On 14 October 2026, Události — the main evening news programme of Czech Television, the country’s public broadcaster — ran a report on what it called “enormous” demand among Czech employers for workers from the Philippines. Czech firms exhausted the monthly quota of the Qualified Employee programme in July, August and September. Tomáš Surka, Managing Partner of Orienta Czech, commented in the report on how fast the market is changing and why the current limits no longer match demand.
Our own numbers tell the same story. In 2025 the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade admitted 4,791 Filipino workers into the programme, roughly 900 of them through Orienta Czech and our Philippine agency Prime Search. In 2026 we passed last year’s total as early as October: by mid-October, 968 workers recruited by us had started with Czech employers. September 2026 was a record month — 450 workers selected for Czech employers in a single month, and 629 across all markets Prime Search serves. For this autumn alone we plan to recruit more than 1,000 people for Czech companies.
The catch is the quota: 10,300 places a year, released month by month (just under 900 a month), and fully used every month since the summer. A rise to around 12,000 places a year is under discussion; Tomáš Surka calls it a step in the right direction, but well short of real demand from Czech industry — for 2027 he argues for 14–15 thousand. Czechia has a working, legal and vetted route for bringing in workers; administrative caps that no longer reflect reality should not be the bottleneck.
“Letos jsme loňský výsledek překonali už v říjnu. A podle všeho jsme pořád teprve na začátku.” — Tomáš Surka on the report (“This year we passed last year’s result as early as October. And by all accounts we are still only at the beginning.”)