How is the application filed?

The procedure, step by step

1. We establish which route applies

   Everything downstream depends on this, which is why it is the first thing we do. The routes ask for different things — the Red-White-Red Card needs no proof of means or accommodation, the settlement permit without work needs both, the income at twice the usual rate, and a quota place besides; the EU Blue Card has a labour-market test where the shortage-occupation category does not — so the route decides the document list, the filing place and the deadline, and gathering the wrong records first is the most common way to lose months.

   More than one route can be open at the same time, and that is worth having. Where a graduate with a job offer fits both the EU Blue Card and a Red-White-Red Card category, the choice turns on what each carries with it: the family’s German requirement, mobility within the EU, the labour-market test. You are welcome to read ahead — compare the routes side by side, or answer the questionnaire, which works through the requirements one at a time and gives us the starting point for this step.

2. The employer’s part

   Every employed category of the Red-White-Red Card, and the EU Blue Card, starts from the employer. The employer completes the employer’s declaration (Arbeitgebererklärung) — a written undertaking to observe the pay and conditions stated in the application (§ 20d(1) AuslBG) — and may file the application with the residence authority in Austria on your behalf, together with the applications of your spouse and children. The declaration is what the Public Employment Service confirms against, and it is where a salary that sits just under the year’s threshold is caught before it is filed rather than after.

   The residence authority forwards the file to the regional office of the Public Employment Service (AMS) at the employer’s seat, which has 4 weeks to confirm that the category’s conditions are met. For other key workers and the EU Blue Card it also runs the labour-market test — whether an Austrian, or a foreign national already available on the Austrian labour market, is willing and able to fill the post on lawful conditions (§ 4b AuslBG). For a self-employed key worker or a start-up founder there is no employer; the AMS provincial office gives an expert opinion on the business itself within 3 weeks.

3. You gather the documents

   This is the half of the file that is about you, and it is the one place we ask you to do something: send us what you already hold. Every application carries a valid passport, a photograph to the passport standard, and the civil-status certificates the route relies on — marriage, birth, adoption. Then the proofs the route requires: means and accommodation for the settlement and family titles, health insurance for everyone who will not be insured through a job, the degree or training certificate and the language certificates for a points test, the admission letter or hosting agreement for a student or researcher, the German certificate at A1 for the family titles and for the settlement permits other than the researcher’s.

   Order matters because some documents expire. The A1 certificate may not be older than 12 months when presented; a language certificate for the points not older than 5 years on the day of filing; a police clearance certificate, where an authority asks for one, not older than three months (Vienna’s practice, and the official portal’s recommendation). A degree from outside Austria may need an evaluation before the AMS will count it, and that takes time. We tell you which of these to obtain first and which to leave until the file is otherwise complete.

   The full list, organised by what each document proves — it is there so you can see what the file has to contain before you start assembling it.

4. Translation and legalisation

   A document not in German has to be presented with a German translation when the authority asks for one (§ 6(3) NAG-DV). English documents are as a rule accepted without translation — oesterreich.gv.at says so, and Vienna asks for a translation only of documents in a language other than German or English — but the ordinance entitles each authority to ask. Where a translation is needed, Vienna and the representations expect one by a sworn court-certified translator (allgemein beeideter und gerichtlich zertifizierter Dolmetscher) — not a fluent relative, and not an agency without that standing — and we commission it. A foreign public document may also need authenticating before an Austrian authority will accept it: an apostille where the issuing country is a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, consular legalisation where it is not (§ 6(4) NAG-DV). We tell you which documents the authority is likely to ask for, so that you do not pay for authentication in advance where it is usually not required.

5. We file the application

   The rule is that a first application is filed in person at the Austrian embassy or consulate responsible for your place of residence, before you enter Austria, and the decision is awaited abroad (§ 21(1) NAG). The exceptions are what most readers of this site use. A citizen of a country whose nationals enter without a visa may file with the residence authority in Austria during the lawful visa-free stay; applicants for the Red-White-Red Card, the EU Blue Card, the student permit and the settlement permit “Researcher” — and the family of Blue Card and researcher applicants — may file in Austria after lawful entry; the family of an Austrian, EEA or Swiss citizen living in Austria may file here after lawful entry and during a lawful stay; and the employer may file for you. Filing in Austria does not extend your right to stay: you leave when the visa-free period or the visa ends, and the decision follows you. Two exceptions matter here. A holder of another EU state’s Blue Card who files under § 50a NAG stays lawfully until the decision; and since 7 August 2026 a Red-White-Red Card application filed in person in Austria is no longer among the filings that § 21(6) NAG says create no right to stay — the official migration portal (migration.gv.at) says such an applicant may remain while the application is decided.

