Slovakia
Residency route coverage
| Route family | Routes | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Investment | No routes recorded | No qualifying route as of 2026-08-24[1][8] Slovakia has no residence route granted for making an investment. Slovak law grants temporary residence only for a purpose the Act on the Residence of Foreigners names, and that list is closed: business, employment, study, special activity, research and development, family reunification, service with the civilian components of the armed forces, the status of a Slovak living abroad, the status of a long-term resident of another EU state, and the EU Blue Card. The Act on Significant Investments is not a residence route of its own: it shortens the decision period on a residence application and exempts an investor's staff from needing an employment permit for their first 90 days. |
| Remote work | No routes recorded | No qualifying route as of 2026-08-24[1][8] Slovakia has no digital-nomad or remote-work route. The Act's closed list of residence purposes contains none, and the employment purpose is built around a Slovak employer: it runs on a labour office confirming that a vacancy advertised in Slovakia could not be filled by a registered jobseeker, and the permit names the employer, the place of work and the kind of work. Every temporary residence is tied to one declared purpose carried out on Slovak territory. |
| Passive income | No routes recorded | No qualifying route as of 2026-08-24[1][8] Slovakia has no retirement, pensioner or passive-income route. The same closed list of purposes that answers the investment question has no entry for a retiree or for a person of independent means, and 'special activity' covers named activities rather than self-sufficiency. A financial-security condition runs through the Act, but always attached to another purpose. |
| Entrepreneur | Routes recorded as of 2026-08-24[6][8][12] Two routes, and the split is a decision taken deliberately rather than a reading of two instruments. Slovakia has ONE business permit – prechodny pobyt na ucel podnikania, § 22 – with two limbs: § 22 ods. 1 pism. a), a person who conducts or will conduct business as a natural person, and § 22 ods. 1 pism. b), a person who acts or will act on behalf of a commercial company or a cooperative and is not in an employment relationship. They share a name, a maximum term, a decision period and a document set. They diverge on the one figure a reader compares on: the business-funds test is twenty times the subsistence minimum on limb a) and one hundred times on limb b), or forty times on limb b) where an innovative-project business plan is submitted. reqEntrepreneur.min_capital holds one value, so recording the permit once would have cost the record its most material number. They are therefore recorded as two routes with identical identity fields and different capital tests, and a later touch that disagrees should merge them deliberately and say so, not tidy them together. Poland's art. 142, whose two limbs share their conditions, was recorded the other way for that reason. Slovakia has no startup, accelerator-endorsed or innovation-graded entrepreneur permit: the innovative-project business plan is an alternative route through the same permit's capital test, not a separate instrument. | |
| Work |
| Routes recorded as of 2026-08-24[8][9][16][17] |
| Study | Routes recorded as of 2026-08-24[8][13] One route: temporary residence for the purpose of study under § 24, granted for the expected duration of the study and at most six years — the longest initial term any Slovak temporary residence carries — decided in 30 days and free of any application fee. Two things a reader should not be left to infer sit in the route: the work right is capped at 20 hours a week for a university student and 10 for a secondary-school pupil, and a language-school pupil is excluded from it entirely; and Slovakia has no post-study job-search or graduate residence at all, so a graduate moves onto ordinary employment-purpose residence, helped by § 23a ods. 1 písm. t) of the Employment Services Act, which frees anyone who has completed secondary or university study in Slovakia from the work-permit and labour-office-confirmation requirement. Research and development (§ 26) is a study-adjacent route and is deliberately placed in work, not here: it is performed under a hosting agreement with a research institution, it carries a labour-market exemption in its own right, and its holder is a researcher rather than a student. Cross-purpose routes live in exactly one family; a reader looking for the researcher route will find sk-vyskum-a-vyvoj under work. The same applies to sk-dlhodoby-pobyt-iny-clensky-stat: a person holding EU long-term-resident status in another member state who comes to Slovakia to study uses § 30, which is recorded under work and pointed at from here. | |
| Family | Routes recorded as of 2026-08-24[8][14][15] |
Country facts
Identity
| Local name | Slovensko |
|---|---|
| ISO code | SVK |
| Region | Europe |
| Currency | EUR as of 2026-08-24[2] |
| Official languages | sk as of 2026-08-24[2] |
Memberships
| Memberships |
|---|
Permanent residence
| Qualifying years | Not established from a qualifying source |
