On this page

1. On this page
2. Key takeaways
3. On this page
4. Who apostilles an FBI background check for Colombia?
5. What does the whole route actually look like?
6. Does Colombia accept apostilles, or does it need legalization?
7. Do I actually need an apostilled FBI check for my Colombian visa?
8. What exactly is the document the FBI gives you?
9. How do I get the FBI report in the first place?
10. I already live in Colombia — how does this work from there?
11. How long does a federal FBI apostille take?
12. Can I get same-day service on a federal apostille?
13. Can I submit the PDF version of my FBI background check?
14. Do I need a Spanish translation, and when does it happen?
15. Which apostille route applies to my document?
16. Common reasons an FBI apostille request is rejected
17. How do I keep the two clocks from colliding?
18. What does Federal Apostille do on an FBI check for Colombia?
19. What should I do next?
20. Frequently asked questions
21. Sources

On this page

1. Key takeaways
2. On this page
3. Who apostilles an FBI background check for Colombia?
4. What does the whole route actually look like?
5. Does Colombia accept apostilles, or does it need legalization?
6. Do I actually need an apostilled FBI check for my Colombian visa?
7. What exactly is the document the FBI gives you?
8. How do I get the FBI report in the first place?
9. I already live in Colombia — how does this work from there?
10. How long does a federal FBI apostille take?
11. Can I get same-day service on a federal apostille?
12. Can I submit the PDF version of my FBI background check?
13. Do I need a Spanish translation, and when does it happen?
14. Which apostille route applies to my document?
15. Common reasons an FBI apostille request is rejected
16. How do I keep the two clocks from colliding?
17. What does Federal Apostille do on an FBI check for Colombia?
18. What should I do next?
19. Frequently asked questions
20. Sources

On this page

1. Who apostilles an FBI background check for Colombia?
2. What does the whole route actually look like?
3. Does Colombia accept apostilles, or does it need legalization?
4. Do I actually need an apostilled FBI check for my Colombian visa?
5. What exactly is the document the FBI gives you?
6. How do I get the FBI report in the first place?
7. I already live in Colombia — how does this work from there?
8. How long does a federal FBI apostille take?
9. Can I get same-day service on a federal apostille?
10. Can I submit the PDF version of my FBI background check?
11. Do I need a Spanish translation, and when does it happen?
12. Which apostille route applies to my document?
13. Common reasons an FBI apostille request is rejected
14. How do I keep the two clocks from colliding?
15. What does Federal Apostille do on an FBI check for Colombia?
16. What should I do next?

Who apostilles an FBI background check for Colombia?

The U.S. Department of State’s Office of Authentications in Washington, D.C. is the only office that can apostille an FBI Identity History Summary. The FBI is a federal agency, so no state Secretary of State has jurisdiction over its records. Colombia is a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, so that single federal apostille is enough — no Colombian consular legalization afterwards.

That one paragraph resolves the mistake that causes the most damage to Colombia visa timelines: sending an FBI report to a state office. A state apostille on a federal record is void on its face. The document comes back stamped, the applicant assumes it is finished, and the error only surfaces weeks later when the Colombian visa reviewer looks at the certificate and sees the wrong competent authority. By then the FBI report may also be too old to use.

The rest of this guide walks the document from fingerprint capture to a Colombian visa file, including what to do if you are already living in Colombia, how the Spanish translation fits in, and the specific formatting failures that get FBI documents kicked back at the Department of State window.

What does the whole route actually look like?

An FBI apostille for Colombia is not one transaction. It is three separate agencies stacked in sequence, each with its own queue, plus a translation step at the end. Understanding where each stage begins and ends is the difference between a realistic plan and a missed appointment.

Notice what is missing from that table: a Colombian consulate stamp. Under the Apostille Convention, the apostille is the terminal certification. Anyone telling you the document also needs to be legalized at a Colombian consulate is describing the pre-Convention process.

Does Colombia accept apostilles, or does it need legalization?

Colombia is a contracting party to the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents. You can confirm this yourself on the HCCH status table for the Apostille Convention, which lists every contracting party and the operative dates. The United States has been a party since 1981.

Because both countries are in, the treaty does exactly what it was written to do: it replaces the old chain — notary, county, state, federal, foreign embassy — with one certificate issued by one designated authority. For a U.S. federal document heading to Colombia, that authority is the Department of State.

