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We, a family of 3, will travel to Europe on a 12-day group package tour. Entry in Italy and depart from Paris.

We were granted a 12-day Schengen visa, issued by the Swiss embassy and finally decided to extend our stay in Paris for 4 days.

  • How can we extend our Schengen visa's validity?
  • Do we need to seek another visa from the French embassy?
  • Since it is a package tour, can we change or cancel our flight back and make a new flight itinerary?
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    Changing your flights is a matter for the tour company or airline. You will have to contact them.
    – user16259
    Mar 2, 2018 at 5:58

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A Schengen visa has a validity period and a duration. Usually validity is longer than duration. For example, if you have 10 days duration between January 1st and January 20th, you have the choice to stay from January 1st to January 10th, from January 2nd to January 11th, ..., from January 11th to January 20th, or even from January 19th to January 20th (you do not have to use all your duration, but you cannot stay past the end of validity).

This is done so that you don't need a new visa application if you make minor changes to your itinerary, e.g. a business meeting that gets postponed by a week.

So you have to check what validity and duration you have. Usually for first-time applications you get not much more validity than duration, perhaps a day on either end.

That could become a problem in your case because you cannot hold two different Schengen visa valid at the same time. So if the Swiss gave you extra validity beyond the duration, you cannot get a new French visa for those days. You'd have to cancel the Swiss visa and apply for a new one for the entire trip.

I'd advise against that.

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  • I thought I've heard tales of applying for a second Schengen visa just for the additional days, rather than having to cancel the first one, but I may be wrong on that. Have you heard of such a thing?
    – Zach Lipton
    Mar 2, 2018 at 9:08
  • @ZachLipton, AFAIK that would depend on the timing of duration and validity. One does not have to leave to "transition" from one visa to the other if one has enough days of duration left to stay to the end of validity.
    – o.m.
    Mar 2, 2018 at 18:58

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