Apply for a student visa

Country of origin	Requires a student visa
EEA + Monaco and Switzerland	No
NON EEA	Yes
NON EEA with a visa for another EEA country	No*

* If you are a non-EEA student who is already studying in another EEA country and, therefore, you already have a visa for that other EEA country, then you don't need to apply for a new visa to come to Belgium. However, the International Office will need to notify the authorities about this latest days before your arrival in Belgium.
Is this your case? You need to contact yourself the International Office via incoming@thomasmore.be asap to start this procedure.

If you need a visa to study at Thomas More, you will need to apply for a long-stay visa (type D). This is also called an Authorisation for Provisional Sojourn (Machtiging tot Voorlopig Verblijf). It allows the holder to enter and remain in Belgium for a period longer than 90 days.

Students should not enter Belgium on a tourist visa if they intend to stay longer than 90 days. Thomas More will not support an application for a change of status or visa.

If you need a visa, we highly recommend starting this process as soon as you have received the necessary documents from Admissions (for Degree students) or International Office (for Exchange students). Student visa applications can often take 3 to 4 months to be processed so it is essential to start the process as soon as you received your documents.

Plan to be in Belgium at least two weeks before the start of the classes in order to attend Orientation Days.

It is important to refer to the Belgian Embassy or Belgian Consulate website in your home or neighbouring country. They will provide you with information about which documents are required to apply for a student visa. Please note that some embassies and consulates work with external agencies like VFS or TLS.

The visa application must be completed at the Belgian Consulate or Embassy in your home country or in the country where you legally reside. If there is no Belgian consulate or embassy in your country, you may submit your application to the Belgian consulate or Embassy in a neighbouring country. In some countries, a visa application centre handles the visa procedures for Belgium, for example VFS Global and TLS.

Make sure that you inform Thomas More via email (Degree students: admissions@thomasmore.be. Exchange students: incoming@thomasmore.be) about the application number and/or contact person at the Belgian embassy or consulate where you are applying for your visa. This way, we can confirm your admission directly with them.

If you need to apply for a visa to study in Belgium, then you will have to provide proof of solvency, also known as ‘sufficient financial means'.
This is an essential condition to obtain an Authorization for Provisional Sojourn as a student (student visa type D) for living and studying in Belgium.

Why is proof of solvency required?

The Belgian authorities want to make sure that you can support yourself while studying in Belgium. Therefore, you need to prove that you are solvent, i.e. that you have sufficient money at your disposal while staying in Belgium. You will need to prove that you have the necessary means to cover your healthcare, living expenses, and study and repatriation costs.

How can I prove my solvency?

There are different ways of proving you have sufficient financial means. Depending on the embassy you start your application at, you will have different options to do so.
One of the options is the blocked account procedure. This implies that you choose to transfer the appropriate amount of money to the bank account of Thomas More, that will in turn forward this amount on a monthly basis to your personal Belgian bank account in Belgium.

Thomas More offers exchange students who have been accepted to one of their programmes the option of a blocked account procedure.

What is a blocked account procedure?

It's a way for you to prove your financial solvency, i.e. sufficient means of subsistence, when applying for a student visa.

How does it work?

You make an advance payment of your monthly living expenses into a blocked account managed by Thomas More. The minimum amount to cover your living expenses is €850 per month and is set by the Belgian government*. There is an administrative fee of €250.

Blocked account 25/26: €850 x 5 months + 250€ administrative fee = €4500

When you arrive in Belgium you open a Belgian bank account in your name into which you receive monthly payments during your stay with us. You will receive a double payment (€1700) the first month to cover all extra costs such as rent deposit etc.. At the end of your stay you are fully reimbursed, apart from the €250 administrative fee.

* Be aware that the monthly amount is set by the Belgian Government and is subject to change at any given time. If any changes should occur we will notify our students.

How can I apply for a blocked account?

If you want to apply for a blocked account as an exchange student, you need to contact the International Office yourself asap via incoming@thomasmore.be. They will send you the procedure via email.
Please note you should do this as soon as possible, since it takes some time to set it up.

Should your visa be refused, the blocked account will be fully refunded (€-250 administrative fee 25/26) onto the account where the money originally was transferred from.