EU Blue Card salary thresholds 2026: all 29 Schengen countries

Verified 2026-10-04 · Gross annual salary you must be offered to qualify

The EU Blue Card is the standard residence-and-work permit for university-educated workers from outside Europe. Each country sets its own minimum salary, so the same job can clear the bar in one country and miss it in the next. Here is every country on one page, with an honest label on how sure we are.

Last verified 2026-10-04. Research method: official-source collection for all 29 Schengen countries, then an independent cross-check with Perplexity. Where the two disagreed we used the official source; anything we could not confirm is labelled. See our editorial standards.

Status key: Official figure published by the authority · Derived official formula × official average wage, euro amount calculated or from a law-firm/secondary page · Not confirmed no 2026 euro figure found · No Blue Card country does not issue it. Click any column heading to sort.

How to read this table

• It is a gross figure. The threshold is your annual gross salary in the contract, before tax. What you actually take home is in our take-home pay guide.
• It changes. Most countries recalculate once a year from a national average-wage statistic, some twice (Netherlands changes on 1 July; Sweden changed on 15 July 2026). Check the official page on the day you apply.
• The salary is not the only condition. You normally also need a recognised university degree (a few countries accept equivalent IT experience), a work contract of at least about six months, and an employer who meets local rules.
• Belgium is three different thresholds because immigration is a regional matter: Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia.

Countries without an EU Blue Card

Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are not covered by the Blue Card scheme. They have their own permits, which are often harder to get:

• Denmark — Pay Limit Scheme from DKK 552,000 (≈ €73,900) per year, or the Supplementary Pay Limit Scheme from DKK 446,000 (≈ €59,700) (2026, confirmed on the Danish immigration site).
• Norway — skilled-worker permit; reported minimums of NOK 545,400 (bachelor level) and NOK 624,700 (master level) for jobs without a collective agreement. We could not confirm these directly because the Norwegian immigration site blocks automated access, so treat them as unconfirmed.
• Iceland — expert-knowledge work permit; no published salary minimum, collective-agreement pay applies.
• Switzerland — cantonal permits under tight quotas; no national salary minimum, but pay must be customary for the job and the employer must show no Swiss or EU candidate is available.
• Liechtenstein — permits only for managers and specialists the local market cannot supply.

Before you apply

1. Open the official page for your country (linked in the table) and read today's amount — not last year's.
2. Check whether your job qualifies for the lower shortage-occupation threshold (Germany, Spain, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Netherlands for recent graduates).
3. Ask your employer to confirm in writing that the contract meets the threshold including any 13th/14th salary rules (Austria's figure includes special payments such as the 13th/14th salary; for the Netherlands, check whether 8% holiday allowance counts — the authority's page does not say clearly).
4. Read the country page for visa fees, processing times and permanent-residence rules: all country pages →

Compare take-home pay in all 29 countries → · Exact Germany salary calculator →