The two-stop route from London
A London apostille for Czech Republic starts with a question about the paper itself, not the destination:
- A civil record — birth, marriage or death — can be replaced by a fresh certified copy from Westminster Register Office, 317 Harrow Road, London W9 3RJ, rather than posting away the only original a family holds.
- Anything else — a degree, a company document, a power of attorney — skips that stage and goes straight onward.
That single stop is the FCDO Legalisation Office. It is the sole UK authority that attaches an apostille, and it works entirely through the post — there is no counter anywhere, London included, where a document can be handed over in person. Staff there check the signature or seal, attach the certificate, and return the whole bundle by mail, ready to travel onward without a second stop of any kind anywhere.
Why one certificate is the end of it
The Czech Republic has recognised the Hague Convention since 1999; the United Kingdom joined far earlier, in 1965. Both countries have worked to the same rulebook for a long stretch of time, which is why a receiving desk in the Czech Republic is trained to treat a UK apostille as complete proof on its own, without escalating the question to anyone else.
Nothing about that changes with the type of paper involved. An apostille issued in London for use in Czech Republic looks identical whether it is stapled to a birth certificate or a company filing; the certificate authenticates a signature and a seal, and that is the whole of its job.
What it costs and how long it takes
£45 covers the standard postal tier per document; £40 covers the next working day tier, but only for a registered business, not an individual posting a single certificate. Neither figure moves because the destination is the Czech Republic specifically — the same fee applies no matter which Hague country the paper is travelling to, and no extra charge appears once it arrives.
The standard tier runs up to 25 working days, and that already accounts for the post each way rather than only the days spent at the Legalisation Office itself. A sender working back from a deadline in Prague or anywhere else in the country should count from the day the envelope goes in the post, not from whenever the certificate actually gets attached.
What the Czech Republic expects beyond the stamp
For the great majority of personal, academic and business papers, the Czech Republic asks for nothing on top of the apostille; the certificate answers the one question a receiving office actually has, which is whether the UK signature or seal on the page is genuine.
A Czech translation is a separate matter, decided by the specific use rather than by this certification step. The apostille has nothing to say about which language the document is written in; where a translation is needed, it gets arranged and paid for as its own errand, alongside the apostille rather than in place of it, and planned on its own timeline.
The longer route this page skips
Somewhere outside the Hague Convention, a UK document heading abroad would need a different, slower chain: a consulate for that country, based in London, adding its own stamp on top of or in place of an apostille before its home country would accept the paper.
A document legalisation for Czech Republic request never needs that detour, because the Czech Republic's own Hague membership makes the apostille sufficient by itself. One certificate from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office is where the process starts and also where it ends, with no second signature and no second fee to plan around.