Colombia has also filed declarations with the HCCH about its own apostille format over the years, including changes to how the certificate is affixed and the move to a redesigned certificate. Those notifications, published on the HCCH page for Colombia’s declarations and competent authority, name the Coordination of Legalizations and Apostille within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Colombia’s competent authority. That office matters for documents flowing the other direction — Colombian birth certificates, Colombian police certificates, Colombian degrees going abroad. It has no role in certifying your U.S. FBI report.

The single most expensive error on this document is sending it to a state Secretary of State. Some state offices will issue an apostille on paperwork that looks official without checking whether the signer is a state official. The certificate you get back is not valid for a federal record, the Colombian reviewer will treat the document as uncertified, and you will have burned the shelf life of the FBI report on top of the wasted weeks.

Do I actually need an apostilled FBI check for my Colombian visa?

It depends on the visa category, and this is where generic advice does real harm. Colombia’s visa framework is organized into visitor (V), migrant (M), and resident (R) types, each with its own document list. Some categories request a criminal record certificate from the applicant’s country of nationality or last residence. Others do not ask for one at all.

Before you order fingerprints, open the requirement list for your exact category on the Cancillería’s official visa pages and read what it says about criminal records. If a police clearance is listed, the U.S. equivalent is the FBI Identity History Summary — not a county sheriff’s letter, not a state police record, and not a commercial “background check” from an employment screening company. Those documents are not federal public records and cannot receive a federal apostille.

Two other realities worth planning around:

• Requirements move. Colombia has revised its visa decrees more than once in recent years, and document lists shift with them. Check the current list, not a forum post from two years ago.
• The reviewing officer has the final word. A visa officer can request a document that is not on the published list, or ask for a fresher copy of one you already filed. That discretion is normal and is worth building a buffer for.

What exactly is the document the FBI gives you?

The FBI Identity History Summary — the document people casually call an “FBI background check” — is the record of information the FBI holds under your fingerprints: arrests, federal employment, naturalization, or military service records that were submitted with prints. If nothing is on file, the FBI issues a report saying so, and that “no record” response is a valid, apostillable document. Applicants frequently panic that a clean record means there is nothing to apostille. There is.

Two details about the document itself matter for the apostille:

The watermark, not a seal

The FBI authenticates fingerprint search results by applying an FBI watermark and the signature of a division official at the time the results are produced. The FBI’s Identity History Summary Checks FAQ is explicit that the raised or printed FBI seal is no longer placed on these results — the watermark and signature are what carry the authentication now. If you are working from an older guide that tells you to look for an embossed seal, that guide is out of date, and so is any processor that rejects your document for lacking one.

The FBI will not re-authenticate an old report

The same FBI FAQ states that requests to authenticate previously processed results will not be accepted. This is the rule that quietly kills reused documents. If you ran an FBI check eighteen months ago for a different purpose, you cannot send it back for a fresh signature and you cannot have a notary refresh it. The only remedy is a new request with new fingerprints. Plan your Colombia application around a report you order for this purpose.

How do I get the FBI report in the first place?

There are three practical routes, and the one you choose determines how long the upstream stage takes.

Route 1 — Direct electronic request to the FBI

You submit the request electronically to the FBI and have your fingerprints captured at a participating U.S. Post Office. The FBI notes that additional fees may apply for that print capture service. This route is straightforward if you are physically in the United States and near a participating location.

Route 2 — An FBI-approved Channeler

Channelers are private companies the FBI has approved to receive fingerprint submissions and return Identity History Summary results. They are generally the fastest option because they push electronic prints straight into the FBI queue and return the result to you digitally. Which Channeler you used changes the exact appearance and delivery format of your report, which is why we maintain document-specific guidance for the main ones — see the complete directory of FBI-approved Channelers, or go straight to the notes for apostille an FBI report issued through First Advantage Biometrics (PrintScan), reports issued through Telos ID / IDVetting, reports from National Credit Reporting / National Background Information, reports issued through VetConnex, or reports from TRP Associates.

Route 3 — Mailed fingerprint card

The FBI accepts a completed fingerprint card sent by mail. This is the route that makes the whole thing possible from Colombia. It is slower — mailed submissions are processed in the order they are received, and international post adds its own weeks — but it works, and it does not require you to fly to the United States for a print appointment.

I already live in Colombia — how does this work from there?

Fingerprint capture is the only stage that has to happen where your hands are. Everything after that is paperwork moving between agencies in the United States, and it does not care where you are sitting.

