How to renew Slovak identity documents abroad 🇨🇿
If you live abroad and one of your identity documents is about to expire, you do not always have to travel back to Slovakia to obtain a new one. You can use the Slovak embassy in your country of residence—an especially useful option during the pandemic at the time this article was written.
My passport was due to expire in March 2021, so I decided to apply for a new one at the Slovak embassy in Prague. Besides a passport, you can also apply there for a new identity card or driving licence.
Booking an appointment
You must book an appointment online before visiting the embassy. The reservation has to be made for a specific type of document. If you are applying for several documents, you need several bookings because each reservation covers only a short 15-minute slot.
When creating the reservation, you can complete all your personal details in advance. Doing so means you will not have to spend time entering them during your visit.
Book early, however. At the time of writing, the wait for an appointment was almost six months.
I booked my February 2021 appointment in September 2020, and even that felt quite lucky.
Submitting the application
You have to arrive at the embassy at the reserved time. Submitting my application genuinely took only 15 minutes, although I had completed all the details online beforehand.
Everything takes place in a small room at a window with an embassy employee on the other side. The main steps are having your photograph taken and your fingerprints scanned. This does not always work on the first attempt.
Because I was applying for a new passport, I had to pay the equivalent of €40 in Czech korunas at the current exchange rate. Payment was possible only in cash.
The normal processing time for a new document is four to six weeks. My passport was ready in four.
Collecting the document
New documents could be collected every Tuesday and Thursday between 1 pm and 3 pm. The embassy notified me by text message and email when mine was ready.
Be prepared for a long wait when collecting it. I arrived a few minutes after 1 pm on a Thursday and eight people were already ahead of me.
The collection process was unexpectedly slow and took almost an hour. Even so, it was still better than travelling to Slovakia.