Usually you cannot. An e-visa is a record held on a government system against one passport number, and when that passport is replaced the record does not move across to the new one. For most schemes the honest answer is a fresh application on the new passport. A minority publish an official update route, and there is a workaround that sometimes carries you through a border. Both are below, along with the timing that avoids the problem entirely.
Why the visa is tied to the passport, not to you
When you present a passport at check-in or at a border, the system deciding whether you may travel reads the machine-readable zone and queries the authorisation database on the passport number, the issuing country and the date of birth. Your name is a secondary check. The passport number is the key.
A new passport carries a new number, and the old number is cancelled at issue. The record saying you may enter now points at a passport that no longer officially exists, so a query against the new one returns nothing. Your visa has not been withdrawn. It has stopped being findable by the only identifier the system searches on.
What "transfer" actually means, by category
Schemes with an official update route
A minority of authorities let you re-link an existing approval to a replacement passport. It usually appears in the portal as a passport-details update, a re-issue against a small fee, or an endorsement handled at a consulate, and it is normally conditional: available only before the visa has been used, only within a set window, or only when your personal details are otherwise unchanged.
Check the issuing portal's own guidance and treat it as the only source that counts. If a route exists, the authority documents it. If you found it on a forum but cannot find it on the official site, assume it does not exist for you.
Traveling with both passports
Where an authority states that the visa remains valid in the old passport, carrying both documents can work. The visa references the old number, the old passport proves that number was yours, and the new passport establishes your current identity. Border officers handle this regularly.
The failure point comes earlier in the day. Airline check-in files advance passenger information against whichever document you hand over. Present the new passport and the visa lookup comes back empty; present the old one and you are traveling on a document your own government has cancelled. A check-in agent facing two passports and a screen that disagrees is not a gamble to build a trip on. It is a fallback when a trip is already booked and there is no time to reapply. It is a poor basis for planning one. Some issuing authorities also clip or punch the cancelled passport in a way that voids everything inside it.
Reapplying on the new passport
This is the default, and for most travelers the fastest route to a document that will actually scan. You pay the fee again and wait out the processing time again. If the old approval is still live, answer any question about previous visas honestly and say the passport was replaced; inconsistent declarations across two applications cause their own problems.
The timing that saves the whole problem
Most destinations want a passport valid for a set period beyond your arrival or departure, commonly six months. A passport sitting just above that floor is one of the recurring causes behind rejected applications, and it is what forces the renewal that strands your visa. If yours is near the floor, renew the passport first and apply for visas afterwards. The other order means buying authorisations against a document you are about to throw away.
Before booking, check what your specific route asks for, transit stops included, with our requirements checker, and read when an electronic visa expires and how to renew it so the visa's validity and the passport's validity are not running on separate calendars.
If the passport was lost or stolen
Operationally the visa has gone with it. A reported-lost passport is flagged internationally within hours, so it cannot be used even if it surfaces in a coat pocket a week later, and any visa inside it goes down with the document.
- Report the loss to the local police and keep the report.
- Contact your embassy or consulate for an emergency travel document or a replacement passport.
- Reapply for the visa against the new passport number.
- Keep the police report with your application file. Portals sometimes ask why you are applying twice, and officers sometimes ask about a passport issued unusually recently.
Long-validity e-visas you already hold
Multi-year approvals are where this stings. A ten-year authorisation bought two years ago still has real value in it, and a passport renewal writes that value off unless the scheme publishes a re-link route. Three things to do:
- Check the official route first. If one exists, use it before the old passport is cancelled, because some schemes will not process an update once the document is void.
- Budget for reapplication. Treat a passport renewal as carrying the cost of every long-validity visa attached to the old book.
- Never assume it carries over. A traveler who cleared a border on an old passport last year tells you nothing about your nationality, your route, or this year's policy.
The US ESTA is the clearest published example: it is issued against one passport, and a new passport means a new application. Plenty of other schemes work the same way without saying so plainly.
If you are weighing an official update request against simply reapplying, look at your departure date. A reapplication has a stated processing time you can plan around; an update request that may or may not be answered before you fly does not.