Can you visit all of Europe with a Schengen Visa?

Several questions that arise while planning a travel to Europe for tourists are related to the requirements of Visa. One such popular question is, “Can I use my current available Visa of Germany to travel instead of France? or how about Austria? And wait! I don’t mean the intra-Europe travel from Germany to France or Germany to Austria. What I am rather referring to is travelling directly from outside Europe to another Schengen country. Is that possible? Or do I need to once again go through the painstaking process of applying another Schengen Visa for the specific country I would like to land-in.”

VFS Global

I am going to answer this question shortly. But before that, perhaps, the most popular Visa outsourcing service company worldwide is VFS Global. Amassing in excess of 3400 application centres and operations in 145 countries spreading across 5 continents, VFS Global serves the interests of 67 governments. VFS Global has successfully processed over 253 million applications (and counting) since its inception in 2001, and over 113.89 million biometric enrolments since 2007. You can visit their website by clicking here.

One Schengen Visa for all of Europe?

Getting back to the question at hand, it is not easy (at least in our experience) to find a clear answer. After checking with Visa experts, government offices, searching online, etc. it is often best to rely on your own experience. This is what I would like to share with you all today.

For my business trips, I am often required to travel to Europe from UAE. During November 2022, I was able to successfully travel to Italy with a valid German Schengen Visa with absolutely no issues at the airport immigration. It was a smooth ride. It was a certainly a risk I took to avoid the time to apply for a new Visa. You can read more about my trip to the Colosseum in Rome over here.

Well, it’s not the first time, I had this positive experience. Couple of years ago, I have also successfully travelled to Germany possessing an Austrian Schengen Visa. I remember the year before that I had booked my flight in such a way that I purchased a connecting flight from Dubai to Vienna and Vienna to Munich, just because I wasn’t sure that I would be allowed to travel directly to Germany with an Austrian Schengen Visa. I was not willing to take the risk and missing out on a critical business meeting that was scheduled. Nonetheless, for my next trips I realized that I am able to directly fly-in to any Schengen European country as long as I have a valid Schengen Visa.

So, that’s 2 of my clear experiences in the recent years where I had no bottlenecks using a Schengen Visa for a European country to directly fly to another European country from outside the continent. By the way, please remember that not all European countries are Schengen. For detailed list of Schengen countries, please visit here.