Procedure · Visado para la búsqueda de empleo
Job-seeker visa for Spain (visado de búsqueda de empleo)
Twelve months of residence in Spain to look for work, with no job offer needed to enter. Once you find one, the employer's permit application is decided in ten days.
Checked at source ·
- Official fee
- Consular visa fee. The quota and the selection system are set each year by ministerial order, not by the Regulation
- Official name
- Visado para la búsqueda de empleo
- Forms
- —
- Steps
- 10
- Documents required
- 4
Source: Boletín Oficial del Estado — Real Decreto 1155/2024, por el que se aprueba el Reglamento de la Ley Orgánica 4/2000 (texto consolidado). Checked .
Who needs one
Non-EU nationals who want to look for work in Spain without a job offer — in particular the children and grandchildren of Spaniards by origin, who have a class of this visa to themselves.
Step by step
What the visa actually gives you
It authorises you to travel to Spain to look for work during a residence period of twelve months. That is residence, not a tourist stay: you are lawfully resident for the year while you look. What it does not give you is the right to start working the day you find something — the job has to be converted into a work permit first, and the next steps are how.
Check which of the two classes you fall into
There are only two. The first is for children or grandchildren of a Spaniard by origin. The second is limited to particular occupations and particular parts of Spain. If you fit neither, this visa is not available to you and the ordinary route is an employer applying for a work permit on your behalf before you travel.
If you are the child or grandchild of a Spaniard by origin
This class exists because that group is exempt from the assessment of the national employment situation under article 40 of the immigration statute. In practice that means the job you eventually find does not have to be in a shortage occupation and no employer has to advertise the vacancy first. The number of visas, how holders are selected and how applications are presented are all set in the annual ministerial order on collective hiring at origin.
If you are applying under the occupations and territories class
The annual order can approve a number of job-seeker visas restricted to certain occupations and certain territorial areas. Exceptionally, where unforeseen circumstances arise in the labour market, the Directorate-General for Migration Management can allow the resulting work permit to be granted in a different area or occupation than the one the visa was tied to.
Apply at the consulate, under the general visa rules
The requirements are those of article 38 — the general long-stay visa conditions — plus whatever specific ones the ministerial order sets for that year's quota. There is no employer, no contract and no labour-market test at this stage, because the whole point of the visa is that you do not yet have a job.
Where: Spanish consulate for your place of residence
When you find a job, the employer applies — and you need no new visa
Once you have a contract, the employer files an application for an initial residence and work permit in your favour. The ordinary employed-permit procedure applies, with one crucial difference: no visa is required, because you are already lawfully in Spain on this one.
Ten days, not three months
The maximum period to decide and notify that application is ten days. An ordinary initial work permit takes three months. This is the single biggest practical advantage of the route and it is the part least often mentioned: an employer weighing up whether hiring you is worth the wait is looking at a fortnight, not a quarter.
Your residence does not expire while you wait
If the employer files during the validity of the job-seeker visa, that filing extends your residence until the procedure is decided. The twelve months cannot quietly run out while the office is reading the file, which is what would otherwise make a short visa dangerous.
Register with Social Security within one month
The permit granted is conditional on your affiliation and registration with Social Security within one month of the decision being notified. Once that condition is met the authorisation takes effect and counts as an initial residence and work permit — with all the consequences that carries, including that its renewal runs four years and lifts the occupational and regional limits.
What happens if you do not find work
The visa authorises a residence period of twelve months for the purpose of looking. It is not a permit that renews itself on the strength of having tried. If no contract has produced a permit application by the end of it, the residence ends with it.
Documents you need
The general long-stay visa file
The requirements of article 38 of the Regulation, as for any residence visa: passport, criminal record certificate, medical certificate and the rest of the standard file.
Proof of descent from a Spaniard by origin
For that class of the visa: documentation establishing that you are the child or grandchild of a Spanish national by origin.
Whatever the annual ministerial order requires
The specific requirements, the quota and the selection system are set by the order approving collective hiring at origin for that year, and change with it.
For the permit stage: the employment contract
Filed by the employer with the application for the initial residence and work permit, once you have found the job.
Common questions
Can I go to Spain to look for work without a job offer?
With this visa, yes — it authorises a residence period of twelve months for exactly that. But it exists in only two classes: one for children and grandchildren of Spaniards by origin, and one restricted to particular occupations and territories set by ministerial order each year.
How long does it last?
Twelve months of residence. If an employer files a work permit application while it is still valid, your residence is extended until that application is decided, so the twelve months cannot expire underneath you.
Do I need a new visa once I find a job?
No. The employer applies for the initial residence and work permit and no visa is required, because you are already lawfully resident in Spain. The application is decided within ten days rather than the usual three months.
I am the grandchild of a Spaniard. Does that help?
It gives you a class of this visa to yourself. Children and grandchildren of Spaniards by origin are exempt from the assessment of the national employment situation, so the job you find does not have to be in a shortage occupation and the vacancy does not have to be advertised first.
How many of these visas are there?
The Regulation does not say. The number, the selection system and how applications are presented are set every year in the ministerial order approving collective hiring at origin, so the answer changes annually and any fixed figure you are quoted is either that year's or invented.
Can I work while I am looking?
Not on the visa itself. It authorises residence for the purpose of looking for work. Working lawfully requires the permit that the employer applies for once you have the contract, and that permit takes effect on your registration with Social Security.
What happens if the twelve months end with nothing?
The residence ends with them. This visa does not renew on the basis of having searched, so the twelve months are the whole of it unless a job has produced a permit application in the meantime.
Sources
Every fact on this page comes from one of these. We do not cite other guides, because a copy gives us no way to notice when the original changes.
- Real Decreto 1155/2024, por el que se aprueba el Reglamento de la Ley Orgánica 4/2000 (texto consolidado)Boletín Oficial del Estado
- Cita previa de extranjeríaMinisterio de Política Territorial y Función Pública
This is information, not advice
Your own case depends on your nationality, your current status and your history with the administration — none of which a web page can see. Confirm anything that matters with the responsible authority or a qualified professional before you act on it.