1. Get your prints taken on a fingerprint card. Any technician who can roll a clean set of prints onto a standard FBI fingerprint card will do — a private fingerprinting service in Bogotá or Medellín, or a police station willing to perform the service. Confirm the current card format and mailing instructions on the FBI’s Identity History Summary pages before the appointment, and check U.S. Embassy Bogotá for whether any consular fingerprinting service is currently offered, since U.S. posts have discontinued it in many countries.
2. Insist on print quality. Smudged, over-inked, or partially rolled prints are the number one cause of a rejected FBI submission, and a rejection from abroad costs you an entire international mail cycle. Ask the technician to roll a spare card. Extra cards cost you almost nothing and save you a month.
3. Submit the card to the FBI or a Channeler. Mail it with the required request information, or use an FBI-approved Channeler that accepts ink cards. Confirm the Channeler accepts hard-card submissions from outside the U.S. before you ship anything.
4. Have the report delivered to a U.S. handler. Rather than have the FBI result chase you back to Colombia and then ship it to Washington again, have it routed to whoever is handling the apostille in the United States. Every ocean crossing you remove is a week or more off the timeline.
5. Apostille in Washington, D.C. The document goes to the Office of Authentications with the correct request form and destination country named as Colombia.
6. Translate into Spanish after the apostille is on. The translator must see the apostille certificate, because that certificate is part of the document being submitted.
7. Ship the finished set to your Colombian address. Use a trackable courier. Colombian customs handles document envelopes routinely, but you want the tracking number.

The practical version of this: the only thing you personally do in Colombia is sit for fingerprints and, at the end, receive an envelope. The middle is administered remotely.

How long does a federal FBI apostille take?

Honest answer: the Department of State publishes its current processing time for authentications and changes it as volume shifts, so any fixed number printed on a service page has a shelf life measured in weeks. Check the posted figure on the Department of State’s Office of Authentications page on the day you plan to submit, and build your plan around that number rather than around a marketing promise.

What you can control is everything around the government’s own handling. Three of the four stages in this process are not government queue time at all:

• Document review before submission. Catching a formatting problem at your desk costs an hour. Catching it after the Department of State returns the packet costs the whole cycle over again.
• Delivery into and out of Washington. Mailing a packet in and waiting for it to mail back adds transit at both ends. Hand delivery and hand pickup removes that transit.
• Return shipping and scanning. A same-day scan of the finished apostille lets you start the Spanish translation while the physical document is still in the air.

That is the honest anatomy of a “fast” service. Nobody speeds up the Department of State. What a competent processor does is eliminate the dead time on either side of it and ensure the packet is right the first time.

Can I get same-day service on a federal apostille?

Be skeptical. The Department of State does not publish an expedited or same-day tier for federal document authentication the way some state offices do for state documents. If a website promises same-day federal turnaround, ask precisely what is being promised — same-day pickup of your file, same-day courier run, same-day scan of a finished document? Those are real services. A same-day government certification is not something a private company can guarantee.

The same skepticism applies to guarantee language generally. A guarantee is only meaningful if you know what starts the clock and what is excluded. FBI issuance time, international shipping, and government closures are outside any vendor’s control, and any honest guarantee says so.

Can I submit the PDF version of my FBI background check?

This is the most consequential formatting question on the page, and it deserves a careful answer rather than a confident one.

When you request an Identity History Summary electronically or through a Channeler, the FBI delivers the result as a PDF carrying the FBI watermark and the signature of a division official. That is a genuine authenticated document — it is not a scan of something else. Separately, the FBI can mail you a printed copy for an additional fee.

What varies is how the Department of State’s Office of Authentications treats a copy of the electronic file that you printed yourself. Rather than guess, confirm the current acceptance policy with the Office of Authentications before you commit. If you send us the file, we check the format against what the window is currently accepting before the packet goes anywhere — which is the cheapest possible place to catch a problem.

What if I only have the paper copy the FBI mailed?

A paper report mailed by the FBI is submitted as-is. Do not write on it, do not staple anything to it, do not remove staples the FBI applied, and do not hole-punch it for a binder. Any of those alterations can compromise the document. If your paper copy has been marked, folded into quarters for a year, or partially damaged, order a new report instead of hoping it passes.

What if my report is more than a few months old?

