India e-Visa Shake-Up 2026: New Entry Points & Higher Fees

A London-based founder emailed us in February, mid-way through booking a trip to a trade expo in Chennai. "I applied for the same one-year business e-Visa my colleague got eighteen months ago," she wrote, "but the fee that came up was nearly half as much again, and the site listed a different number for an Australian on our team. Have I been sent to a scam page?"

She had not. She had simply run head-first into India's quietly significant 2026 e-Visa shake-up — a package of changes that widened where you can enter the country, pushed the e-Business fee up under a new pricing logic, and made the once-simple question "what does an Indian e-Visa cost?" depend heavily on which passport you hold.

This guide unpacks that shake-up for UK applicants: the new and expanded entry points, the higher e-Business fee, what "reciprocal pricing" actually means in practice, and — most importantly — how to make sure you pay the correct amount rather than an inflated one. We will be honest about when you can handle all of this yourself and when our Indian business e-Visa service genuinely earns its fee. As with every figure in this piece, treat the numbers as approximate 2026 estimates that float with the rupee and FX, and defer to the official fee schedule before you pay.

What actually changed in 2026#

Three things moved at roughly the same time, and it is worth keeping them separate in your head because they affect different travellers differently:

• Where you can enter widened considerably — more airports, a lot more seaports, and, for the first time on this scale, land crossings.
• The one-year e-Business fee rose, no longer a single flat global figure.
• Pricing logic reportedly shifted toward a reciprocal model, so your fee depends on your nationality rather than one universal price.

The tourist categories, by contrast, look largely untouched. If you are a UK holidaymaker on a short e-Tourist visa, very little has changed for you. If you are travelling for business, almost everything in your cost calculation has.

The big one for travellers: entry points jumped to 51#

For years, the frustrating catch with India's e-Visa was that it was only valid for arrival at a designated list of airports and a handful of seaports. Land borders were firmly off-limits — you needed a regular sticker visa to walk or drive across. Show up at the wrong port and an otherwise valid e-Visa could be useless.

In early 2026, India expanded the list of e-Visa-compatible entry points to around 51. The breakdown, at the time of writing, looks roughly like this:

• Approximately 33 airports — the established major international gateways plus additions.
• About 16 seaports, of which 14 are newly added — a substantial opening-up for cruise and ship arrivals.
• Two land crossings — Raxaul (on the Nepal border, Bihar) and Rupaidiha (Uttar Pradesh) — the headline first-of-their-kind addition for e-Visa holders.

That land-crossing change is genuinely new ground. If your itinerary involves entering India overland from Nepal, an e-Visa may now be an option where previously only a paper visa would do. Our deeper companion piece on this, India's new e-Visa entry gateways, walks through the full port logic and the cruise-passenger angle in more detail.

The e-Business fee went up — and is no longer flat#

Here is the change that prompted our founder's panicked email.

For a long time, the one-year e-Business visa carried a flat fee of roughly US$80 for everyone, regardless of nationality. In 2026 that flat figure reportedly gave way to a higher standard rate of around US$120, with nationality-specific amounts layered on top. Reported examples circulating at the time of writing include:

• US nationals — roughly US$140.
• Australian nationals — about US$215.
• UAE nationals — around US$415.

We are deliberately not publishing a single "this is what a UK applicant pays" figure, because the per-nationality numbers are secondary-sourced, they float, and the worst thing we could do is have you budget against a stale figure. What matters is the direction and the logic: the e-Business visa is meaningfully more expensive than it was, and the amount now depends on your passport.

Here is how the broad picture compares, keeping every figure firmly hedged.

The takeaway from that table is the bottom row as much as the top one: the tourist fees are reported to be broadly the same, while the business fee both rose and switched to a nationality-driven model. If you are comparing notes with a colleague of a different nationality, expecting your fees to match is exactly how people convince themselves a legitimate page is a scam.

"Reciprocal pricing": what it means for you#

The clearest way to understand the new model is the principle reportedly behind it: reciprocity. India sets its visa fee for a given nationality to broadly mirror what that country charges Indian citizens for an equivalent visa.

In plain terms: if a particular country makes it expensive for an Indian passport-holder to visit, India's fee for that country's nationals tends to rise to match; where a country is cheaper or easier on Indians, the Indian fee tends to be lower. That is why the reported examples vary so widely — a US, Australian and UAE national applying for the same one-year e-Business visa can each see a different number, and none of them is wrong.