|---|---|
| Language requirement | Not established from a qualifying source No language condition appears in the Border and Aliens Police document lists for any of the three forms of settled status, but those lists are documentary rather than a statement of the conditions, so this is recorded as not established rather than as a sourced absence. |
| Integration requirement | Not established from a qualifying source Not established. No integration or civics condition appears in the document lists for § 43, § 46 or § 52, but see the language note – the lists are not an enumeration of conditions. |
| Income requirement | Not established from a qualifying source |
Citizenship
| Years to naturalisation | 8 as of 2022-09-04[10] § 7 ods. 1 pism. a) of Act No. 40/1993 Z. z.: uninterrupted permanent residence in Slovakia for at least eight years immediately preceding the application. Shorter grounds exist for other situations and are not this field – five years of marriage to and cohabitation in Slovakia with a Slovak citizen, three years for a holder of a certificate of the status of a Slovak living abroad, three years for a person born in Slovakia, ten years' uninterrupted residence where permanent residence has already been granted, and a discretionary ground for persons of significant economic, scientific, technical, cultural, social or sporting merit. |
|---|---|
| of which on permanent residence | 8 as of 2022-09-04[10] |
| Dual citizenship | restricted as of 2022-09-04[10] |
| Language requirement | required, level unspecified as of 2022-09-04[10] § 7 ods. 1 pism. h): the applicant must demonstrate command of the state language in speech and in writing, together with general knowledge of the Slovak Republic. No CEFR level is stated by the cited source. Applicants under 14 at the date of application and certain enumerated categories are exempt. |
| Citizenship test required | Yes as of 2022-09-04[10] The same condition requires general knowledge of the Slovak Republic to be demonstrated alongside the language, which is a knowledge test in substance. The form of the examination is not described by the cited source. |
Tax
| Tax-residency day threshold | 183 as of 2026-08-24[3] § 2 pism. d) bod 1 of Act No. 595/2003 Z. z. on income tax, as stated by the Financial Administration: a natural person is habitually present in Slovakia if present for at least 183 days in the calendar year, continuously or in several periods. The day count is one of three alternative limbs, not a cumulative condition. |
|---|---|
| Other tax-residency triggers | registered residence, domicile as of 2026-08-24[3] The other two limbs of § 2 pism. d) bod 1 are permanent residence (trvaly pobyt) on Slovak territory and a dwelling (bydlisko) there. 'registered_residence' carries trvaly pobyt and 'domicile' carries bydlisko; the vocabulary has no closer word for either. |
| Headline income tax rate | 35% as of 2026-08-24[5] Top marginal rate on the 2026 scale under § 4 ods. 1 pism. a) of the Income Tax Act: 19% up to a base of EUR 43,983.32, 25% on the part above that up to EUR 60,349.21, 30% on the part above that up to EUR 75,010.32, and 35% above EUR 75,010.32. A separate 15% rate applies to the business and self-employment base of a taxpayer whose taxable business receipts for the period do not exceed EUR 100,000, which the single headline number cannot show alongside the scale and which is the rate most relevant to a holder of the § 22 business permit. |
| Income tax structure | progressive as of 2026-08-24[5] |
| Net-wealth tax | Not established from a qualifying source |
| Inheritance or estate tax | Not established from a qualifying source Not established, for the same reason as wealth_tax. |
Your next step
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Reference figures
| subsistence minimum for one adult natural person |
|
|---|---|
| average monthly wage of an employee in the economy of the Slovak Republic |
|
Changes
Recent changes
| 2026-01-01 | The personal income tax scale gained two new bands. For 2025 the scale under § 4 ods. 1 pism. a) of the Income Tax Act ran 19% up to a base of EUR 48,441.43 and 25% above it. For 2026 it runs 19% up to EUR 43,983.32, 25% to EUR 60,349.21, 30% to EUR 75,010.32 and 35% above that, so the top marginal rate rose from 25% to 35% and the point at which the second band starts fell.[4][5] |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-01 | The subsistence minimum for one adult natural person rose to EUR 295.22 a month. Both limbs of the § 22 business permit state their business-funds test as a multiple of this figure, so the amounts a business applicant must show rose with it. Affects: Temporary residence for the purpose of business, Temporary residence for the purpose of business[11] |
