Albania type D work visa: applying on e-visa.al and the single permit link

The type D visa is Albania's visa for stays longer than 90 days within a 180 day period. According to the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, it is filed only online at e-visa.al or through the single permit service on e-albania.al. The visa grants entry; the right to work comes with the single permit.

Who needs a type D visa and what it allows

The visa regime is published by the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, known as MEPJ. Under that regime a type D visa is issued to a foreign national who requires a visa and intends to stay in Albania longer than 90 days within 180 days, which is exactly the position of a worker arriving on an employment contract.

The point employers most often confuse is the division of roles between two documents. The type D visa lets the foreign national enter Albanian territory and stay lawfully until the residence permit is issued. It is not a work authorisation in itself. The right to work for a named employer comes from the single permit, which combines residence and work and is set out step by step in the single permit employer procedure.

The usual sequence for a hire runs like this: the employer prepares the contract and supporting documents, the worker applies for the type D visa from his own country, enters Albania on that visa and then files the residence permit application. The deadline for that last step is 30 days from entry into the territory under law no. 79/2021 on foreigners. A worker who misses it holds an irregular stay even though he entered on a valid visa.

The online application and the review deadlines

The application is electronic only. According to MEPJ, the foreign national completes the form on e-visa.al or opens the request through the single permit service on e-albania.al, uploads the required documents and pays the fee. There is no paper file handed in at a counter before that step; the diplomatic mission enters the process once the application is registered online.

The deadlines MEPJ publishes for 2026 split into two parts, and that split matters for planning.

The decision clock starts from the date the fee is paid, not from the date the worker opened the account or uploaded the first document. A file started on Monday and paid on Friday carries Friday as its reference date. That is why an application which looks ten days old can still sit inside the legal deadline.

Note also that the decision deadline depends on the type of link: 5 working days when the application travels with the single permit and 4 working days when it travels with the residence permit. The difference is one working day, but for a group of twenty workers arriving in a wave, that day moves the arrival week.

Where the calendar breaks

Three failure modes repeat on third country hires, and all of them concern the order of steps rather than the content of the file.

The first is entering without a type D visa in the hope that the single permit will fix everything after arrival. If the worker's nationality requires a visa, entry under another regime does not substitute for the long stay visa and forces the worker to leave the country to correct it.

The second is leaving the fee payment until last. Since the decision deadline runs from payment, every day of delay in paying is a day added to the arrival date.

The third is the 30 day deadline after entry. The worker arrives, starts work, and the residence permit application slips while the employer chases one missing document. On day 31 that same worker is exposed to a visit from the State Labour Inspectorate, with the consequences described in labour inspection of foreign workers.

Fee levels and the full elapsed time from offer to first working day are collected in the cost and timeline of hiring a foreign worker, and the file structure an international employer prepares is described on the employers page.

The type D visa and the single permit are two steps in one chain, tied together by the payment date at one end and the 30 day deadline at the other. An employer who keeps both dates on the same calendar knows when the worker can actually start.