Renewing your passport in the middle of an application

The one fact that causes all of this

When you re-issue a Bangladeshi passport you do not get the same number back. You get a new booklet with a new number, and the old one is returned to you cancelled. Nothing in your application updates itself.

That is manageable at every stage except one, and the whole point of this article is to get you renewing at a stage where it is manageable.

What breaks, stage by stage

The rule of thumb

If your passport has less than about eighteen months to run, renew before you start applying. That single decision removes every row of the table above except the first.

The temptation runs the other way, because a passport renewal feels like something you can leave until the offer is real. It is not — see the e-passport timeline, where the clock is longer than most people plan for.

If you must renew during the application

Do these four things, in this order, and keep copies of everything.

1. 1Keep the old booklet. Do not let anyone retain it. It is your evidence that the two numbers belong to one person, and it holds any visas or stamps that show your travel history.
2. 2Update every online portal. Universitaly, universityadmissions.se, Studyinfo, DreamApply and each university's own system all store the passport number, and a mismatch between the portal and the passport at the counter is a query. The country-specific guides walk through where the field sits — for Italy see Universitaly pre-enrolment.
3. 3Write to the admissions office. A short email naming the old number, the new number, and attaching scans of both bio pages. Ask them to reissue the offer letter on the new number if the visa file has not yet been submitted.
4. 4Tell the mission or the visa application centre. If an appointment is already booked, the booking is usually tied to the passport number. Confirm before you turn up rather than at the counter — the practicalities are covered in VFS Global Dhaka appointments and biometrics.

⚠️ The hard case: a visa already in the old passport

A visa is affixed to a specific passport, and that passport has now been cancelled. There is no single European rule here, which is exactly the problem — practice differs by country and sometimes by mission.

The common outcome is that you travel with both booklets, the cancelled one containing the visa and the new one as your valid travel document, and the airline and the border officer accept the pair. Some missions instead require the visa to be transferred or reissued into the new book, which takes time and may cost a fee.

Do not guess, and do not rely on what a forum says worked for someone else last year. Write to the mission that issued the visa, describe the situation, and get the answer in writing before you book a flight. An airline check-in desk in Dhaka is the worst possible place to discover the answer.

What this means for the visa file itself

If the renewal happens before submission, the file simply uses the new passport throughout, and the old book goes in as supporting evidence of travel history. Two details matter:

• Your police clearance certificate follows the passport. If the PCC was issued against the old passport number, check whether your destination will accept it or whether you need a fresh one — see the police clearance guide.
• Attested documents name you, not your passport number, so the attestation chain does not have to be redone. That is the one piece of good news in this whole article.

Before you decide

1. 1Count the months of validity left on the day you plan to submit the visa file, not today.
2. 2If it is under eighteen, renew now, before an offer exists.
3. 3If you have already applied, budget an afternoon for portal updates and emails — it is tedious, not difficult.
4. 4If a visa has already been issued, stop and get the mission's answer in writing before anything else.