Foreigners who have temporary or permanent residence permits in Lithuania should not forget to carefully monitor the validity of these documents and apply to the Migration Department in a timely manner for their change. The free MIGRIS service of the Lithuanian migration information system can remind those who have forgotten about the approaching expiry of the document.

A foreigner can submit a request to change and extend a temporary residence permit in Lithuania, if the grounds for being in the country continue to exist, 4 months before its expiration date.

Two months are allocated for examining such a request in the general procedure and for making a decision, one month in the case of urgency. A foreigner’s request to change a permanent residence permit in Lithuania must be processed within 1 month in the normal procedure, within 15 working days in the case of an emergency procedure.

However, bearing in mind that the number of foreigners coming to Lithuania is increasing, and the processing of some applications takes longer, the Migration Department recommends that citizens of foreign countries who already have such permits advance the submission of applications and, if possible, apply for the extension of the residence permit 4 months before its expiration.

The Migration Department also encourages foreigners to order an automatic notification about the expiration of their personal documents in the Lithuanian migration information system MIGRIS.

Such messages can be ordered free of charge by logging in to your personal MIGRIS account and marking a special consent to receive information in the “My Documents” section. The reminder message will reach the owner of the document twice by e-mail: 120 and 60 days before the expiration date of the personal document.

These reminders are also sent about the upcoming expiration of documents issued to minors.

There is no doubt that the document expiration reminder service not only encourages people to plan visits to customer service departments in advance, but also helps to avoid unpleasant surprises.

They may arise, for example, if the Migration Department decides to change the deadline for examining an application submitted in an urgent manner to a general one. Thus, if the foreigner submitted the application when the existing permit expired, it is likely that the new document will not be issued until the end of the person’s legal residence in the country. In this case, the foreigner’s stay in Lithuania would become illegal and the foreigner would have to leave the country, which, of course, would cause additional problems.

In addition, after receiving a positive answer regarding the issuance of a new temporary residence permit, such a person would have to either take care of sending the document to a foreign country, or legally come to Lithuania on another basis and only then visit the customer service department to collect the document issued to this person.