Order a new one. The FBI will not re-authenticate previously processed results, and Colombian reviewers commonly expect a recently issued criminal record certificate. Confirm the current expectation for your visa category on the Cancillería’s site — but as a planning rule, treat the report’s issue date as the start of a countdown that runs until your visa file is submitted, not until you order the apostille.

Do I need a Spanish translation, and when does it happen?

Colombia’s visa process is conducted in Spanish, and foreign-language supporting documents are expected to be accompanied by an official translation. Confirm two specifics with the Cancillería for your category before commissioning one: who is permitted to perform the translation (some Colombian authorities accept only translators officially certified in Colombia, others accept a certified translator from the country of origin) and whether the translation itself must carry any additional certification.

The sequencing rule, however, is not ambiguous:

1. Apostille first. The Department of State attaches its certificate to the FBI report.
2. Translate second. The translator works from the complete apostilled document, so the Spanish version includes the text of the apostille certificate itself, not just the FBI report.
3. Submit both together. The original English apostilled document and its Spanish translation travel as a set.

Translating before the apostille produces a Spanish document that does not reference the certification attached to it, and that mismatch is a routine cause of a file being returned for correction. It also wastes the translation fee, because the work has to be redone.

Which apostille route applies to my document?

Not everything a Colombian visa file asks for is federal. Use this to sort your documents before you send anything anywhere.

If your Colombia file also includes a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, or a university transcript, those are state or institutional documents and travel a different path — each needs its own apostille from the correct authority. They cannot be bundled with the FBI report into one federal submission.

Common reasons an FBI apostille request is rejected

Rejections are rarely dramatic. They are almost always one of these, and every one of them is preventable at the desk before submission.

How do I keep the two clocks from colliding?

Two independent countdowns run against you on this document, and they run in opposite directions.

Clock one is the age of the FBI report. It starts the moment the FBI issues it and it never pauses — not while the report sits in the Department of State queue, not while it is being translated, not while you assemble the rest of your file.

Clock two is your visa deadline — the appointment, the entry date, the expiry of your current status in Colombia.

Ordering the FBI check too early means it may be considered stale by submission day. Ordering it too late means the apostille and translation stages will not finish in time. The way to manage this is to work backwards: fix your submission date, subtract translation turnaround, subtract shipping, subtract the Department of State’s currently posted processing time, subtract the FBI’s issuance time for your chosen route, and order the fingerprints on the date that arithmetic gives you. Then add a buffer, because the government’s posted times are estimates and international mail is not a precision instrument.

If both your FBI check and other documents such as a birth certificate need apostilles, start them all in the same week. They travel through different offices at different speeds, and the slowest one sets your real date.

What does Federal Apostille do on an FBI check for Colombia?

Our price is $120 per apostille, all-inclusive — no separate government-fee surcharge and no per-page add-ons. The filing fees charged by the agencies involved are already covered by that flat price, which is why you will not find a fee breakdown on this page: there is nothing else for you to pay.

What that covers on this specific document:

• Format review before submission. We look at your file the way the Office of Authentications window looks at it — watermark, signature, issue date, alterations, name match — and tell you before it moves if something will cause a problem.
• Correct authority, correct form, correct destination. Colombia named on the request, submitted to the federal office rather than a state one.
• Hand delivery and hand pickup in Washington, D.C. Removing the mail-in and mail-back legs from a multi-stage process is where the recoverable time actually is.
• Same-day scan on pickup. You get a digital copy of the finished apostille the day it is collected, so your translator can begin while the original is in transit.
• Trackable shipping to a U.S. or Colombian address. Including to a residential address in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, or anywhere else you are already living.

Requirements vary by visa category and the Colombian authority reviewing your file has the final say on what it accepts — our job is to make sure the certification itself is correct, current, and issued by the office that actually has jurisdiction.

What should I do next?

Do these three things today, in this order, before you spend a dollar:

1. Confirm your visa category’s document list. Open the Cancillería’s visa pages, find your exact category, and confirm whether a criminal record certificate is required and whether any validity window is specified.
2. Check the current federal processing time. Read the posted authentication processing time on travel.state.gov the same day you plan your timeline, then work backwards from your submission deadline.
3. Get your FBI report in hand — or send us what you already have. If you already hold a report, send us the file and we will confirm the format, the authentication marks, and the issue date before anything is submitted. If you do not have one yet, use an FBI-approved Channeler and route the result to us directly.

When your report is ready, start an order and send the document straight to us — we will review it, take it to the Office of Authentications in Washington, and get the apostilled original back to you with a scan the day it is collected.