Seasonal work in Latvia: employment rules for third country workers

Seasonal employment in Latvia is not a lighter regime. A seasonal worker from a third country still needs a vacancy that has stood free for ten working days at the State Employment Agency (NVA), an invitation approved by PMLP, and an employer who covers maintenance, including housing and healthcare. The EU framework is Directive 2014/36/EU, and the Immigration Law defines the seasonal worker in Section 1.

Why a short contract does not mean a short procedure

In agriculture, tourism and food processing the employer usually plans backwards from the harvest or the opening of the season: people are needed in May, so the paperwork starts in April. That arithmetic does not hold. The stages in seasonal hiring are the same as in permanent hiring, and none of them runs faster because the contract is short.

The first stage is registering the vacancy on the NVA CV and vacancy portal. A third country national may be hired into it only once it has stood free for at least 10 working days (pmlp.gov.lv, updated 19 February 2026), and the NVA opinion on the need to recruit a foreigner closes the stage. For seasonal posts the opinion tends to be predictable, since many seasonal roles genuinely go unfilled locally, but predictable is not the same as immediate: ten working days is a fortnight of calendar.

The second stage is the invitation. PMLP approves an invitation naming the specific foreign national, the post, the pay, and the employer's undertaking to cover maintenance. The decision takes five working days where the invitation concerns employment, or ten working days if the officer checks further. The request costs 17.00 euro on paper or 10.00 euro through latvija.lv, plus 85.00 euro for the right to employment, and each correction the employer later asks for costs 14.00 euro and restarts the review.

The third stage is the worker's own application, filed with PMLP or at a Latvian mission abroad depending on where the worker is. If the worker comes from a country where Latvia has no mission, the trip to the nearest embassy is a separate block of time, and it is the block most often left out of the plan.

Directive 2014/36/EU sets this framework at EU level and sets the protection floor with it: equal treatment on pay and working conditions, a written contract or work offer before entry, and adequate accommodation. The directive also requires member states to fix a maximum stay for seasonal work of between five and nine months in any twelve month period, so no seasonal route anywhere in the bloc runs longer than nine months. Latvia applies the framework through the Immigration Law, and a seasonal worker is not a lower category carrying lighter employer duties.

Housing and the costs the employer carries

Section 15, paragraph one of the Immigration Law puts health care, the stay in Latvia and the cost of return on the inviter, and in seasonal work that duty is the one most often underestimated. Seasonal work happens in rural regions where the rental market is thin, and housing for ten people in June in Vidzeme or Kurzeme does not appear within a week.

The insurance side is a document rather than a courtesy. The policy filed with the application must carry a minimum liability limit of 42 600 euro for the insured period and be valid for no less than the intended stay, and it must cover transport to the nearest medical institution and repatriation in case of serious illness or death (pmlp.gov.lv). For a crew of ten on a three month contract that is ten policies bought before anyone travels, not after.

So housing has to be arranged alongside the paperwork, not after it. An employer who starts looking for beds once the permit is in hand has lost three weeks out of a season that is three months long.

There is one figure to read at source before planning. The maximum duration of seasonal employment in Latvia and the list of seasonal occupations sit in Cabinet of Ministers regulations, inside the five to nine month band the directive allows, and both are checkable on likumi.lv for the year of filing. If your post is not on the list, the seasonal regime does not apply and the file runs through the ordinary employment route, where the permit now caps at one year under Section 27, paragraph one, point 12.

In a seasonal budget the housing and healthcare line is usually larger than the fees, and it is the part left out of the forecast.

Planning a season so people arrive on time

The method is simple: count forward from the day the vacancy is registered rather than backwards from the day a person has to be standing at the workplace, and put the embassy leg on its own line rather than folding it into the PMLP window. Ten working days at NVA, five working days for the invitation, then the review track you paid for. For a season opening in May that means registering the vacancy in winter, not in spring.

The second method is to return to the same workers next season. Someone who has worked for you knows the job, and their documents are familiar. The EU seasonal framework is built for repeat entry, and employers who run the same crew across several years spend less time on each season than they did on the first.

The full step by step route, which covers seasonal hiring too, is set out in the Latvia employment residence permit steps, and the article numbering after 15 September 2026 has to be checked as described in Latvia's new Immigration Law text. To compare seasonal corridors elsewhere, Greece's bilateral quotas for seasonal labour is the nearest parallel.

Seasonal hiring in Latvia works when it starts in winter. What breaks it is almost never a document. It is the calendar: a three month season does not forgive a three week delay.