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Spain’s minimum wage rose to 1,221 euros a month for 2026, paid in 14 instalments, or 17,094 euros a year for a full-time employee. That is a 3.1 percent increase on 2025. It applies in every region and sector, and part-time staff receive it pro rata.
The SMI is only the legal floor. Most roles are covered by a collective agreement (convenio colectivo) with its own, usually higher, minimum rates. Employers also pay roughly 30 to 32 percent in social security on top of gross salary. Quote salaries as an annual figure to avoid confusion between 12 and 14 payments, and budget from the total cost of employment rather than the SMI alone.
The average salary in Spain depends heavily on which figure you use. INE puts the mean at around 28,050 euros a year and the median at roughly 23,350 euros. Location matters too: average pay in the Basque Country is about 11,000 euros a year higher than in Extremadura. Benchmark typical roles against the median, and check regional figures when deciding where to hire.
The minimum wage in Spain for 2026 is €1,221 gross a month, paid in 14 instalments, or €17,094 a year for full-time work. The average salary is considerably higher, at around €28,050 gross a year according to Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE).
For employers, neither figure tells the full story. Collective agreements often set higher pay floors, salaries are usually split across 14 payments, and social security adds a significant cost on top. This guide explains what you need to know to budget a hire in Spain accurately.
Spain’s statutory minimum wage is called the salario mínimo interprofesional (SMI). Under Article 27 of the Workers’ Statute (Estatuto de los Trabajadores), the government sets it every year by Royal Decree, after consulting the main trade unions and employer organisations.
The SMI is a single national figure. It applies in every autonomous community and every sector, regardless of the employee’s age, sex or type of contract. Part-time employees are entitled to it in proportion to the hours they work.
Select a row to see what each figure means.
Source: BOE, Real Decreto 126/2026, de 18 de febrero and Real Decreto 87/2025. 12-payment figures and changes calculated by ThisWorks.
One point that often catches foreign employers out: compliance is judged on annual pay. The SMI is compared against the employee’s total gross salary across the year, including salary supplements, rather than against the base salary line on a single payslip. It is a helpful safeguard, but it also means an employer cannot simply rely on the base salary figure in the contract to prove compliance.
On the tax side, the government has kept the tax obligation for SMI earners very low (close to 1%-2%). Social security contributions still apply in full.
Spain is one of the few European countries where a salary is, by default, paid in 14 instalments. Article 31 of the Workers’ Statute gives every employee a right to two pagas extraordinarias (extra payments) each year: one around Christmas and a second on the date set by the applicable collective agreement, typically in June or July.
Where the collective agreement allows it, the two extra payments can be spread across the year instead, giving 12 larger monthly payments. The annual salary is exactly the same either way; only the cash flow changes.
Summer extra payment date set by the collective agreement (usually June or July). Source: BOE, Real Decreto 126/2026, de 18 de febrero, por el que se fija el salario mínimo interprofesional para 2026; Estatuto de los Trabajadores (Real Decreto Legislativo 2/2015), Art. 31. 12-payment amounts calculated by ThisWorks.
“Most of the confusion we see around Spanish offers comes down to arithmetic rather than generosity. A hiring manager divides the annual package by twelve, the candidate divides it by fourteen, and suddenly both think the other has moved the goalposts. Our advice is to write every offer as an annual gross figure first and settle the payment model second. It keeps negotiations clean and makes it much easier to compare a Madrid hire with someone in Amsterdam or Berlin.”
—Tarun Arora, Payroll Specialist at ThisWorks
Spain does not publish a general hourly minimum wage for ordinary employees. If you need an hourly equivalent, divide the annual SMI by the annual working hours that apply to the role. At the statutory maximum of 40 hours a week (about 1,826 hours a year), the 2026 SMI works out at roughly €9.36 per hour. Many collective agreements set fewer annual hours, which pushes the effective hourly rate higher.
The SMI decree does set dedicated rates for two groups: temporary and seasonal workers (eventuales y temporeros) whose work for the same company lasts no more than 120 days, and domestic workers (empleados de hogar) paid by the hour.
