Poland rewrote its rules for foreign workers in 2025: the work permit is electronic, the labour-market test is gone, the fines are higher and the contract has to be on paper before the first shift. For a Filipino hire the permit is rarely the problem — the appointment at the Polish Embassy in Manila is. This page is the process from brief to first working day as it works in October 2026.
Since 1 June 2025 a Polish employer hires a Filipino on a work permit type A applied for electronically through praca.gov.pl at the voivodeship office for the place of work: no labour-market test, no starosta opinion, pay at least the statutory minimum and not lower than comparable employees, a written contract before work begins in a language the worker understands, a validity of up to three years, a fee of PLN 400 for work longer than three months (PLN 200 for up to three months) since 1 December 2025 (Regulation of 20 November 2025, Dz.U. 2025 poz. 1622). The statutory decision time is one month (two in complex cases); the national average in practice has lengthened to about 81 days in April 2026, and it varies by voivodeship. With the permit the worker applies for a national visa D through the Embassy's visa application centres in the Philippines — where appointment capacity, not the permit, is the real bottleneck of the Polish route — and, once in Poland, may switch to a temporary residence and work permit filed only through the MOS system since 27 April 2026. The declaration route (oświadczenie) that makes Poland fast for Ukrainians is not available to Philippine nationals.
The Act of 20 March 2025 (in force 1 June 2025) also widened the refusal grounds — employers with social-security or tax arrears, fictitious businesses, employers that would direct the worker to a third party without temporary-worker status — and raised the penalties for illegal employment to PLN 3,000–50,000, scaled by the number of foreigners concerned, with PLN 1,000–3,000 for a missing written contract, translation or notification. Since 8 July 2026 a change from a civil-law contract to an employment contract no longer needs a new permit if the other terms stay the same. A draft ministerial list of deficit occupations with a simplified procedure was shelved in June 2026; occupations remain open by default.
The practical bottleneck is visa-appointment capacity in the Philippines. Employment-visa appointments are currently handled through BLS International's visa application centres in Metro Manila and Cebu, with slots released by the Embassy according to published schedules and allocated on a first-come, first-served basis; the Embassy has stated (notice of 3 December 2024) that it has no possibility to add further appointment capacity, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the same on 24 January 2025 after 6,183 work visas had been issued to Filipinos in 2024. We therefore prepare each worker's account and documents before the permit is issued, take slots at the first release after it, and plan employers' start dates with a visa buffer measured in months rather than weeks — and we say so before a contract is signed.
The employer files the permit, signs the contract and, if the worker later applies for the single permit, signs Załącznik nr 1 electronically in MOS; the worker files the visa in Manila and the single permit in Poland; we prepare the files, coordinate the voivodeship office and the Embassy calendar, run the Philippine side through MWO Prague and the DMW, and brief the worker in writing on the gross pay, the deductions, the housing and the climate. Poland does not regulate immigration advice as the UK or Australia do, so no third-party licence is needed for this coordination.
Recruitment runs through our own DMW-licensed agency, Prime Search Manpower Agency Inc. in Makati (licence DMW-027-LB-11182024): your company is accredited at the Migrant Workers Office in Prague, which has handled labour matters for Poland since December 2021, the job order is registered with the DMW, and every worker leaves Manila with a verified contract, medical clearance, pre-departure orientation and an Overseas Employment Certificate. Recruitment follows the employer-pays principle: no applicant pays for an interview, a trade test or a place on a shortlist. Your company is the employer from day one; we never employ or lease the workers.
Everything here is subject to the Act of 20 March 2025 on the conditions for entrusting work to foreigners, the Act on Foreigners, the voivode's practice in force, the Polish Embassy in Manila's appointment rules, Polish labour law and Philippine DMW rules.
No — the starosta's labour-market information was abolished on 1 June 2025. A starosta may set a list of occupations closed to foreigners in a difficult local market, approved by the voivode; none had been set at the time of review.
No. Since 1 December 2025 the declaration (oświadczenie) covers only citizens of Armenia, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine. Filipinos need the work permit type A.
One month by statute, two in complex cases; in practice the national average was about 81 days in April 2026 and differs by voivodeship. We quote the current figure for your office.
Visa-appointment capacity in the Philippines: slots at the BLS visa application centres are released per the Embassy's published schedule, first come, first served, and the Embassy has stated it cannot add capacity. We plan start dates with that buffer.
Not for the permit or the visa. The contract must be given in a language the worker understands before signing; English is the working language in most plants, with Polish safety vocabulary briefed before departure.
General information for employers, not legal or migration advice. Rules change; we re-verify before each hire.