After the Grant: Your eVisa, Your UKVI Account and What the Border Officer Already Knows

The grant email and what it does not contain

As Part 1 explained, the decision email is generated by Atlas at a milestone, through GOV.UK Notify, not written by the officer. For a grant it confirms the route, the validity dates and the conditions, and it tells you how to access your eVisa. It does not contain a visa number in the old sense, it is not a travel document, and it is not what the airline will check. Keep it, but do not rely on it at the airport.

eVisa or vignette: who gets what in 2026

The move away from stickers happened in stages. From 15 July 2025, main applicants on the Student, Skilled Worker, Global Talent, Temporary Work and Youth Mobility routes stopped receiving the 90 day entry vignette and received an eVisa only. From 25 February 2026, “most visitors who need a visa will get an eVisa only”, and from the same date carriers began confirming travel permission through “automated digital checks with the Home Office”. Dependants and children on work and study routes were still receiving both a vignette and an eVisa at the time of the 2025 change.

In practice, a Pakistani visitor applying today attends VFS once to enrol biometrics, gets the passport back at that visit, and later receives a grant email. Nothing further is placed in the passport. An older vignette in an expired passport remains valid evidence of the visa; if your passport has changed since, travel with both.

Setting up the UKVI account properly

The UKVI account is created at gov.uk/evisa with an email address, a phone number and an identity check through the Home Office ID Check smartphone app, which reads the passport chip and takes a face photo. Three details catch families out:

• One account per person. Children and dependants need their own accounts, although they can share a parent’s email and phone number.
• Logging in to the visa application is not a UKVI account. The application site and the eVisa account are different systems. Many applicants believe they have an account when they only have an application login.
• The passport in the account must be the passport you fly on. GOV.UK puts it plainly: “You must travel with a valid passport or travel document that you’ve added to your UKVI account.” You can add more than one.

What the airline checks

At check in the carrier sends your passport details to the Home Office and receives a yes or no on whether you hold permission to travel. If the details in your account do not match the passport you present, the automatic check fails, a manual check is attempted through the Border Force carrier support hub, and GOV.UK warns that the carrier may decline to let you travel “if your details are wrong”. A spelling difference between the passport and the account, or a new passport that was never linked, is enough to cause this. It is the single most common eVisa problem we see at Lahore airport.

What the border officer can see

On arrival, your eVisa “is checked when you leave and enter the UK, either by a border control officer or at an eGate”. Pakistani nationals present to an officer. What the officer sees is not just the visa: through the Person Centric Data Platform described in Part 1, they see your status, your face image from the biometric store and, where relevant, your person record, including earlier visits, the length of previous stays and any notes. The officer is not re deciding the visa, but Appendix V still requires a genuine visitor at the point of entry, and the questions at the desk (“how long, where are you staying, who are you visiting”) are checked against what you told the visa officer. Part 9 of this series looks at how your visits are counted.

The permission you are given is not always the visa you hold

A visit visa valid for six months, two years or ten years is permission to travel and seek entry. The permission to stay is granted at the border for each visit, normally up to six months, and the officer may give less where the stated purpose needs less. Students and workers receive the permission their eVisa shows, running from the start date on the grant. Check the “valid from” and “valid until” lines on the eVisa itself, not only on the email, because the eVisa is what every later check reads.

Share codes and proving status

From the account’s “view and prove” service you can generate a share code. A travel share code is valid for 90 days, can be used more than once and can be generated before you travel. Carriers normally do not need it because the automatic check comes first, but it is required for onward travel to Ireland and it is what an employer, a landlord or a university asks for in the UK. For a visitor the share code is also the quickest way to show a hotel or a relative’s local authority that you are lawfully present.

Errors, new passports and corrections

Part 1 explained that the eVisa is a live view of Atlas and the biometric store, which is why a wrong name, nationality or date has to be corrected in the caseworking system first. The Home Office’s own assessment says rights requests are actioned “on core systems first, then reflected in View and Prove when status is next requested”. Use the “report an error with your eVisa” form on GOV.UK and allow weeks, not days.

New passports follow two tracks. With a biometric passport you can update the number, expiry date, name or nationality in the account yourself. With a non biometric passport only the number and expiry can be changed online; anything else must be changed by UKVI, which may mean new fingerprints and a photo at a visa application centre. Pakistani machine readable passports issued before the e passport rollout fall into the second group, so plan the update before buying tickets.

Your checklist before you fly

1. The day the grant arrives, create or sign in to the UKVI account and open the eVisa. Check name spelling, date of birth, nationality, route and dates against the passport and the application.
2. Link the passport you will fly on, and every family member’s passport to their own account.
3. Generate a share code and screenshot the eVisa page; keep the grant email in the same folder.
4. If anything is wrong, report it immediately through the GOV.UK error form and tell us; corrections take time.
5. Prepare for the desk, with the same purpose, dates and address you gave in the application, and the sponsor’s details to hand.

Part 8 of this series explains how UKVI scores your university, and why a sponsor’s compliance rating can decide a student application before it is read.

Questions applicants ask

About the author

Mujtaba Maharvi

Mujtaba is the CEO of Westside Visa Consultants. He began his career in 2001 as Executive Secretary to the Consul General of the Republic of Korea in Karachi, co founded Westside in London in 2003, and has since guided more than 1,000 students and families through UK, European, North American and Australian visa decisions from the firm’s offices in DHA Lahore and the UK. He holds postgraduate degrees from the University of Karachi, the University of Padua, Loughborough University and the University of West London, and writes this series from more than twenty years of reading decision letters.

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