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Are you ready to grow your business?
The HSM route is fast and employer-friendly — but it’s employer-led, not candidate-led. The kennismigrant permit skips the separate work permit (TWV), the labour market test, and any diploma requirement. In exchange, the burden sits with you: a candidate can’t apply until a recognised sponsor (or an EOR acting as one) is in place to file on their behalf.
Salary is the whole test, and it’s a moving target. With no diploma check, the IND uses gross monthly pay to decide whether a role is “highly skilled” — €5,942 (30+), €4,357 (under 30), or €3,122 (recent graduates) for 2026. The 8% holiday allowance and the 30% ruling don’t count toward it, and the thresholds are re-indexed every January.
Sponsorship is an ongoing compliance duty, not a one-off approval. Recognised sponsors must keep salaries above the (rising) threshold for the full permit, report relevant changes to the IND within four weeks, and retain employment records for seven years. Get it wrong and you face fines of up to €20,000 or loss of sponsor status — putting every worker you sponsor at risk.
You have found a perfect candidate for a Dutch role and then discovered they are not an EU national. Suddenly you are facing a wall of IND terminology, sponsorship, obligations and statutory threshold, none of which existed on the job description. For most employers, this is the moment the hire stalls.
It does not need to. The Highly Skilled Migrant permit – the kennismigrant route (commonly called the HSM visa) is the fastest and most employer-friendly way to bring non-EU talent into the Netherlands. There is no separate work permit, no labour market test and the whole process is driven by the employer rather than the individual.
This guide is written for HR teams and business owners. It covers who qualifies, the 2026 salary thresholds, how sponsorship actually works, and how an Employer of Record in the Netherlands can run the entire process on your behalf.
The HSM visa (in Dutch, kennismigrant, or “knowledge migrant”) is a single permit that covers both residence and work. One approval from the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) lets a foreign national live in the Netherlands and work for their sponsoring employer. You don’t file separately for the right to live there and the right to work.
It’s built for people from outside the EU, EEA and Switzerland who are being hired into specialist, senior or knowledge-heavy roles. Think engineers, researchers, product leads and technical specialists, the kind of profiles Dutch scaleups and international firms are all fighting over.
Employers like it for two reasons: speed and a lack of hoops. There’s no separate work permit (the TWV), and the route skips the labour market test (the arbeidsmarkttoets), which is the process that would otherwise make you prove no EU candidate could do the job. There’s also no diploma requirement. Instead, the IND leans on salary and seniority as its shorthand for “highly skilled”. Meet the threshold in a role that genuinely looks specialist, and you’re in.
Salary is the thing everything hinges on. Because there’s no diploma check in most cases, the IND uses gross monthly pay to decide whether a role counts as highly skilled. The numbers change every January.
| Category | Gross monthly salary (excl. 8% holiday pay) | Annual equivalent (incl. 8% holiday pay) |
|---|---|---|
| Age 30 and over | €5,942 | ~€77,000 |
| Under 30 | €4,357 | ~€56,500 |
| Recent graduate(orientation year route) | €3,122 | ~€40,500 |
A quick note on the maths: the threshold the IND checks is the monthly figure in the middle column, which sits before holiday pay. The annual figure is that monthly amount times 12, plus the 8% holiday allowance on top (so €5,942 × 12 × 1.08 ≈ €77,000). It’s there to show the true yearly gross, which is why it’s higher than a straight monthly × 12. Check the current numbers against the IND income requirements page before you rely on them, since they’re re-indexed each January.
Three things catch employers out more than anything else.
First, holiday allowance doesn’t count. The Dutch 8% holiday allowance (vakantiegeld) sits on top of the threshold, so the gross monthly figure has to be met before you add it in.
Second, the 30% ruling won’t get you under the line. It’s a tax benefit, not an immigration one. You have to meet the salary requirement on the full base gross salary first, and the ruling can’t be used to bring pay below the IND minimum.
Third, it’s the application date that matters, not the day the contract was signed. If a January uplift lands in between, the newer figure is the one that applies.
