Key Takeaways
• Schengen visa applications from India rose 29% in 2025, overwhelming consulates and causing long appointment wait times.
• The cascade system offers multi-year visas to frequent travelers but does not benefit first-time or infrequent Indian visitors.
• Visa process remains fragmented, with no central application, strict financial documentation, and inconsistent rules across Schengen embassies.
Indian travelers hoping to visit Europe are running into tough challenges, even though the European Union introduced the cascade system to help make things simpler. This new system was supposed to make it easier to get a Schengen visa, especially for people who visit often. But many Indians are still finding it very hard to get these visas, facing long waits, high costs, and lots of paperwork.
The Growing Interest of Indian Travelers in Europe
More and more people from India want to travel to Europe, either for holidays, business, or to see family. In 2025, there was a huge jump—29% more people from India applied for Schengen visas compared to the previous year. This big increase is mostly because Europe is becoming a popular place for Indian tourists, businesspeople, and professionals who want to work or attend meetings. But with so many new applications, the visa offices can’t keep up. Many consulates don’t have enough workers or resources to handle everyone quickly.
This rise in demand has overwhelmed the system. As a result, people applying for visas are often left waiting a long time just to get an appointment, let alone their actual visa. These challenges put a real strain on anyone eager to visit Europe.
How Schengen Visas Normally Work
If you want to travel to most countries in Europe, you might need a Schengen visa. The Schengen visa lets people visit many European countries without needing a different visa for each one. But getting this visa isn’t always simple. Indian travelers must apply to the country that is either their main destination or, if there isn’t one, where they’ll enter first. Every country in the Schengen Zone 🇪🇺 (like France 🇫🇷, Spain 🇪🇸, Germany 🇩🇪, and others) handles its own visa requests.
Here’s the tough part: there’s no single place to apply. You must pick the right embassy or consulate, book an appointment, fill out forms, and submit all the required documents. Because the process is run by each country, the rules and requirements can change depending on which embassy you use. This makes things confusing—what’s enough proof for one country may not be enough for another.
VisaVerge.com’s investigation reveals that this lack of a single, central process is one of the biggest headaches for Indian travelers. The opportunity to easily move between countries within Europe is great—but the way you get there can feel quite fragmented and confusing.
Problems at Each Stage for Indian Travelers
Let’s look at some specific problems Indian travelers are facing:
- No Central Application: There’s nowhere to apply just once for all Schengen countries. Each country’s embassy or visa center has its own website, form, and paperwork rules.
- Long Wait for Appointments: Because demand is so high, many visa offices run out of appointments for months ahead. Some people have to wait weeks, even months, just to submit their papers.
- High Rejection Rates: Even after waiting and applying, there is a significant chance that the visa will be rejected. Different countries have different standards for what counts as enough proof, making it difficult to know exactly what is needed.
- Expensive Fees and Extra Costs: Fees for these visas have gone up. But applicants complain that paying the fee doesn’t guarantee an appointment slot. Sometimes people pay extra unofficially to brokers just to get a faster date.
- Huge Paperwork Requirements: To show that they have enough money and don’t plan to stay in Europe illegally, applicants often have to include hundreds of pages of documents. This can include bank statements (sometimes dozens of pages long), details of every digital payment, hotel bookings, travel insurance, invitations from friends or family, and proof of employment or study.
The paperwork alone can feel overwhelming, especially since every small error could mean rejection or a request to send more information. For many applicants, this stressful process shadows what should be an exciting trip planning experience.
The Cascade System: What It Promises
To help people who travel often, the European Union brought in the cascade system in April 2024. This system was designed to reward travelers who follow the rules and have visited Europe a few times without problems.
Here’s what the cascade system says:
- If you have gotten and used two Schengen visas in the last three years, and there have been no problems or overstays, you can apply for a visa that lets you enter and leave as many times as you want, for up to two years.
- If you keep following the rules and travel for those two years without any trouble, you can then apply for a five-year multiple-entry visa. This visa is only good as long as your passport is valid.
- With these longer visas, you can travel in and out of the Schengen Zone 🇪🇺 easily, much like people from countries that don’t need a visa at all (like the United States 🇺🇸 or Australia 🇦🇺).
It sounds like a big step forward, and for some frequent Indian travelers, it is. They don’t have to go through all the paperwork every single time they want to travel. Instead, they get a longer visa and can plan trips more freely.
What’s Not Working With the Cascade System
Still, the cascade system has major gaps:
- Doesn’t Help New Travelers: If you’re visiting Europe for the first time or only go rarely, you don’t qualify for the longer visas. You still have to apply for a regular, short-term visa and go through the whole process.
- Doesn’t Fix Appointment Problems: Even people who should qualify for the cascade system have trouble just getting an appointment. The system does nothing to stop brokers from grabbing appointment spots and reselling them online at much higher prices.
- Paperwork Requirements Remain: No matter how many times you’ve visited before, you still might have to show thick stacks of documents to prove you meet all the financial and personal requirements.