Source: BOE, Real Decreto 126/2026, de 18 de febrero (provisions on eventuales, temporeros and empleados de hogar); Estatuto de los Trabajadores, Art. 34 (working time).
Few European minimum wages have moved as quickly as Spain’s. The SMI has risen by around 66% since 2018, driven by a 22.3% jump in 2019 and steady increases since. The government’s stated benchmark is to keep the SMI at around 60% of the average net salary, and each annual rise is informed by a committee of independent experts convened by the Ministry of Labour.
€ gross per month (14 payments)
Source: annual SMI Royal Decrees published in the BOE.
Here is the part many salary guides skip. In Spain, the SMI is the legal floor of last resort, but the figure that actually governs most salaries is set by a convenio colectivo, a collective agreement negotiated between unions and employers. Agreements can be national, regional, provincial or company-specific, and the Ministry of Labour’s statistics show they cover the large majority (over 80%) of employees.
Each agreement includes wage tables (tablas salariales) with minimum pay by professional group, and these are frequently well above the SMI for skilled or office-based roles. Convenios also typically regulate:
Which agreement applies depends on the company’s main activity and the location of the workplace. Agreements are published in the BOE (national), in regional and provincial official bulletins, and in the Ministry of Labour’s REGCON register. Employees placed through a temporary work agency (Empresa de Trabajo Temporal) are entitled to the same pay as the user company’s own staff under that company’s agreement
“In practice, the SMI almost never decides what we pay someone in Spain. The collective agreement does. Before the first payroll run we confirm which convenio applies, which professional group the role belongs to and how that agreement handles extra payments and seniority. It’s entirely possible to pay above the national minimum wage and still fall short of the sector table, and that tends to surface months later as a back-pay claim nobody budgeted for.”
— Janneke Vossen, Manager Backoffice & Payroll at ThisWorks
Our Spanish specialists can get your first employee onboarded in just a few working days — no entity required.
The most comprehensive official measure of pay in Spain is INE’s Encuesta Anual de Estructura Salarial (Annual Wage Structure Survey). It is published each summer with roughly a two-year lag, so the latest full dataset available in 2026 covers 2023. It includes both full-time and part-time employees, which is why its averages sit below the figures some private salary sites quote for full-time roles only.
Source: INE — Encuesta Anual de Estructura Salarial, reference year 2023
On these figures, women earned around 15.8% less than men on average. The raw gap reflects differences in hours, sectors and seniority as well as pay for comparable work, which is why INE also publishes hourly and adjusted breakdowns.
Spain’s pay distribution is skewed to the right: a relatively small group of high earners in finance, energy and senior management pulls the average upwards. As a result, most employees earn less than the “average salary in Spain”, and the single most common salary is closer to the SMI than to the mean.
For benchmarking, the median is usually the more realistic reference point for a typical role. It also puts the minimum wage in context: the 2026 SMI is equivalent to around 61% of the latest average salary and 73% of the median, a relatively high ratio by European standards.
Where a role is based makes a real difference. INE’s regional data shows a gap of more than €11,000 a year between the highest and lowest-paying autonomous communities. The Basque Country, Madrid, Navarre and Catalonia lead, reflecting their concentration of industry, financial services, corporate headquarters and technology employers. Extremadura, the Canary Islands and Andalusia sit at the lower end, where tourism, agriculture and services weigh more heavily.
Source: INE — Encuesta Anual de Estructura Salarial, results by autonomous community, reference year 2023 (rounded).
INE does not publish city-level salary tables in this survey, so figures for Madrid city, Barcelona, Valencia or Málaga should be read through their regional data. For employers, the regional spread is worth factoring into location decisions: a role based in Valencia or Málaga can offer a competitive local package at a noticeably lower cost than the same role in Madrid or Bilbao. Our Spain country guide covers the wider hiring landscape by region.
