Are you ready to grow your business?
Are you ready to grow your business?
The process is employer-led, and sponsorship comes first. Hiring a non-EU national is your responsibility, not the candidate’s. For the main routes (HSM and ICT) you must hold IND recognized-sponsor status, or use an EOR that already does, before an application can be filed.
There is no single Netherlands work visa, so match the route to the hire. HSM suits specialist and senior roles, the EU Blue Card fits degree-qualified candidates who want EU mobility, ICT covers internal transfers, and the GVVA / TWV is the slower route for everything else. Salary and qualifications usually decide which applies, and the wrong choice costs weeks.
Approval is not the finish line, and thresholds keep moving.HSM and Blue Card salary thresholds re-index every January (€5,942 a month for age 30 and over in 2026), and recognized sponsors must keep pay above the line and report changes to the IND. After approval, BRP registration and the BSN still have to be done before payroll can run.
There is no single Netherlands work visa. Depending on the role, the salary, and whether your hire is a new recruit or an internal transfer, the right permit might be the Highly Skilled Migrant route, the EU Blue Card, an Intra-Company Transfer, or the single permit for everyone else. Choosing the wrong one, or assuming the candidate can arrange it themselves, is what turns a clean hire into a three-month delay.
This guide is for HR leads, People Ops teams and COOs hiring into the Netherlands for the first time. It maps out every Netherlands work visa route, shows you how to tell which one applies to your hire, and explains where a recognized sponsor or an Employer of Record (EOR) fits in. The theme running through all of it is simple: these routes are employer-led. In almost every case the application runs through you, not the candidate.
The UK uses a points-based immigration system. Below are the routes most relevant to employers hiring international talent into skilled roles.
| Route | Best for | Sponsor required? | Labour market test? | Salary threshold (2026, 30+) | Typical processing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Highly Skilled Migrant (HSM) | Specialist or senior roles, no diploma needed | Yes, recognised sponsor | No | €5,942 / month | 4–6 weeks (recognised sponsor) |
| EU Blue Card | Degree-qualified hires wanting EU-wide mobility | No (standard employer) | No | €5,942 / month | 30 days (recognised sponsor) / up to 90 days |
| Intra-Company Transfer (ICT) | Internal transfers from a non-EU branch | Yes, recognised sponsor | No | Meets HSM-equivalent threshold | 2–4 weeks (recognised sponsor) / 10–12 weeks (non-recognised) |
| GVVA / Standard Work Permit (TWV) | Roles that don't fit HSM, Blue Card or ICT | No, but UWV involvement required | Yes — arbeidsmarkttoets | General minimum wage (~€2,294 / month) | Up to 90 days (GVVA) |
| Dependent visa | Spouse/partner and children of a main visa holder | N/A — tied to main applicant | No | None | Processed alongside main application |
Salary thresholds are re-indexed by the IND in January and July. Confirm the current figures on ind.nl before relying on them.
Most hires resolve to one route after a handful of questions. Work down the list and stop at the first “yes”.
The HSM route (the kennismigrant permit) is the one most employers use for specialist and senior hires. There is no labour market test and no diploma requirement; eligibility is driven almost entirely by salary. For 2026 the thresholds are €5,942 per month for applicants aged 30 and over, €4,357 for those under 30, and €3,122 for recent graduates on the orientation year route.
Because it is the workhorse route, we cover it in full on its own page, including the salary bands in detail, the recognized-sponsor comparison, employer compliance duties, and the step-by-step application.
No Dutch entity, no sponsor status, no in-house immigration function. Our Netherlands specialists confirm the route and get the application moving within days, then manage it through to approval.
The EU Blue Card is aimed at non-EU nationals who hold a recognised higher-education qualification and a job offer above the Blue Card salary threshold. It is worth reaching for when the candidate is degree-qualified and the freedom to move around the EU later matters to them.
What sets it apart from the HSM route:
For 2026 the Blue Card threshold sits at €5,942 per month (gross, age 30 and over), with a reduced rate of €4,754 for recent graduates and no separate under-30 band. Decisions run around 30 days with a recognised sponsor, or up to 90 days otherwise. Confirm the current figure on ind.nl/required-amounts, as the thresholds re-index in January and July.
The ICT permit covers managers, specialists and trainees moving from a non-EU branch of your company into a Dutch branch of the same group. It is the right route when the person already works for you abroad and you are relocating them rather than hiring from the open market.
The main conditions:
Because it reuses much of the HSM machinery, the ICT route is quick when a recognized sponsor is already in place, commonly two to four weeks.
If your hire does not qualify for HSM, the Blue Card or ICT, you are not out of options, but the route is slower. The GVVA (a single permit combining work and residence) and the standalone TWV work permit exist for roles that fall outside the highly skilled categories.
The reason it takes longer is the labour market test, the arbeidsmarkttoets. Before a permit is granted you generally have to show a genuine effort to fill the role from the EU and EEA labour market first. In practice that means advertising the vacancy, notifying UWV, and observing a lead time before the application can move. It is the part that most often catches employers off guard, so build it into your timeline from the start.
The GVVA itself is issued by the IND working with UWV and rolls work and residence into one document, so the employee does not carry two separate permits. UWV publishes the detail of the labour market test on uwv.nl.
