reform is billed as the most radical redesign of India’s immigration framework since the 1990s. Under the new framework, the familiar alphabet soup of letters (T-visa, X-visa, J-visa, etc.) disappears. Instead, foreign travellers will pick from nine broad purpose-based classes such as Visitor (short stay), Business & Investment, Employment, Student (e-S1), Medical, Conference, Official, Transit and Research/Media. Each class contains sub-types that share the same validity rules and documentary checklist, replacing the current patchwork of overlapping rules that confuse applicants and frontline officers alike. A companion change slashes compulsory data fields on the Indian Visa Online portal from 90-plus to about 25, dropping legacy questions on parents’ birth places, references in India, and past rejections that officials admit were rarely used for risk-assessment. Pilot versions of the shorter form are already live for Visitor and Business visas; the full roll-out across all nine categories is targeted for the December 2026 holiday peak. For companies, the headline change is the expanded, clearly-defined B-1 sub-class that covers long-duration project work, equity investment and factory set-up—activities that previously floated between Business, Employment and Project visas. Sponsors will now file a single online form and receive multi-year, multiple-entry permission tied to project milestones rather than a fixed 180-day cap. Universities welcome the new e-S1 student stream, which allows a five-year electronic visa linked to the Study in India portal and removes the annual “visa extension” ritual at local FRROs. The MHA says fees will remain unchanged until a review in the 2027–28 Union budget. Indian missions abroad have been told to switch to the nine-category matrix by 15 December. Multinational mobility teams should update template invitation letters, re-train HR staff on the new codes, and watch for early-phase teething issues as consulates migrate data from the old system.
