How long does it take to
get an apostille from the
US Department of State?
It all depends on the U.S Department of State (USDOS).
Pre-COVID we (or any other company like ours) used to be able to file and obtain Department of State apostille and authentication certificates for our clients in only 3-4 business days because we could physically walk into the United States Department of State building in Washington D.C to hand file documents.
Since March 20th, 2020 the United States Department of State building has been shut down to the general public.
Until around May 2021, the United States Department of State was taking an insane 12-13 weeks to turn around documents once they received them from us (or any person or company).
Then the summer of 2021 hit and the turnaround time went down to 6-8 weeks and for a few spring months in 2022, it went down to 3-5 weeks.
In 2024 it’s currently taking the US Department of State an estimated 10-12 weeks to issue a federal apostille or federal authentication certificate on any type of document for any country. The exception is FBI criminal background checks and FBI identity history summaries that the USDOS is turning around in only 3-4 weeks.