For employer-sponsored routes, no. A job offer, and for most routes a recognised sponsor, are required before an application can be filed. There is no general “Netherlands work visa without a job offer” for standard skilled hiring, and this is the single most common misconception we correct.
Two narrow exceptions exist, and neither is an employer-sponsored work visa in the usual sense:
For an employer, the useful next step is not chasing an exception. It is confirming your sponsor status, or using an EOR that already holds it, which is covered next.
Recognised sponsor status (erkend referent) is permission from the IND to sponsor certain applications. It is not something you arrange after finding a candidate; it has to be in place before you can file, and obtaining it independently takes time and a Dutch entity. Not every route needs it, though, which is worth knowing before you assume the worst.
Where a recognised sponsor is required, you have two realistic paths: apply to the IND for erkend referent status yourself, which needs a Dutch entity and takes a couple of months before you can file for anyone, or use an Employer of Record that already holds the status and files on your behalf. The EOR route removes the entity requirement and the waiting period entirely.
| Option 1: Become your own recognised sponsor | Option 2: Use an Employer of Record | |
|---|---|---|
| How it works | You apply to the IND for erkend referent status and file applications in-house. | The EOR becomes the legal employer and recognised sponsor, and runs the application. |
| What you need | A Dutch entity, KvK registration, and sound finances. | Nothing of your own: no Dutch entity, no sponsor status. |
| Set-up cost (IND) | €2,539 (under 50 employees) / €5,080 (50+). | No separate sponsor-status fee, covered within the EOR service. |
| Timeline to sponsor | ~2–3 months before you can apply for anyone. | No separate wait, sponsor status already in place. |
| Ongoing compliance | Sits with you: threshold monitoring, IND reporting, record-keeping. | Sits with the EOR as legal employer, alongside payroll and contracts. |
| Best for | Companies already established in the Netherlands, hiring regularly. | First or occasional hires, or no Dutch entity. |
The sequence is broadly the same whichever route you use, with one decisive fork near the start: whether a labour market test applies. That single difference is what separates a four-to-six-week hire from one that can run past three months.
The shared path looks like this:
Two things shape the timeline as much as the IND does. The employer or sponsor files the application, but the employee has to attend biometrics and municipal registration in person, so their availability matters too. And payroll cannot start until the BRP registration and BSN are in place, so treat those final steps as part of the hire, not paperwork to tidy up afterwards. Our full work permit service covers how we run this end to end.
The cost of a Netherlands work visa is not a single figure. It is built from an IND application fee charged per applicant (the main hire, plus each dependent), a one-off recognised-sponsor set-up fee if you are becoming your own sponsor (scaled to company size), and, for the GVVA / TWV route only, recruitment-advertising and translation costs that are easy to underestimate. The route-by-route breakdown lives on the HSM and EOR pages.
The IND publishes current fee amounts and reviews them periodically, so check the latest on ind.nl before budgeting. If you would rather not carry the sponsor set-up cost or manage a separate fee per hire, an EOR folds sponsor status, application handling and payroll into one arrangement.
As an Employer of Record and recognised IND sponsor in the Netherlands, we can employ your hire on your behalf and run the visa process for whichever route fits, so you can make the offer without first setting up a Dutch entity or applying for your own sponsor status. You choose the person and direct their work; we handle the legal employment, the application, payroll and ongoing compliance. Read more about our EOR service in the Netherlands here.
“The first question is never ‘can we hire this person’, it’s ‘which route’. HSM, Blue Card and ICT can look interchangeable from the outside, but the right one depends on the role, the salary and where the person wants to end up. Seeing these cases every day is what lets us read each one quickly and avoid the false starts that cost employers weeks. And because we already hold recognised-sponsor status, we have a direct line to the IND, so once the route is set we can start filing straight away rather than waiting in the general queue.”
—Imke van Rengs, Team Lead NL at ThisWorks
Not for employer-sponsored routes: a job offer, and usually a recognized sponsor, are required. The only routes without a job offer are the orientation year permit for recent graduates and the self-employed residence permit, neither of which is a standard hiring visa.
HSM needs no diploma and depends on recognized-sponsor status and salary; it is the default for most Dutch hires and the fastest. The Blue Card requires a recognized degree, does not rely on sponsor status in the same way, and offers EU-wide mobility after a qualifying period, so it suits candidates planning to move between EU countries.
To become your own recognized sponsor, yes: you need a Dutch entity with KvK registration and sound finances. If you use an Employer of Record, you do not, because the EOR is the legal employer and sponsor.
It usually falls under the GVVA / TWV route, which allows work permits for jobs outside the highly skilled categories but requires a labour market test through UWV. It is slower, so allow extra time in your hiring plan.
Hiring across borders is rarely as tangled as the first IND page makes it look. Once the route is right and a recognized sponsor is in place, most Dutch hires come down to a compliant contract and a start date. The hard part is usually just knowing where to begin.
If you are weighing up a hire and are not sure which route fits, that is the perfect point to talk to us. Tell us the role and the candidate’s situation, and we will tell you which Netherlands work visa applies and roughly how long it is likely to take. No commitment, just a clear answer to work from.
