If you are not a citizen of an EU or EEA country or Switzerland, you need a residence permit that allows you to work before you can start a job in the Netherlands. For most professionals hired by a Dutch employer, that permit is the highly skilled migrant permit (kennismigrant), and “visa sponsorship” in a job description means the employer is able and willing to apply for it. This guide explains the basics so that you can read job descriptions, ask the right questions and know what the employer will do and what you will do. It is a general explanation, not legal advice. The authority is the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, the IND (ind.nl); its pages have the current conditions, amounts, fees and processing times, and they change every year.
Who does not need any of this
Citizens of EU and EEA countries and Switzerland can live and work in the Netherlands without a permit. They register with the municipality after arrival, receive a citizen service number (BSN), and that is the whole procedure. Family members of EU citizens have their own route. If you are a British citizen, you have been a third-country national since Brexit unless you were already resident under the Withdrawal Agreement.
The highly skilled migrant permit
The defining feature of this route is that the employer applies, not you. To do so the employer must be a recognised sponsor (erkend referent) registered with the IND. The IND publishes a public register of recognised sponsors on its website, and most international companies, universities and larger Dutch employers are on it. An employer that is not a recognised sponsor cannot hire you on this permit without first going through recognition, which takes time and which small companies often decline to do; this is what a job description means when it says “we cannot offer sponsorship”.
The main condition is a salary threshold: a gross monthly amount, set by the IND and adjusted every January, that the employer must pay you under a market-conform contract. There is a lower threshold for applicants under 30, and a reduced one for people who graduated from a Dutch institution or a highly ranked foreign university within the last three years. The current amounts are on the IND’s page for highly skilled migrants; the figures you find on blogs and forums are often a year or two old. There is no points test, no labour market test and no list of shortage occupations: if the recognised sponsor offers a contract above the threshold, the conditions are met.
In practice the sequence is: you accept the offer; the employer collects your documents (passport, sometimes a legalised birth certificate, an antecedents certificate you sign, a tuberculosis test declaration depending on your nationality) and submits the application to the IND; the IND decides. For applications from recognised sponsors the IND aims to decide quickly, typically within a few weeks, although the legal maximum is longer. If your nationality requires an entry visa (MVV), the permit and the visa are applied for in one combined procedure and you collect the visa at a Dutch embassy before travelling. Fees are paid by the employer in most cases, although the law does not require that.
Changing jobs
The permit is linked to the employer. When you move to another recognised sponsor, the new employer notifies the IND and applies in its turn; you do not start the whole procedure from scratch, but you cannot take a job with a non-sponsor on the same permit. After an employment ends you normally have a search period of up to three months to find a new sponsor before the permit is affected; the IND states the current rule.
Related routes you will see in job descriptions
- EU Blue Card. An EU-wide permit for highly qualified workers, with its own salary threshold and a requirement for a higher education degree or, since the revised directive, in some cases equivalent professional experience. The employer does not need to be a recognised sponsor. Useful mainly for people who want mobility between EU countries later.
- Orientation year (zoekjaar). A one-year permit for recent graduates of Dutch universities and of top-ranked foreign universities, and for recent PhDs, during which you can work for any employer without sponsorship. If you then find a job with a recognised sponsor, the reduced salary threshold applies.
- Intra-corporate transfer. For employees transferred to the Dutch branch of their own company for a fixed period.
- Dutch-American Friendship Treaty. A route for United States citizens to live in the Netherlands as self-employed with a modest capital requirement. Not an employment route.
- Partners. The partner of a highly skilled migrant receives a permit with free access to the labour market and can work for any employer without a separate work permit.
The 30% ruling
Separate from immigration: a tax facility, administered by the Dutch tax authority (Belastingdienst), that lets an employer pay part of the salary of an employee recruited from abroad free of tax for a limited number of years, subject to a salary condition and a distance condition (you must have lived far enough from the Dutch border before being recruited). The percentage and the conditions have been changed several times in recent years and are being reduced again from 2027. Ask the employer whether they apply for it, and check the Belastingdienst’s page for the current rules rather than any summary, including this one.
Reading job descriptions
Job descriptions say “visa sponsorship available”, “we are a recognised sponsor”, or “relocation and immigration support”, and the portal flags job descriptions that mention sponsorship so that you can filter on them. Silence in a job description means nothing either way: many recognised sponsors never mention it. The reliable check is the IND’s public register. If the employer is on it, sponsorship is possible and the question becomes whether the salary meets the threshold.
What to say in your application
One factual sentence, in the CV and in the letter: “I require a highly skilled migrant permit; I understand you are a recognised sponsor”, or “I hold a highly skilled migrant permit valid until 2028 and can transfer to a new sponsor”, or “I hold an orientation year permit”. Recruiters ask in the first call anyway; saying it first saves a round and shows that you know how the process works. Do not describe your situation as “complicated” or ask the employer to explain the law to you.
The guide on applying for jobs in the Netherlands covers the rest of the process, and the portal has a filter for jobs whose job description mentions sponsorship.