Visa Medical Certificate: An Approved Example & Guide [2026]

What is a visa medical health certificate?

Before moving, I searched high and low for an example of this document.

I couldn’t find much information in my search, however. So I thought this might be a great opportunity to actually SHOW you the exact letter we ended up submitting to our Spanish consulate for our non lucrative visa in Spain.

(And they approved it just fine! Woohoo!)

I also want to mention that you are going to need TWO different ‘medical/health’ requirements for most visa applications. When I was first researching this, it became VERY confusing because I didn’t know which was which. (Or if they were the same thing!)

I do have a separate post about health insurance for a visa. But I wanted to clarify that these two requirements are NOT the same and don’t overlap!

The medical health certificate is a signed, stamped letter from your doctor. (The other is an actual health insurance policy for going to the doctor/hospital/etc.)

Hopefully, this is helpful, because I remember being very confused when trying to figure out exactly what these things were and what specifically was needed.

(In fact, as I mentioned above that was a HUGE motivator for starting this blog. It just seemed like I had so many unanswered questions when we were moving overseas with kids and no-one to ask!)

Now that we’ve got that clarified- let’s talk about what the medical health certificate actually looks like.

What is an example of a visa medical certificate?

Here is an example of our medical health certificate letter, stamped and signed from our doctor.

In order to get our medical health certificate from the doctor, I made an appointment for each of our family members to get a physical. Luckily, I was able to get appointments one after another.

At the appointment, I gave the doctor my basic printed wording example with a brief explanation of what I needed.

The office secretary used my template wording and drafted us each a letter on their official letterhead. I was able to pick up the letters within a few days! 🙂 Awesome!

It was much easier to literally just GIVE our doctor the exact wording I wanted so there was no confusion.

The consulate website should be pretty clear about what is needed. There are fairly straightforward requirements world-wide on what this letter is used for and what wording it needs to have.

First I copied and pasted the exact wording, then translated it into Spanish (because we were moving to Spain). Then I printed the sample for the doctor with both languages already on it.

Be sure to match your wording to what your specific consulate requires, and you should be fine.

What should the medical health certificate for my visa application SAY?

Be sure to have yours translated into the language of your desired country as well.

Lastly, make sure it is printed on the doctor’s official letterhead, signed and stamped with their official medical stamp. (I know I said this already! I just want to make sure you remember so it doesn’t cause you any headaches later!)

That’s it! Pretty straightforward, right?

I find it a bit funny now, when looking back on our journey of moving abroad with children (and our subsequent world travel with kids)- because this is THE document that really sparked an entire blog into creation!

The medical health certificate in itself is a pretty simple document- but yet it gave me so many headaches going around in circles just to figure out what it was! 😂

So hopefully, this post helped to explain a few things for you as well.

The other big visa application document I wasn’t sure about was the letter of intent- so I prioritized writing that blog post as well. You can see our letter of intent example here.

Feel free to check out our other Visa Application posts (here’s our main list of non lucrative visa documents) to see other visa requirements and their explanations.

You can also download our free visa prep checklist to help you stay organized with all of the different requirements and documents needed! 😉

Also, if you have ANY questions about this (or any of the other requirements/documents) please feel free to comment them below or reach out! I’m here to help however I can!