Industry is one of the strongest predictors of pay in Spain. Energy supply, financial services and information and communication consistently top INE’s rankings, while hospitality sits at the bottom, partly because of the high share of seasonal and part-time work in the sector.
Within each sector, the applicable collective agreement sets the minimum rate for every professional group, so two companies in different sectors can have very different floors for similar job titles.
Context for employers: Highest-paying sector, small and specialised workforce
Context for employers: Concentrated in Madrid and Barcelona
Context for employers: Core sector for tech and software hires
Context for employers: Consulting, engineering, legal and research roles
Context for employers: Strong in the Basque Country, Navarre and Catalonia
Context for employers: Wide spread between store and head-office roles
Context for employers: High share of part-time contracts
Context for employers: Lowest average, strongly seasonal
Source: INE — Encuesta Anual de Estructura Salarial, results by CNAE-2009 activity section, reference year 2023 (rounded).
A Spanish payslip (nómina) starts from gross salary (salario bruto) and arrives at take-home pay (salario neto) after two main deductions, both withheld by the employer each month.
Source: Agencia Tributaria — IRPF general scales. Regional scales differ; rates shown assume a regional scale equal to the state scale.
What does that mean in practice? As an illustration for a single employee with no children on an indefinite contract:
These are approximations. For an exact figure, the Agencia Tributaria’s official withholding simulator calculates the IRPF rate from personal circumstances.
Relocating a senior hire? Spain’s special tax regime for inbound workers, widely known as the “Beckham Law”, allows eligible employees who have not been tax resident in Spain in the previous five years to pay a flat 24% on Spanish employment income up to €600,000 for up to six years. It can make a significant difference to net pay and is worth raising early in the offer process. Eligibility conditions are set out by the Agencia Tributaria.
“Newcomers are usually pleasantly surprised by how small their own social security deduction is in Spain compared with other European countries. The number that moves around is IRPF, because the withholding rate is personal and depends on where you live and your family situation. Two colleagues on identical salaries can see different net pay, so we always encourage new starters to check their withholding in their first month instead of waiting for the annual tax return to settle it.”
— Janneke Vossen, Manager Backoffice & Payroll at ThisWorks
This is where the real cost of a Spanish hire becomes clear. Employers pay the bulk of social security, adding around 30–32% to gross salary depending on contract type and the risk category of the work. Contributions are calculated on a monthly contribution base, which sits between a minimum linked to the SMI (€1,424.50 for most professional groups) and a maximum of €5,101.20 per month in 2026.
Two further points matter for higher earners:
Putting it together, here is what two typical hires cost per year on an indefinite contract in an office-based role.
An employee on the 2026 SMI earns €17,094 gross, and employer social security of around 32.15% adds €5,496, for a total cost of €22,590. For an employee on the national average salary of €28,050, employer contributions add €9,018, bringing the total to €37,068.
A full budget should also account for occupational health and safety services (prevención de riesgos laborales), any benefits required by the collective agreement, and the cost of ending an employment relationship. Statutory severance for an unfair dismissal on an indefinite contract is 33 days’ salary per year of service, capped at 24 months’ pay, while an objective dismissal carries 20 days per year, capped at 12 months (Workers’ Statute, Arts. 53 and 56).
“When clients line Spain up against their other markets, we steer the conversation away from gross salary and towards total cost of employment. Spain’s employer contributions are among the higher ones we manage, but the contribution cap changes the picture for senior people. The on-cost on a junior role and on an engineering lead can look quite different in percentage terms, and that matters when you’re deciding where to build a team.”
— Tarun Arora, Payroll Specialist at ThisWorks
Running this correctly each month involves registering as an employer with the Seguridad Social, affiliating every employee, submitting monthly contributions through the RED System and filing IRPF withholding returns with the Agencia Tributaria. ThisWorks handles all of this through its Employer of Record service in Spain or, for companies with their own Spanish entity, through payroll services.
