Your eVisa: Setting It Up, Proving Your Status and Travelling

If you are an international doctor living in the UK, your immigration status is now entirely digital. There is no card and no sticker in your passport. Everything sits in an online record called an eVisa, which you reach through a UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) account.

The switch is finished. Biometric residence permits stopped being issued during 2024 and every BRP expired on 31 December 2024. Since 1 July 2026, successful new applicants no longer get a vignette sticker in their passport either.

This guide covers what you need to do and the handful of things that catch doctors out.

Setting up your UKVI account

You cannot see your eVisa until you have created an account and linked it. Setting one up is free.

You will need a phone number and an email address, plus one of the following to prove who you are:

• A valid passport and your visa application number, which is either a GWF or a UAN
• A valid passport and your BRP number
• Your expired BRP card

You will also need a smartphone, because you confirm your identity through an app. If you do not have a passport or a smartphone there is an alternative route, so do not give up at that point.

Keep your old BRP for now, but not for long

Your expired BRP card still has three uses. You can use it to sign in and view your eVisa, to create a UKVI account in the first place and to apply to extend your permission.

That concession runs out on 31 December 2026. After that the card does nothing at all. If you have not yet created your UKVI account, do it this year.

What the card will not do is prove your status. An employer cannot accept a manual check of an expired BRP, and neither can a landlord. They need a share code. If you turn up to NHS induction with only the card, HR will send you away to generate one.

Proving your status: share codes

When an employer, a landlord or a bank asks you to prove your immigration status, you generate a share code from your UKVI account and give it to them along with your date of birth. They do not need to see your eVisa. A code lasts 90 days and you can use it as many times as you like within that window.

Travelling in and out of the UK

What matters at the border is the passport linked to your UKVI account. Your carrier checks your details automatically against that record before you board.

So before you travel, sign in and check three things: that your account holds your current passport, that your eVisa shows the right status and that the details you give the airline match exactly. If they do not match, the airline may refuse to let you board and you may be held up at the UK border.

You do not need a share code at the border, but it is worth generating one before you fly in case a check-in agent asks for extra proof. If an agent still cannot verify you, ask them to contact the Border Force Carrier Support Hub, which is staffed around the clock specifically to answer this kind of question.

If you have an old passport with a valid vignette sticker in it, that sticker remains valid until it expires. And if you were issued a Form for Accompanying an eVisa, usually shortened to FAV, that works as your travel document as long as it is linked to your eVisa.

Changing your passport or your details

You update your passport, name, address, phone number or email through the update service in your UKVI account. Changes to your name, date of birth or nationality need a document proving the change.

One timing rule worth knowing: you cannot change your name or your passport while you are waiting on a visa decision. That is awkward, because renewing a passport and extending a visa often happen around the same time. Do the passport first, or wait until the decision lands.

If something on your eVisa is wrong

There are two different routes and picking the wrong one costs you weeks.

If the Home Office has your details wrong, so a wrong date of birth or the wrong conditions on your status, that is an error and you report it through the eVisa error service. UKVI aims to fix most within five working days, or up to 15 if it is complicated. There is no charge.

If your details have genuinely changed, so a new passport or a married name, that is an update rather than an error and it goes through the update service instead.

Either way, check your eVisa well before you book travel. Do not fly on an eVisa showing the wrong details.