There are two sides to this, the employee and the employer.
On the employee side, they need a valid passport, a clean bill in terms of public order and national security, and a willingness to take a TB test on arrival unless their nationality exempts them. The role and salary also have to meet the HSM criteria above.
On the employer side, you either need to be a recognized sponsor (erkend referent) with the IND, or you use an EOR or umbrella company that already holds that status.
There’s no degree requirement, but the role does have to look the part. If the job title and the actual duties don’t match a highly skilled classification, the IND can and will ask questions.
The roles that typically go through this route are software and platform engineers, data specialists and analysts, product managers, scaleup leadership hires, technical researchers and healthcare professionals. Those are the profiles we see most often at ThisWorks: hard-to-fill specialist positions where the best candidate just happens to live outside the EU.
Healthcare is a special case worth calling out. The HSM permit gives someone the right to live and work in the Netherlands, but it doesn’t give them the right to practise a regulated medical profession. For that, doctors, nurses, dentists, physiotherapists and similar roles need separate professional registration in the BIG register (Beroepen in de Individuele Gezondheidszorg).
For candidates trained outside the EU that usually means getting their foreign diploma formally recognised, sitting a skills assessment, and meeting a Dutch-language requirement before they can register. These steps run alongside the immigration process, not as part of it, and they can take considerably longer than the visa itself. So if you’re hiring into a regulated clinical role, plan for the BIG timeline as a separate workstream and check the current requirements with the BIG register early. For non-clinical healthcare roles (say a data scientist at a hospital), this doesn’t apply and the standard HSM route is enough.
Our Netherlands specialists can get your first employee onboarded in just a few working days — no Dutch entity required.
You can’t sponsor an HSM permit as an ordinary employer. The sponsor has to be recognised by the IND, and there are two ways to get there.
| Option 1: Become your own recognised sponsor | Option 2: Use an Employer of Record (EOR) | |
|---|---|---|
| How it works | You apply to the IND for erkend referent (recognised sponsor) status and file HSM applications in-house. | The EOR becomes the legal employer and recognised sponsor, and runs the full IND application from start to finish. |
| What you need | A Dutch entity, KvK (Chamber of Commerce) registration, and sound finances. | Nothing of your own — no Dutch entity and no sponsor status. The EOR already holds it. |
| Set-up cost (IND) | €2,539 (under 50 employees) / €5,080 (50+ employees) for sponsor status. | No sponsor-status fee — covered within the EOR service. |
| Timeline to sponsor | ~2–3 months to get status before you can apply for anyone. | Up to ~4 weeks to HSM approval, with no separate wait for sponsor status. |
| Ongoing compliance | Sits with you: salary-threshold monitoring, IND reporting, and record-keeping for the full permit. | Sits with the EOR as legal employer — who also runs payroll, contracts, tax and social contributions. |
| Best for | Companies already established in the Netherlands that hire HSM workers regularly. | First or occasional hires, or companies with no Dutch entity that want to skip the setup. |
For a company making its first international hire, or its first handful, the EOR route takes almost all of the setup off the table. ThisWorks works as an EOR and recognised sponsor in the Netherlands, so we can run the sponsorship and employment side for you without you standing up any local infrastructure.
The permit lasts as long as the employment contract, up to a maximum of five years, and it’s renewable.
Recognised-sponsor status isn’t a one-off. It comes with duties you have to keep up for as long as the permit runs.
You have to tell the IND within four weeks if anything relevant changes: the employment ends, the salary drops below the threshold, or the employee leaves the Netherlands. You need to keep employment records (the contract, payslips, contact details) for seven years. From 2026 there’s a newer requirement to hold on to bank statements showing the salary was actually paid. And you have to keep the salary above the applicable threshold for the whole permit period, not just on day one.
None of this is box-ticking. Get it wrong and you’re looking at fines of up to €20,000, or losing your recognized sponsor status altogether, which would put every HSM worker you sponsor at risk.