If you plan to hire from outside the EU, the SMI and the average salary take on a second role: several Spanish immigration routes use them as salary benchmarks. That means every new SMI decree or INE release can move the threshold a candidate needs to meet. Spain’s updated immigration regulation, Real Decreto 1155/2024, has applied since 20 May 2025.
Salary benchmarkAt least 1.4 × INE's average annual gross earnings per worker. A 0.8 reduction applies to occupations in CNO-11 major groups 1 and 2 on the hard-to-fill occupations list, and to applicants who obtained their qualification within the last three years.
Salary benchmarkSalary consistent with a highly qualified role, assessed by the Unidad de Grandes Empresas y Colectivos Estratégicos (UGE-CE)
Salary benchmarkAt least 200% of the monthly SMI
Salary benchmarkAt least the applicable collective agreement rate, and never below the SMI
Source: Ministerio de Inclusión, Seguridad Social y Migraciones; Ley 14/2013 and Orden PJC/44/2026, Digital Nomad Visa
Immigration requirements change frequently, and salary is only one part of each application. Our work permits team can assess which route fits your candidate and manage the process alongside employment.
For companies hiring across Europe, Spain combines moderate average salaries with relatively high employer contributions and a pay structure that is quite different from its neighbours. The comparison below is a directional overview; each country guide carries the full local detail.
Spain’s minimum wage for 2026 is €1,221 a month, paid in 14 instalments. Employer social costs are high, at around 30–32% on top of salary. What sets Spain apart is that salaries are paid in 14 instalments, and collective agreements set most pay floors.
In Germany, the minimum wage is €13.90 an hour and employer social costs are substantial, at around 20–22%. Tax classes, collective bargaining and a separate floor for agency work shape pay. The Netherlands sets its minimum wage at €14.99 an hour, with moderate to substantial employer costs, a statutory holiday allowance on top of salary and a tax facility for eligible incoming staff. In the United Kingdom, the minimum wage is £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over. Employer costs are comparatively lighter, with age-banded minimum rates and workplace pension auto-enrolment.
The lesson for cross-border hiring is the same in every market: a headline salary tells you only part of the story. How pay is split across the year, what sits on top in employer costs and which local agreements apply can change the total cost considerably.
Between the SMI, sector wage tables, 14 payments, regional income tax and a multi-layered contribution system, Spanish payroll leaves little room for error. ThisWorks offers two ways to handle it:
Source: ThisWorks; minimum share capital for an S.L. per Ley 18/2022 ("Crea y Crece"), BOE.
The 2026 minimum wage (SMI) is €1,221 gross per month in 14 payments, or €17,094 a year for full-time work. That is a 3.1% increase on 2025’s €1,184 per month, set by Royal Decree and published in the BOE.
By default it is paid in 14 instalments: 12 monthly payments plus two extra payments, usually in summer and December. Where the collective agreement allows, the extras can be spread over 12 months, giving €1,424.50 per month. The annual total is the same.
Gross salary (bruto) is pay before deductions. Net salary (neto) is what the employee receives after IRPF income tax and employee social security of around 6.5%. On the average salary, net pay is roughly 78% of gross for a single employee.
Employers pay social security of roughly 30–32% of gross salary, covering pensions, unemployment, training, the wage guarantee fund, the MEI and accident insurance.
Yes. Part-time employees receive the SMI in proportion to their hours. Temporary and seasonal workers employed for up to 120 days by the same company receive a daily minimum that includes their share of extra payments and holidays.
Yes, and it usually does. Collective agreements set minimum salaries by professional group, often well above the SMI. Employers must pay whichever is higher, so identifying the correct agreement is an essential first step.
An EOR such as ThisWorks employs your team member on your behalf, applies the correct collective agreement, runs payroll including extra payments, withholds IRPF and social security, and updates pay whenever the SMI or agreement rates change, all without you needing a Spanish entity.
Hiring internationally doesn’t have to mean setting up a local entity, building payroll infrastructure or navigating complex employment legislation on your own. Whether you are hiring your first remote employee or expanding an international team, our specialists can support a smooth, compliant onboarding process in just a few days.