   The authority in Austria is the one for your intended place of residence: MA 35 in Vienna, the district administration (Bezirkshauptmannschaft) or the municipal authority of a statutory city elsewhere, in Lower Austria the Office of the Provincial Government for quota-bound and intra-corporate-transfer applications (the official portals differ on whether it also takes the other titles — we check before filing) and, for Graz, the Office of the Styrian Provincial Government. The federal fee for a fixed-term title is €218 since 1 January 2026, wherever it is filed. For the quota-bound settlement permit without work the date and time of filing decide the place in the register, and the practice in Vienna and Styria has been to allocate appointments in advance for filings at the start of the quota year — though while no ordinance for 2026 exists, the 2025 places are released month by month.

6. The authority decides

   The residence authority and the AMS have 8 weeks from filing to decide a Red-White-Red Card or EU Blue Card application (§ 41(3), § 42(2) NAG). Since 7 August 2026, for applications filed on or after that date, titles without a deadline of their own have to be decided within 90 days, extendable by 30 in exceptional cases (§ 19a NAG; not for the student permit, whose 90 days cannot be extended); the plain and the quota-bound settlement permits, family reunification and long-term residence keep the general six-month limit of administrative procedure (§ 73 AVG). A quota-bound family-reunification application filed when no place is free is held over until one is, and the deadline is suspended meanwhile (§ 12(5), (7) NAG); an application for the settlement permit without work is not held over but rejected once the year’s places are exhausted (§ 12(4) NAG) — it is deferred only while places are allocated but not yet final (§ 12(5)) — which is why its filing date matters. The eight weeks run from filing (§ 41(3) NAG). § 19a NAG itself does not say when the 90 days start; the explanatory notes refer to the Directive’s 90 days from a complete application, and the general rule of § 73 AVG runs from receipt — so an incomplete file may in practice be treated as not yet starting the period, and a delay the applicant caused cannot be complained of, which is why the file should be complete on the day it is filed. The Vienna authority reported an average of 52 days across all third-country procedures in 2025, and that figure is worth more than the maxima.

   What arrives is a decision. Where the application was filed abroad, the representation informs you; where it was filed in Austria, the authority does. Because a residence title is granted on conditions, the decision records that the conditions were met — and, for the quota title, that a place was available.

7. You enter Austria and collect the card

   A residence title is a card, and the card is issued in Austria. If the application was approved while you were abroad and you need a visa to enter, you apply at the representation within three months of being notified for a Visa D to enter and collect the title (§ 23(2) NAG) — a single-entry visa valid for four months (§ 25 FPG), fee €195 — enter, and collect the card in person from the authority within six months of the notice; if it is not collected in that time the procedure is closed (§ 23(3) NAG). If you enter without a visa, you simply come and collect, within the same six months. Your fingerprints are taken for the card if they were not taken at filing, and the passport is shown in the original.

   The card is issued for the route’s term — 24 months for the two cards (a shorter contract plus three months where the contract is shorter), twelve months for most other titles at first — and your right to work, where the title carries one, starts with it.

8. After arrival — registration, insurance, integration, renewal

   Within 3 days of moving into your accommodation you register the address with the registration authority on the Meldezettel form (§ 3 Meldegesetz); everyone in Austria does, and the fine for not doing so runs to €726. Health insurance starts with employment for an employee; everyone else keeps the private cover the application was granted on, or takes voluntary self-insurance with the ÖGK once registered — bearing in mind that at the full rate self-insurance pays for treatment only after a waiting period (three months under § 124(1) ASVG, extendable to six by the insurer’s statutes — oesterreich.gv.at gives six), which the authority does not accept as cover: the private policy has to run until the self-insurance pays.

   The Red-White-Red Card, the Red-White-Red Card plus, the settlement permits (other than the researcher’s) and the “Family Member” title carry Module 1 of the Integration Agreement — the ÖIF integration examination at A2, which tests German and the basic values of the legal and social order together — to be fulfilled within 2 years of the first such title (§ 9 Integrationsgesetz). A Red-White-Red Card, or a school-leaving qualification giving university entrance, counts as fulfilment. The EU Blue Card and the settlement permit “Researcher” carry no Module 1 obligation; for their holders it begins with the Red-White-Red Card plus. Renewal is applied for before the title expires, and at the earliest three months before (§ 24(1) NAG). For the Red-White-Red Card plus, the settlement permits (other than the researcher’s) and the “Family Member” title, the next card is issued for three years once Module 1 is fulfilled and two years of settlement have passed (§ 20(1a) NAG); a renewed EU Blue Card runs two years (§ 42(4) NAG), and the temporary permits twelve months. An employed-category Red-White-Red Card or an EU Blue Card held for two years, with 21 of the last 24 months in employment under its conditions, can be converted on application into the Red-White-Red Card plus (a self-employed key worker moves to a settlement permit, a start-up founder to the plus card on the company’s own test); after five years of settlement, with Module 2 and the general requirements, permanent residence can be applied for.

How long it takes