Cyprus brings visa processing in-house

The Embassy of the Republic of Cyprus in Moscow has announced a significant operational shift in its visa application process for Russian nationals. Effective from Monday, 15 June 2026, all applications for entry visas will be accepted directly at the Consular Section of the Embassy in Moscow, as well as at the Consulates General in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, and Krasnodar.

The change is triggered by the expiration of the service agreement with BLS International on 13 June 2026. From that date, the company’s local visa application centres will cease to accept new submissions. The embassy has clarified that applicants who lodged their documents at BLS International offices on or before 11 June 2026 must collect their passports from the respective visa centres where they applied. This marks a temporary return to fully in-house consular processing while the Cypriot authorities finalise a new contract with an external service provider. 

All visa applications must now be submitted in person. Each applicant is required to present a complete set of supporting documents, including both originals and copies, with no shared dossiers permitted even for family groups. Applications must be lodged no later than 15 calendar days before the intended date of travel, reinforcing the need for early planning.

According to data from the Statistical Service of Cyprus (Cystat), in 2024 Russia returned to the top 5 inbound markets for Cyprus (alongside the United Kingdom, Israel, Poland, and Germany), showing a significant increase in tourist flow — around 120 -130 thousand tourists. Tourism industry experts cited higher figures — up to 150–180 thousand people, since booking systems recorded the volumes of sold tours, some of which included complex flight routes. Although, some statistics show lower numbers 60-70 thousand people. Since 2022, there have been no direct flights between Russia and Cyprus, so tourists travel via connecting flights (through Turkey, the UAE, Serbia, Armenia). Because of this, some tourists may appear in statistics as arriving not directly from Russia, but from transit countries. However, these figures are incomparable to the indicators of 2018 and 2019, when there were 782 thousand and 781 thousand Russians in Cyprus, respectively.