As of December 2018, 116 countries have acceded to The Hague Apostille Convention. As a result of this, UK documents being presented in any of these countries simply require the apostille in order to be legally recognised. Nevertheless, there are many countries that are not party to this treaty. When this is the case additional legalisation steps may be required.

The following countries are not currently part of the apostille convention. UK documents being presented in these countries may require further embassy legalisation once the apostille has been issued.

Many of the countries listed above will issue their own attestation stamps and/or certificates to a document. This attestation is usually issued to verify the authenticity of the apostille that has been issued to a document which, in turn, ensures the document is legally recognised in the respective country.

The processing time and complexity for this varies from country to country. As an example, the UAE embassy require the document with the apostille only to issue their stamp, whereas the Chinese embassy request a copy of the passport for the person named on the document and insist on the apostille being no longer than 3 months old.

We work with most embassies in the UK to legalise documents where possible. Not all countries have an active embassy in the UK so we may not be able to assist in all cases. We strive to make the embassy attestation service as simple and as cost effective as possible. For more information on the process and fees for legalising your document(s) for a given country please contact us today.