“The one that catches people out isn’t the paperwork at the start, it’s the salary check that never really stops. Employers hit the threshold on day one, breathe out, and move on. But the thresholds go up every January, so someone who was comfortably above the line can slip under it without ever getting a pay cut, just because the number moved. If you’re not watching for that each year, you can be non-compliant without realising it”
—Juul Seuren, HR Consultant, ThisWorks
The permit is genuinely appealing to candidates, which makes it a recruiting advantage as much as an admin one.
It’s a single permit to live and work in the Netherlands under one approval, and it lets the holder travel around the Schengen area. A partner or spouse can join and get full, unrestricted work rights, with no separate permit and no salary threshold of their own. Children can come as dependents. There’s 30% ruling eligibility where the employee is recruited from abroad and lived more than 150 km from the Dutch border for at least 16 of the 24 months before the hire. And after five years of continuous residence, there’s a path to permanent residence.
| Factor | HSM Visa | EU Blue Card |
|---|---|---|
| Processing time | 4 to 6 weeks (recognised sponsor) | 30 days (recognised sponsor) or up to 90 days (regular employer) |
| Sponsor required? | Yes | No |
| Salary threshold 2026 (30+) | €5,942/month | €5,942/month |
| Reduced rate for under-30s | Yes, €4,357/month | No age-based reduction |
| Recent-graduate route | Yes, €3,122/month (orientation year) | Yes, €4,754/month |
| Degree required? | No | Yes, a 3-year higher education qualification |
| Spouse work rights | Full and unrestricted, no separate permit | Full and unrestricted, no separate permit |
| EU mobility after 18 months? | No | Yes |
| Best for | Most standard Dutch hires | Candidates planning EU-wide moves |
Source: IND — EU Blue Card → · IND — Required amounts / income requirements →
In short: the HSM visa is the default for someone who’s going to work in the Netherlands, especially if they don’t have a formal degree, if you’re hiring younger or recently graduated talent who benefit from the lower thresholds, or if you need to move quickly. The EU Blue Card earns its keep when the person is degree-qualified and wants the freedom to move between EU countries down the line.
We’re your Employer of Record and recognized IND sponsor in the Netherlands, so we run the whole HSM process rather than just advising on it. You pick the person; we handle everything else. Read more about our work permit service here. Here’s how the work splits:
| You handle | ThisWorks handles |
|---|---|
| Choosing the candidate | The compliant Dutch employment contract |
| Setting the role and salary | Filing and managing the IND application, including family and dependant permits |
| Signing off the offer | Payroll, tax, social contributions and 30% ruling support |
| Directing their day-to-day work | Ongoing compliance, salary-threshold monitoring and permit renewals |
A few steps have to be done in person by your new hire: giving biometrics, collecting the residence card, and registering with the municipality for a BSN. We prepare the documents and book the appointments, but they attend these themselves.
The result: a compliant Dutch hire without setting up an entity, applying for your own sponsor status, or building an in-house immigration function.
What sets us apart:
We request updates and clear questions fast, instead of waiting in the general queue — so applications keep moving.
No friction with the IND, the municipality or the tax office.
Fewer surprises and smoother approvals.
€5,942/month (age 30+), €4,357/month (under 30), €3,122/month (recent graduates). Figures exclude 8% holiday allowance and are updated each January by the IND.
Yes, or you must use an EOR or umbrella company that already holds recognised sponsor status. An EOR like ThisWorks can handle the full application without you needing your own IND sponsorship.
4-6 weeks for recognised sponsors. However, The IND has a maximum of 90 days to make a decision.
Yes. Partner/spouse and minor children can join. The spouse receives full unrestricted work rights, no separate work permit or salary threshold required.
You must notify the IND within 4 weeks. Failure to do so risks fines or loss of recognised sponsor status. If using an EOR, the EOR manages this obligation.
No. Immigration compliance must be met on the base gross salary. The 30% ruling is a separate tax benefit and does not reduce the IND salary requirement.
Speak to our Dutch team. We’ll tell you straight away whether the HSM route fits and what the timeline looks like for your case.
