Indian passport and visa services in Australia have moved to six new centres

If you renewed an Indian passport last year, forget where you went. Indian passport renewal Australia-wide, along with visa and OCI services, has since 23 July 2026 been delivered from six new Indian Consular Application Centres at new addresses, with appointments now mandatory and biometrics required for visa and OCI applications.

For the many households that need one of these documents to travel, this is the administrative change of the year, and it has been explained almost entirely through notices on official websites.

What happened, and when

Six new Indian Consular Application Centres opened on 23 July 2026, operated by VFS Global. The company is not new to the work. Its own media release describes it as a partner of the Government of India for visa, passport and consular processing since 2008, including in Australia, and Travel Weekly reports the new centres replace facilities that had been in place for more than a decade. The company did not change. The centres, the addresses and the lodgement rules did.

The Consulate General of India in Perth states it plainly: “With effect from 23 July 2026, the Indian Consular, Passport, Visa (CPV) services in Perth will be provided by VFS Global at below location: Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth WA 6000”.

VFS Global’s Australia and India site carries a notice dated 22 July 2026 headed “Launch of New Indian Consular Application Centres (ICACs) Across Australia”.

Indian passport renewal Australia-wide: where to go now

The six centres are in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. The published addresses are Suite 8.01, Level 8, 111 Gawler Place, Adelaide; Suite 0201, Level 2, 127 Creek Street, Brisbane; Level 6, 40 Marcus Clarke Street, Canberra; Ground Floor, 324 St Kilda Road, Melbourne; Ground Floor, 23 Barrack Street, Perth; and Level 9, 22 to 24 Market Street, Sydney.

Check the address against the centre’s own page before travelling. Several of these moved from locations people had been using for years, and a wasted trip into the city with a parent and a folder of documents is exactly the sort of thing this article exists to prevent.

Appointments and biometrics

VFS Global’s Australia and India page carries two notices dated 26 June 2026, issued before the centres opened. One is headed “Biometrics Required for Visa and OCI Applications”. The other is headed “Mandatory Appointments at All Centres”.

Mandatory appointments means the booking comes first and the documents second. Turning up without one is not the process.

Biometrics, on the face of that notice, applies to visa and OCI applications. Whether passport applications are also captured is not stated in the notice heading, and it is worth asking the centre before assuming either way. Where biometrics are required, the applicant attends in person. For an elderly parent, or a family lodging for several people at once, that is a logistical question worth settling before booking a single slot.

Updating an OCI after a new passport

This is the requirement people forget until an airline asks, and it is unchanged by the move to the new centres. The Consulate General of India in Sydney states that an OCI cardholder must upload a copy of the new passport and a recent photo each time a new passport is issued up to 20 years of age, and once after completing 50 years of age, and that the uploading may be done within three months of receipt of the new passport. That online service, the Sydney consulate says, is free.

A fresh OCI card is required in narrower circumstances than people assume, and the Sydney consulate sets out the conditions and the fees. Read that page rather than a summary of it, because getting the conditions wrong means lodging and paying for an application you may not need.

Who got the contract

The changeover was not sudden from the High Commission’s side, and the paper trail is public.

A High Commission notice dated 6 January 2026 records tender number CAN/CONS/415/02/2025, dated 17 November 2025, for outsourcing of Consular, Passport and Visa services in Australia. Six companies lodged technical bids, which were evaluated on 29 and 30 December 2025. Two qualified for the financial bid stage, IVS Global Services Pvt Ltd and VF Worldwide Holdings Ltd. Four did not reach the minimum score: BLS E Services, DU Digital Global, E Trav Tech and Verasys.

VFS Global describes its own role carefully. Harpreet Singh, the company’s Regional Head for Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific, said in a media release dated 24 July 2026 that “the new centres reflect a significant enhancement in infrastructure, technology integration, and customer support systems, designed to address evolving demand and provide more efficient and comfortable application experience”. He added that “as the administrative service partner, VFS Global is responsible for front-end service delivery in accordance with the framework and standards defined by the Government of India”.

That distinction matters when something goes wrong. The company runs the counter. The decisions remain the Government of India’s.

The High Commission itself has moved

Worth noting separately, because people still post documents to the old address. The High Commission states that it “has shifted its office premises from 3 Moonah Place, Yarralumla ACT” to 15 Tench Street, Kingston ACT 2604, with effect from 21 May 2026.

What it costs

For Indian passport renewal Australia-wide, VFS Global’s media release refers to a service charge covering application facilitation but does not state an amount. SBS Hindi, reporting on 23 July 2026, put the service charge at $115 per application from that date and attributed the figure to the Indian High Commission. Confirm the current charge with the centre when booking.

The practical upshot

Three things to do before you lodge anything. Book the appointment before you assemble the documents, because the appointment now sets your timeline. Check with the centre whether your particular application needs biometrics, which will decide whether the person concerned has to attend. And ring your own centre to confirm what can still be lodged by post, because that varies and is not worth guessing at. Updating an existing OCI after a new passport is a separate matter and is still done online, as the Sydney consulate sets out.

The larger point is about how this was communicated. A change affecting a great many Indian Australian households was announced through separate notices on the High Commission’s site, the consulate sites, a company’s news page and a tender result, with no single place a family could read to find out what now applies to them. For anyone helping a parent through this process, the work is not the paperwork. It is finding out what the paperwork is.