Change of employer in Lithuania: the 3 and 6 month windows explained

A foreign national holding a temporary residence permit for work in Lithuania may change employer. Under article 44(8) of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens, the application must be filed no later than 3 months after the employment relationship ends, or 6 months where the permit has been held for more than 2 years. The Migration Department under the Ministry of the Interior decides.

When the window starts, and which window applies

The clock starts on the day the employment relationship ends, not on the day the new employer signs an offer or the file goes into MIGRIS. Article 44(8) speaks about applying, meaning filing the application, not about receiving the decision. An application filed on the last day of the third month is on time even if the Migration Department spends several more weeks reviewing it.

Which window applies is decided by how long the permit has been held, not by how long the person worked for the outgoing employer. Someone who has lived in Lithuania on a temporary residence permit for 26 months and worked 4 months at the last site has the 6 month window. Someone who received a first permit 14 months ago has 3 months. Employers confuse these two figures more than any other point here, so the first question when taking a worker over from another company is not how long he worked there, but when the Migration Department first issued his permit.

The second deadline is shorter and matters more. Under article 44(9)(2), the obligation to leave Lithuania does not apply if the notification under article 36(1)(3) is filed within 10 working days of the termination of employment. That notification reports the end of the employment relationship. Miss those 10 working days and the change of employer window is still formally open, but the duty to leave the country has already attached, and the case continues with the worker outside Lithuania.

When the worker may actually start

This is where employers lose money. Under article 62(4) of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens, a foreign national may work only for the employer that undertook to employ him and only in the job function stated in the permit. Until the Migration Department has approved the change of employer, work at the new company is illegal employment, even with the application filed and every document in order.

The practical consequence is plain: the signed contract with the new employer and the first legal working day are two different dates. A production manager who puts the worker on a machine the day after signature is not carrying that risk alone. The State Labour Inspectorate treats the case as illegal employment on both sides, and the Migration Department sees the same fact while reviewing the very file that is meant to legalise the move.

Article 62(4) covers a change of job function at the same employer as well. A welder moved to a warehouse role inside the same company is working outside his permit. Article 44(10) provides that a holder of a permit under article 44(1)(2) or 44(1)(3) may change employer, or change the job function with the same employer, under the procedure set by the Migration Department, which is the same filing route.

Three deadlines in one table

The application goes through MIGRIS, the Migration Department's electronic service system, together with the new employer's undertaking and the contract data. The state fee for examining a temporary residence permit application in 2026 is 160 euro under the ordinary procedure and double that under the urgent one. Check the exact tariff for the specific service in the Migration Department's fee section before paying, since the amounts are set by a government resolution and are revised.

A change of employer is not a new permit procedure, so the salary and quota requirements that applied to the original permit continue to apply. The employer path from offer to start date is covered in Lithuania's temporary residence permit for work. The refusal patterns that catch employers across EU corridors are collected in work permit refusal failure modes, and the processing ranges by country are in EU work permit timelines.

Taking a worker over from another Lithuanian company means planning against three dates: the end of employment, the notification day, and the Migration Department decision day. Between the second and the third, the person cannot work. The transfer calendar is therefore counted from the permit issue date, not from the day the candidate accepts the offer.