So, it’s finally here! The Czech Republic has started there own Digital Nomad Visa, effective from 1.7.2023. The rules are pretty limiting (as you’ll read below) but it is a start! Limiting Digital Nomad Visa is still better then no Digital Nomad Visa 🙂 Read on a discover all the rules with us.
How does the Digital Nomad Visa works in the Czech Republic
What is important to understand is that a Digital Nomad Visa in the Czech Republic is actually not a new type of visa. It is a special status/confirmation that you have to obtain from the Ministry of Industry and Trade before you apply for a visa. The type of visa you will be applying for then depends on your situation – either a standard business visa (if you are a freelancer) or the “other” visa if you are an employee of a foreign company and you want to work in the Czech Republic.
Who qualifies for the Czech Digital Nomad Visa
Before we jump into further details, let’s talk about the limitation we mentioned above. There are basically two main limitations – your nationality and the field of business you want to work in. The Czech Digital Nomad Visa program is at this point limited to the following nationalities:
– Australia,
– Canada,
– Japan,
– New Zealand,
– South Korea,
– Taiwan,
– United Kingdom,
– United States.
The second limitation is the field of business that the Digital Nomad Visa applies to. You can only apply for the Czech Digital Nomad Visa if you work in IT sector, no digital marketing or any other type of business at the moment.
Step by step process to obtain the Czech Digital Nomad Visa
As the first step before all others, we would recommend consulting with us to see if you meet the requirements and qualify for the Digital Nomad Visa at all. Or at least check the rules/limitations above and the list of required documents below. If you think you are good to go, these steps are what you should follow as a freelancer (we’ll get to the allocated employee case below):
- Get a Czech Trade License (we describe the process in another article here) from any Czech Trade License Office.
- Apply to the Ministry of Industry and Trade to get accepted to the Digital Nomad program. You will need the following documents for that:
- trade license,
- contract about future contract with your client or a sworn statement of your client saying they will contract your services in IT sector, that your monthly pay will be at least 1,5 of Czech national average salary and how long is your cooperation planned for,
- all the other required attachments (such as application form etc.),
- proof of having a degree in IT or at least 3 years of experience in IT.
- If your application is approved, the MIT will provide you with a recommendation to get thee Business Visa under the Digital Nomad program.
- The MIT should also inform a Czech Embassy about this fact and the Embassy should get in touch with you to offer you a date to submit your Business Visa application.
- You have to collect all the documents needed for the Business Visa, go to the Embassy for the given appointment (you can only reschedule once for serious reasons which you would need to prove anyway) and pass the immigration interview. Family members can potentially apply with you, in this case for a Family Reunification Visa.
- Ministry of the Interior (not the Embassy) should make the decision about your Business Visa application within 45 days after submission. Based on our experience with about 15 000 clients in the last 10 years, we seriously doubt that but those are the official conditions at this point. We’ll update this after we will have done a few tens of Digital Nomad Visa applications and we’ll have some reasonable data. The only thing we want to emphasize here is that you should for sure not make plans based strictly on the 45 days since it can really take longer.
- What happens after the approval is not strictly specified for the Digital Nomad Visa so we expect it to be the same as for standard Business Visa – you will have to buy Czech private health insurance covering the whole validity of your visa (or for just 2 months depending on your nationality) and collect the visa from the Embassy where you applied for it.
- Again, if everything is the same as for a standard business visa, you then have to come to the Czech Republic and get registered with the Foreign Police within 3 days after your arrival. You then have to activate your trade license within 3 days from the Foreign Police registration and then get registered with the Tax office, Social Security office (and public Health Care office – depending on your nationality).
- The you should be good for a year.
The registration for the Digital Nomad Program with MIT is only valid for a year so if you want to extend your stay, you will need to apply for a new registration and with the new registration apply for a business residence permit.
The process is new and pretty complicated, especially if you are not here yet. Get in touch with us using the form below or on the right and let us make getting the Digital Nomad Visa for the Czech Republic for you smoothly and as easy as possible 🙂