| 2024-07-15 | The EU Blue Card was reformed. The Central Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family reissued its statement of the Blue Card conditions on 15 July 2024, and the conditions it now states are materially wider than the scheme's earlier shape: higher professional qualification evidenced by a document of university education, with the alternative that for occupations whose ISCO code begins 133 (ICT service managers) or 25 (ICT professionals) the employer may instead declare how it verified the applicant's higher professional skills and file no education document at all; a gross monthly wage of at least 1.2 times the average monthly wage in the economy of the Slovak Republic for the preceding calendar year, reduced to the plain average for an applicant who obtained their higher education at most three years before the application; an employment relationship of at least six months; and a card granted for at most five years. The Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs' consular catalogue, last updated 8 July 2022, still gives the Blue Card a four-year ceiling and has not been brought into line. The amending Act is not named here: this entry records what the administering authority publishes, and the date it published it. Affects: EU Blue Card[7][16] |
Verification
| Sources cited | 17 |
|---|---|
| of which official (tier 1) | 16 |
| Oldest as-of date | 2022-09-04 |
| Newest as-of date | 2026-08-24 |
| Reviewed on | 2026-08-26 |
| Schema version | 1.1 |
Sources
- [1] Zákon č. 404/2011 Z. z. o pobyte cudzincov a o zmene a doplnení niektorých zákonov (znenie vyhlásené v Zbierke zákonov, čiastka 126)
Ministerstvo vnútra SR (kópia vyhláseného znenia na webovom sídle Úradu hraničnej a cudzineckej polície) · gazette · Tier 1 · Published 2011-10-21 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [2] Slovakia – EU country profile
European Union · official portal · Tier 1 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [3] Občania SR v zahraničí – rezident SR (daňovník s neobmedzenou daňovou povinnosťou)
Finančné riaditeľstvo Slovenskej republiky · official portal · Tier 1 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [4] Sadzba dane z príjmov fyzickej osoby za rok 2025
Finančné riaditeľstvo Slovenskej republiky · official guidance · Tier 1 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [5] Sadzba dane z príjmov fyzickej osoby za rok 2026
Finančné riaditeľstvo Slovenskej republiky · official guidance · Tier 1 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [6] Cudzinci – podnikanie v SR
Ministerstvo hospodárstva Slovenskej republiky · official portal · Tier 1 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [7] Modrá karta EÚ
Migračné informačné centrum IOM (Medzinárodná organizácia pre migráciu) · international organisation · Tier 2 · Published 2026-07-14 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [8] Pobyt cudzinca – účely prechodného pobytu, druhy trvalého pobytu a podávanie žiadostí
Ministerstvo zahraničných vecí a európskych záležitostí SR (Generálny konzulát SR v Užhorode) · official portal · Tier 1 · Published 2022-07-08 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [9] Poplatky — sadzobník konzulárnych poplatkov, položky 240 až 265 (položka 242: žiadosti o udelenie pobytu)
Ministerstvo zahraničných vecí a európskych záležitostí SR · fee schedule · Tier 1 · Published 2024-03-11 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [10] Nadobudnutie štátneho občianstva Slovenskej republiky (§ 7 zákona č. 40/1993 Z. z.)
Ministerstvo zahraničných vecí a európskych záležitostí SR (Generálny konzulát SR v New Yorku) · official portal · Tier 1 · Published 2022-09-04 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [11] Dôchodok a exekučné zrážky – základná suma a sumy životného minima od 1. júla 2026
Sociálna poisťovňa · official portal · Tier 1 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [12] 13. Doklady potrebné k prijatiu žiadosti o udelenie prechodného pobytu na účel podnikania podľa § 22 zákona o pobyte cudzincov (edícia júl 2025)
Úrad hraničnej a cudzineckej polície, Prezídium Policajného zboru, Ministerstvo vnútra SR · official guidance · Tier 1 · Published 2025-07-07 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [13] 14. Doklady potrebné k prijatiu žiadosti o udelenie prechodného pobytu na účel štúdia podľa § 24 zákona o pobyte cudzincov (edícia júl 2025)
Úrad hraničnej a cudzineckej polície Prezídia Policajného zboru, Ministerstvo vnútra SR · official guidance · Tier 1 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [14] 30. Doklady potrebné k prijatiu žiadosti o udelenie trvalého pobytu na päť rokov podľa § 43 zákona o pobyte cudzincov
Úrad hraničnej a cudzineckej polície, Prezídium Policajného zboru, Ministerstvo vnútra SR · official guidance · Tier 1 · Published 2025-07-07 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [15] 17. Doklady potrebné k prijatiu žiadosti o udelenie prechodného pobytu na účel zlúčenia rodiny podľa § 27 zákona o pobyte cudzincov (edícia júl 2025)
Úrad hraničnej a cudzineckej polície Prezídia Policajného zboru, Ministerstvo vnútra SR · official guidance · Tier 1 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [16] 2. Zamestnanie štátneho príslušníka tretej krajiny s potvrdením o možnosti obsadenia VPM zodpovedajúceho vysokokvalifikovanému zamestnaniu (k žiadosti o modrú kartu)
Ústredie práce, sociálnych vecí a rodiny SR · official portal · Tier 1 · Published 2024-07-15 · Accessed 2026-08-24 - [17] 1. Zamestnanie štátneho príslušníka tretej krajiny s potvrdením o možnosti obsadenia voľného pracovného miesta
Ústredie práce, sociálnych vecí a rodiny SR · official portal · Tier 1 · Published 2023-01-09 · Accessed 2026-08-24