Complete updated guide with the process to apostille or legalize an official translation before the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2025.
In this brief guide we tell you what the process is to apostille an official translation in Colombia in 2025 in five easy steps.
Average processing time: 30 mins.
1. Go to the notary
Once you have the official printed translation (with seal and ink signature of the official translator) in your hands, you must go to the notary where the signature of the official translator who translated your document(s) is registered ( s).
If your translations were done by Traductores.co, you can go to any of the following notaries in Bogotá (before doing so, remember to ask our team to send your physical translations to your home, as this is what the notary will require):
NOTARY 33 – Carrera 7 No 155 C – 30 – NORTH POINT BUILDING TOWER E
NOTARY 69 – Av. Calle 134 No. 7 B – 83. Ed. El Bosque.
NOTARY 5 – Cra. 15 A # 120-63
NOTARY 44 – Race 15 # 96 07
NOTARY 20 – 74th Street No. 11-37
NOTARY 19 – Calle 63 N° 9A-83 – CC Lourdes – 2nd Floor.
NOTARY 29 – Cra. 13 # 33-44
NOTARY 36 – Carrera 7 # 12B-27 Center – Commercial Passage – 2nd Floor.
NOTARY 14 – 53rd Street No. 21-20 (Note: Please inform us if you are going to use this notary's office as they may request special additional requirements.
2. request authentication
The procedure that you must carry out is known as “Acknowledgment or authentication of registered signature“. Remember to inform the notary official that it is for apostille or legalization process on the Foreign Ministry website. Depending on the notary office, The authentication process for apostille/legalization has an average total price of COP$36,000 per document.
3. Check your authentications
The notary must give you each official translation with a digital signature (generally it is a sticker attached to each translation) and uploaded to the application Supernotariat, which will generate a unique alphanumeric code that you should receive in the email that you have informed the notarial officer. The arrival of this email may take from a few minutes to several hours, depending on the availability of Supernotariado's computer systems.
When you receive the email with the process approval data and the unique alphanumeric code, you must validate that they are correct and that they correspond to your document(s). If there is any error or inconsistency in the information, you must request its correction from the notary official, since the inconsistency of this data will result in the subsequent rejection of your apostille or legalization request. You can verify your document(s) by entering the code you received on the registration page. Supernotariat apostille filing.
4. Go to the Foreign Ministry website
Once you have completed the notarial process, you must visit the website of the Colombian Foreign Ministry. Look for the procedures and services option, select “Apostille and Online Legalization” (you can access directly by doing click here). In the first box, choose the option “Electronic Documents with digital signature” and in the following box: “Documents signed in Colombian Notaries”. The next step will be to enter your email address, select the destination country for your official translations and enter the alphanumeric code provided by the notary.
5. Pay the apostille/legalization
After you enter the code, the platforms of the Supernotariado and the Chancellery will exchange the information, you will be able to verify that the details of the notarial document are correct, and then proceed with the payment using some of the options offered by the Chancellery: PSE, bank deposit, etc.
That's all, Once you pay, the apostilled/legalized document will arrive to your email.
Do you have to authenticate and apostill all official translations?
The short answer is no. Translations signed and stamped by official Colombian translators are valid enough for most procedures. The authentication process is only necessary if you must present an apostille of the official translation. Remember that the authentication process is not a requirement in all cases, as we explain below:
- Translations into Spanish to be presented in Colombia: The authentication process was eliminated as of December 1, 2020 for any translation that is going to be used in Colombian territory: “Official translations produced in Colombia, which have legal effects in this country, are not authenticated, since the signature of the official translator is already valid in the national territory.” (see determination of the Colombian Foreign Ministry).
- Translations into a foreign language to be submitted outside of Colombia: The most common thing is that the entity that will receive the translation asks you to apostille the original documents (in Spanish); if so, you must obtain said apostille here before requesting its official translation and ask the official translator to leave a note of the serial code and date of issuance of the apostille in the official translation. In other words, in this case, it is not necessary to apostille the translation (but only the original document) and therefore, there is no need to process notarial authentication (since this is only a prerequisite to process the apostille of the translation and does not have no international validity), and it would be a formality and an additional expense that we do not recommend that you incur.
If you already have your documents, we invite you to request a quote.
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