Apostille vs. Embassy legalisation for Lithuania
Document legalisation for Lithuania is not the process a Cardiff sender needs to run. Lithuania takes the shorter apostille route instead, so a single certificate from the Legalisation Office at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office is enough on its own. There is no Lithuanian embassy stage to add, and no separate consular attestation sits between the apostille and the document being usable in Lithuania once it lands there.
That single-certificate shape is what makes an apostille issued in Cardiff for use in Lithuania simpler than a legalisation chain built for a country outside the Hague Convention. One stamp, applied once in the United Kingdom, is the whole of the certification a Lithuanian registry or ministry desk asks a foreign paper to carry before it will act on it.
Lithuania's Hague status & what it means
Lithuania has belonged to the Hague Apostille Convention since 1997. That membership is exactly why the apostille route applies to this corridor: both the United Kingdom and Lithuania recognise the same single-page certificate, issued by each country's own competent authority, without either side needing to route the paperwork through an embassy counter first.
The European Union's own exemption under Regulation 2016/1191 does not cover this route, so an apostille from United Kingdom to Lithuania is still required even though Lithuania sits inside the EU. A reader expecting EU membership to remove the step should plan for the apostille anyway, because it stays part of the process for this particular destination regardless of the bloc both countries belong to.
The Cardiff → Lithuania route step by step
The route starts with the document itself. A civil record such as a birth, marriage or death certificate can be replaced with a fresh certified copy from Cardiff Register Office at City Hall, Cathays Park, Cardiff CF10 3ND, so the household's only original never has to leave the house. A degree certificate or a company record goes forward as it was issued, with no register-office step needed first.
From there the paperwork goes to the FCDO Legalisation Office, PO Box 6255, Milton Keynes MK10 1XX. That office works by post for jurisdictions across the United Kingdom; there is no counter in Cardiff to visit and no branch standing in for it locally. The apostille is attached in Milton Keynes and the whole packet comes back by mail, ready to be handed to a Lithuanian office.
Cost & timing for this route
Knowing what you need for an apostille for Lithuania starts with the fee: £45 per document on the standard postal service, or £40 per document on the next-working-day service, which is limited to registered businesses. Both figures cover the apostille itself, not any translation charge or courier cost that a sender might add on top for a faster physical delivery.
Standard turnaround for this corridor runs up to 25 working days, plus postage time on both legs of the journey. The next-working-day option turns the same certificate around far faster, but only for a registered business sending the paperwork; someone applying as an individual should build their plans around the slower, standard window instead of the express one.
Destination-specific requirements
Once the apostille from United Kingdom to Lithuania is attached, the certificate travels with the original document as one packet. A Lithuanian registry, university admissions desk or employer reviewing the paperwork checks that packet on arrival, matching its reference details against the document it sits fixed to, before filing or acting on either page.
Because Lithuania has been in the Hague Convention for decades, no further Lithuanian government stamp gets layered on top of the UK apostille for civil, academic or corporate paperwork of this kind. The certificate that leaves Milton Keynes is the last certification step a Cardiff-issued document needs before a Lithuanian office can put it to use.