For a UK applicant, the practical consequences are simple but important:

• Your fee is whatever the official schedule lists for British nationals at the moment you apply — not a universal figure you can memorise.
• That figure can change as the reciprocal arrangement is reviewed, so a number that was right last year may be stale today.
• Comparing your fee against a differently-passported colleague's is meaningless — different inputs, different outputs.

If you are weighing whether a business e-Visa is even the right category for your trip, our explainer on the business e-Visa versus an employment visa is worth reading before you pay anything, because choosing the wrong category is a far more expensive mistake than the fee rise itself.

The trap: paying the wrong amount#

The fee changes have created a fertile environment for two distinct ways of overpaying, and they catch UK applicants constantly.

Trap one — lookalike "official" sites. A long-standing problem made worse by fee confusion. Search "India e-Visa" and you will find a wall of sites that look official but are private operators adding opaque "processing" or "service" charges on top of the government fee — sometimes doubling the cost. When the genuine government fee is itself in flux, it is harder for an applicant to sense-check whether a quoted total is reasonable.

Trap two — budgeting against an outdated flat figure. Plenty of older guides still quote the old flat US$80 e-Business fee. Apply expecting that and the higher 2026 figure looks alarming — which, ironically, can push nervous applicants toward a scam site that "confirms" a lower (fake) price.

Here is the order of operations we recommend to anyone applying in 2026.

So is this a DIY job or an agent job?#

We will be honest, because that is the point of this guide.

For a straightforward UK applicant — a British citizen, clean travel history, applying for a standard e-Tourist or e-Business visa, entering at a major airport — the official portal is entirely manageable. The fee changes do not make the application harder; they make the budgeting and site-choosing riskier. If you read the official fee schedule and apply on the official portal, you can absolutely do this yourself.

Where an agent earns its fee is when the simplicity breaks down:

• You are unsure which category you need, or whether a business e-Visa even covers your activity (the wrong category is a costly error).
• Your nationality or travel history is non-standard and you want the per-nationality fee and eligibility confirmed before you commit.
• You are arriving via a newly added seaport or land crossing and want certainty that your specific port is e-Visa-valid for your visa type.
• You want a transparent, government-fee-separated quote so you are confident you are not overpaying a markup.
• You simply do not want to risk a lookalike site with your passport data and card details.

That last point matters more than it used to. Our Indian business e-Visa service exists precisely so you get the right category, the correct current fee shown transparently, and your application handled through a legitimate channel — without you having to second-guess whether the page you are on is the real one. For a full walkthrough of the business e-Visa from the UK, our 2026 Indian business e-Visa guide covers documents, timelines and the common pitfalls.

If your business trip is time-sensitive and you cannot afford a rejection or a wrong-category misfire, having someone confirm the details before you pay is cheap insurance against a far more expensive mistake.

The honest bottom line for 2026#

Strip away the noise and the 2026 e-Visa shake-up comes down to this:

• Good news for travellers: far more places to enter — about 51 entry points, including 14 new seaports and two land crossings at Raxaul and Rupaidiha. Cruise and overland trips just got easier.
• Watch your wallet on business visas: the one-year e-Business fee rose from a flat US$80 toward roughly US$120-plus, now set by nationality under a reciprocal model.
• Tourist visas are reportedly steady: the short and one-year e-Tourist fees look broadly unchanged.
• Your job: confirm the current fee for your nationality and your exact entry point on the official portal, and apply through a legitimate channel so you pay the genuine amount and nothing extra.

None of it is exotic. Like most Indian consular paperwork, the difficulty is not the form — it is knowing the current figure, choosing the right category, and not handing your details to the wrong website. Get those three right and the shake-up is manageable.

If you would rather not navigate the reciprocal fees, the new entry-point list and the lookalike-site minefield alone, talk to us about an Indian business e-Visa and we will tell you honestly whether you need us or can handle it yourself.

This article is general information for 2026 and not legal or immigration advice. Entry-point lists, fee amounts, per-nationality rates and the reciprocal-pricing arrangement are approximate, secondary-sourced where noted, and change without notice — always confirm the current position and the exact fee for your nationality and visa type on the official Indian government e-Visa portal at indianvisaonline.gov.in↗ before applying. NriDirect is an independent UK agent assisting with Indian consular paperwork and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of VFS Global or the Indian High Commission.