Most Schengen posts will take any travel medical policy that shows €30,000 of cover on the certificate. The Embassy of the Czech Republic in New Delhi will not. Its short-stay visa pages carry one sentence that decides whether your insurance document counts at all: “Only insurance provided by the listed insurance companies will be accepted when applying for a short-term (Schengen) visa up to 90 days.” Buy the cover from an insurer that is not on that list and the number printed on it stops mattering.
So the order of work for Czechia is not the order you would guess. You do not begin with flights. You begin by opening the embassy’s approved list and reading the name of the company you were about to pay. The rest of the file — a return reservation, lodging for every night, a cover letter, bank statements — is ordinary Schengen assembly. The insurer is the part that is particular to this consulate.
The insurance line the Czech post actually enforces
The embassy states the substance in three clauses: the minimum cover “shall be EUR 30 000”; it must pay for repatriation for medical reasons, urgent medical attention, emergency hospital treatment or death; and it “shall be valid throughout the territory of the Schengen States and cover the entire period of the person’s intended stay or transit”. The tourism checklist tightens the last point further — the policy “has to clearly specify the period of validity and has to cover the entire duration of the trip including the date of arrival and departure”.
Read that literally, because officers do. A policy that begins on the morning after your aircraft touches down at Prague has already failed on the face of it. If you are asking for a multiple-entry visa, the embassy accepts cover spanning the first intended visit and asks you to sign a statement that you will hold cover for the later ones.
The Czech calendar is tighter than the paperwork
Applications from India are lodged through VFS Global and decided by the Consular Section in New Delhi. Two dates govern everything else. First, the appointment supply: the embassy says “new slots are released every second Monday of a month for visa appointments in the upcoming month”. Second, the submission window: a Schengen application “can be submitted six months at the earliest and 15 days at the latest ahead of the trip”, with the embassy adding that it is “strongly recommended to apply at least 3 weeks prior the planned departure”.
Put those together and the month you apply in is chosen for you rather than by you. Miss a second Monday and you are waiting for the next release, while the 15-day floor keeps advancing towards your departure. The decision itself normally takes up to 15 calendar days and can run to a maximum of 45 in individual cases.
One thing here works in your favour, and it is unusual. The embassy says applicants “legally residing in India shall apply at any VFS Global visa application center” — and it lists sixteen of them, Jalandhar and Chandigarh in the north through Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Pune, Goa, Hyderabad, Kochi and Trivandrum. You are not tied to the centre nearest your address. The fee at the time of checking was 90 EUR, shown as 9 900 INR, with children aged 6–12 at 45 EUR; the embassy notes the rupee figures are “updated every month, according to the current exchange rate”, so confirm the day’s amount on its fees page rather than budgeting from this one.
Prague is usually somebody else’s main destination
This is where Czechia files are lost before a document is even opened. The embassy’s own FAQ restates the competence rule flatly: the application belongs to “the Member State whose territory constitutes the main destination of the visit(s) in terms of the length or purpose of stay”. Prague is the great add-on city of Central Europe — three nights wedged into a run that also takes in Vienna, Budapest, Dresden or Kraków. Three nights in Prague against five in Vienna makes the Austrian post competent, however much easier a Czech appointment looks that week.
- 3 nightsPragueArrival airport, shorter stay
- 5 nightsViennaLongest stay → main destination
- Apply to AustriaPurpose is tested first; where no single purpose stands out, the longest stay names the responsible post. A shorter appointment queue is not one of the criteria.
When Czechia genuinely is the main destination, the checklist expects the rest of the trip documented too. Its transport line adds: “if the applicant is travelling to several Schengen States, proof of intra-Schengen flight reservation, train itinerary or car rental”, and its lodging line asks for proof of lodging in each of them. That matters for Czechia more than for most, because the Prague–Vienna and Prague–Berlin legs are usually taken by rail and travellers assume trains do not need documenting. They do.
What we hold for a Prague file, and why it stays a reservation
The embassy’s checklist asks for “proof of means of transport: flight reservation of return or round ticket”. A reservation — the word is theirs, not ours. What it has to be is a booking that exists in an airline’s system, held under a reference, in the name on your passport.
There is no nonstop between India and Prague; Václav Havel Airport’s own destination map shows Abu Dhabi as its Gulf link, flown by Etihad. That is the identical check a consular officer or a check-in agent can run, and it either resolves or it does not.
Keeping it as a held booking rather than a purchased ticket is simply arithmetic while a decision is outstanding for 15 to 45 days. Hold duration depends on the airline and the fare, so if a Czech file runs long we re-hold the reservation rather than let it lapse quietly. Accommodation follows the same discipline: every night of the stay covered, in every Schengen country on the itinerary, with a check-in date that is the date you land and not the day after.
Two Czech rules that outlive the visa
Czechia joined the Schengen Area on 21 December 2007 but has not adopted the euro; it runs on the koruna. That shows up in a number worth knowing. The European Commission’s Annex 25 of reference amounts, in its version dated 01-04-2026, records the Czech figure as 1 565 CZK per day for stays not exceeding 30 days, under Section 13 of Act No 326/1999 Coll. That is a border-crossing benchmark rather than a consular one, but it is the amount the Czech authorities themselves named, and it is a sensible floor for the funds your bank statements show.
The second is the reporting duty. Third-country nationals must register their place of stay with the Foreign Police; the Ministry of the Interior’s portal for foreigners puts it at three working days from arrival and exempts you where the accommodation provider does it on your behalf. A hotel will. A privately let apartment may not, which is exactly the case travellers get caught by. And since 10 April 2026 the Entry/Exit System has replaced the ink stamp with a digital record of each crossing, so your 90-days-in-180 total is now counted rather than estimated — nothing to apply for, but allow extra time at the border on the first crossing.
Tell us the dates, the cities and the nights in each, and we will put the Prague reservation and the accommodation together so they agree with the cover letter you sign. The decision stays with the consulate; what a coherent file removes is the contradictions that make an officer read it twice.