- No Coordination Among Countries: Each country’s embassy still sets its own process standards and documents list. This lack of unity means an applicant could have an easy time with one country but get turned down by another.
A quote from a recent report explains: “Despite this facilitation…a large number of Indians have been complaining about long waiting times and lack of available appointment slots.” That sense of bottleneck is still very present in the system, making the cascade feel out of reach for many.
The Underlying Reasons Behind the Delays
When you dig deeper, some big reasons for these problems become clear:
- Every Country Acts Alone: Even though all Schengen countries accept the same visa, each one does its own paperwork. That means there’s no single standard for what documents are needed, how appointments are booked, or how fast things get processed.
- No Visa-Free Entry for Indians: While people from some countries can visit Europe without a visa, Indians still need to go through the full process every time—unless they qualify for the multi-year cascade visa.
- Limited Staff and Technology: The jump in demand for Schengen visas hasn’t been matched by more workers or faster computer systems. Visa officers are overwhelmed, which means mistakes can happen and people wait longer for answers.
- Brokers Taking Advantage: Because appointments are so rare, informal “agents” swoop in and book lots of slots with fake names, then sell these slots to real applicants at a high price. This makes the process unfair, especially for people who don’t have extra money to spend.
- Heavy Financial Scrutiny: In recent years, consulates have looked much more closely at bank statements, especially with the rise of digital payments in India. Applicants often have to show hundreds of pages of transactions, making the process feel even more intrusive.
Rule Changes vs. Real-World Results
While the European Union hoped the cascade system would make travel easier, the actual experience for most Indians shows that big problems remain. Some people with a good track record still find themselves stuck in long lines—or worse, see their applications turned down for confusing or unclear reasons.
Applicants are told to start getting ready at least 20 days before they want to travel. But because of all the delays and the complex paperwork, many start even earlier, sometimes months ahead of their planned trip. Every bank detail, travel document, and letter must be arranged properly, or the risk of a delayed or rejected application goes up.
This pressure has made applying for a Schengen visa a stressful and frustrating experience for many Indian travelers.
What Experts Say Might Help
Those who follow these issues closely think several steps must be taken to make the process more fair and easy:
- Create a Central System: A single website or office for all Schengen country visas would simplify things a lot, allowing applicants to deal with one process instead of many different ones.
- Increase Consulate Staff: More workers could help clear the backlog of applications and cut down wait times.
- Move More Forms Online: Using online systems for booking appointments and uploading documents could cut down on errors, make things faster, and limit brokers’ ability to sell slots.
- Clearer, More Unified Rules: If all Schengen countries agreed on which documents to ask for and how to check them, applicants would know exactly what is needed each time.
So far, though, these big changes haven’t been put in place. Some small improvements have happened, but not enough to make the process simple or fair for most applicants.
Guidance and Important Resources
If you plan to apply for a Schengen visa, experts recommend starting early and double-checking every requirement. It’s very important to gather all needed documents and to look out for official updates. You can find the most up-to-date and accurate information on Schengen visas, appointment booking, and requirements at the official European Union visa information page.
Looking Ahead
Despite the new rules and the promise of the cascade system, Schengen visa challenges for Indian travelers are not going away soon. For first-time visitors, occasional travelers, and even some frequent fliers, the process involves waiting, paying high fees, submitting large amounts of paperwork, and sometimes being turned away.
Until the European Union and its member countries make deeper changes—by hiring more visa officers, increasing the use of digital systems, cracking down on appointment resellers, and perhaps creating a single, central place to apply—strong demand will continue to outpace improvements.
Highlighting the findings from VisaVerge.com and other reports, it’s clear that only a handful of Indian travelers fully benefit from the cascade system, while the majority must still deal with slow and unpredictable processes.
If you’re an Indian traveler making plans to visit Europe, the best approach is to prepare well, expect some delays, and keep checking for changes to the rules. With appetite for European travel still rising, everyone involved hopes for a smoother system in the coming years—one that truly meets the interests of travelers, countries, and economies on both sides.
Learn Today
Cascade System
→ A policy allowing frequent, compliant Schengen travelers a multi-year, multiple-entry visa, simplifying repeat visits to Europe.
Schengen Visa → A visa permitting travel within 27 European countries without needing a separate visa for each nation.
Consulate → An official office of a country in another nation, handling visas, appointments, and immigration requests locally.
Multiple-Entry Visa → A visa that allows a person to enter and exit a group of countries several times within its validity period.
Financial Scrutiny → The thorough examination of an applicant’s bank statements and transactions to confirm financial stability and legitimacy.
This Article in a Nutshell
Despite the EU’s cascade system aiming to streamline Schengen visas for Indians, applicants face high fees, long waits, and mountains of paperwork. Consulates are overwhelmed by a 29% increase in demand. Only frequent travelers benefit, while most must navigate a fragmented, inconsistent, and stressful process to visit Europe.
— By VisaVerge.com
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