Visa information

The 2026 guide names three routes into the Czech Republic: the Employee Card (or EU Blue Card) for workers, the trade-licence long-stay visa for freelancers, and a Digital Nomad (Zivno) route for selected professions and nationalities. The guide scores the country just 42/100 for visa and bureaucracy — the lowest of its seven dimensions — so expect the paperwork stage, measured in weeks on every plan tier, to be the hard part of the move.

The three routes the guide names

Employee Card combining work and residence, or EU Blue Card — the employed route the guide lists first.

Trade Licence (živnostenský list) long-stay visa — the freelancer route, described as popular with teachers and IT contractors.

Digital Nomad (Zivno) route — on ~$2,500/mo, for selected professions and nationalities (see the income section below).

There is no retirement visa in the guide's list — retirees use a long-stay visa “for other purposes” instead (see the Retirement page).

The income test — what the sources actually say

Only one route carries a printed income figure: the Digital Nomad (Zivno) route, on ~$2,500/mo. The guide's remote-work section restates it as a visa “for IT and selected fields on ~$2,500/mo.” It does not print which professions or nationalities qualify beyond that wording, so this page does not invent an eligibility list.

For the Employee Card, EU Blue Card and trade-licence routes, neither source prints an income or salary threshold at all. At the guide's exchange rate of $1 ≈ Kč21.5, any koruna figure you are quoted converts at roughly that rate for planning.

What the paperwork costs — plan budgets, not government fees

The guide does not list individual government visa fees. What it gives is a bundled “Visa, permits & translations” budget line in each move plan, and those lines are the only sourced cost figures for the application itself:

• $900 — Affordable plan (you file yourself)
• $1,300 — Mid-range and Retirement plans
• $3,100 — Luxury plan (the plan notes the luxury tier adds an immigration lawyer)

The Retirement plan carries one further, separate line: $2,400 for “Retirement visa, lawyer & pension certification”, covering an immigration lawyer, apostilled pension letters, medicals and translations.

Application steps and timelines, by tier

The guide builds the application into each plan's timeline rather than printing a single step list. The common sequence across the plans and checklists is:

• Choose the route first and print its requirements; the Affordable checklist starts with “Visa route chosen and requirements printed.”
• Gather and legalise documents — apostilles and translations are named in every tier; the Retirement paperwork stage adds pension or income letters certified and apostilled, a police certificate, a medical, and birth and marriage certificates translated.
• Check your passport — the Affordable checklist requires a passport valid 18+ months.
• Arrange health insurance before you file (see the Hospitals page for the guide's first-year insurance budgets).
• File — yourself on the Affordable tier, or with a lawyer or agent on the Mid-range, Luxury and Retirement tiers.

Paperwork-stage durations in the guide: ~10 weeks filing yourself (Affordable), ~8 weeks with a lawyer or agent filing (Mid-range), ~6 weeks with a lawyer filing everything (Luxury), and ~14 weeks for the Retirement paperwork stage. After the move, the settle stage includes registering your address and opening a bank account.

Renewals and the path to residency — the honest limit of the guide

The only onward step the guide names is for retirees: the long-stay visa “for other purposes” leads on to long-term residence. Beyond that phrase, neither the guide nor the site data gives renewal intervals, years to long-term or permanent residence, or absence limits for any route — so this page does not state them. Treat the pathway as something to confirm with an immigration lawyer or the consulate before you rely on it; the visa and bureaucracy score of 42/100 is the guide's own warning that this side of a Czech move takes patience.

Frequently asked questions