The Serbian D visa for employment and the eKonzulat procedure

The D visa is Serbia's long stay visa, issued for up to 180 days, and it lets a third country national enter for work. The application is filed electronically through eKonzulat or the Unified Portal for Foreigners, and the consular fee is 50 euros in dinar equivalent.

The point employers miss is that the D visa is not an alternative to a work authorisation. It regulates the stay while the single permit file runs at the Ministry of Interior, and that file still needs a labour market test at the National Employment Service and a signed employment contract.

How the D visa fits into the permit chain

The Office for IT and eGovernment, which runs eKonzulat, describes the procedure as parallel. The moment a foreign national files for a D visa, they receive a case identification number, and the employer can use that number to start its own part of the procedure at the National Employment Service instead of waiting for an issued visa. That parallel track is the only real time saving in the whole chain, and it is lost by every employer who tells the worker to wait until the visa arrives.

The service is open to nationals of the countries Serbia hires from most, among them India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, China, Turkey and Egypt. Competence stays with the diplomatic and consular missions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but the file moves electronically, so no originals travel by post before a decision.

The volume explains why files bunch up in the same weeks. The Office for IT and eGovernment reported that in the first year of the Unified Portal for Foreigners, from February 2024 to January 2025, 41,319 single permit applications were decided positively, and more than 100,000 applications were filed during 2025. The peaks track the construction season and the summer months in hospitality, so an employer opening a file in March queues behind everyone else working to the same calendar. Moving the filing two weeks earlier usually saves more time than anything done inside the file itself.

Once the D visa is issued, the worker enters Serbia and the stay is regulated for the validity of the visa. If the work runs past that period, the file continues as an application for the single permit for temporary residence and work, with biometrics taken in person.

Deadlines, fees and who files what

Three documents get mixed up in practice even though they carry different deadlines and different authorities. The table separates them as the Unified Portal for Foreigners sets them out.

The D visa application can be filed by the worker or by the employer on the worker's behalf with written authorisation. The decision is taken by the competent diplomatic and consular mission, and the Unified Portal for Foreigners tracks case status through the electronic mailbox opened at registration.

The deadline for a decision on the single permit is set by the Law on Employment of Foreigners at 15 days from receipt of a complete application. The word complete carries the whole scheduling risk. The clock starts only once every annex is in the file, so one untranslated document moves the start date by a week or two.

Where files stall

The first mistake is sequence. An employer who waits for an issued visa before starting the labour market test at the National Employment Service adds several weeks by design, because the two procedures are built to run side by side. Under Article 16a of the Law on Employment of Foreigners the service issues its report within four days, and the test can be started up to 60 days before the permit application is filed.

The second mistake is the address of stay. The portal asks for an address in Serbia, and employers who are still negotiating accommodation enter a temporary one they later change. Changing the address after filing means a fresh residence registration and, as a rule, a supplement to the file.

The third is the passport. A D visa is not issued in a passport that expires before the planned stay ends, and renewing a passport in Nepal or India regularly takes longer than the visa procedure itself. Check passport validity before the file is opened at all.

The D visa is a short document with long consequences: it sets when the worker may enter, not how long they may work. The monthly cost that follows is set out in the cost of hiring a foreign worker in Serbia, the registration step that has to happen before the first shift in social insurance registration. If you are planning a corridor from Nepal, India or the Philippines into Serbia, our employer desk maps the deadlines per authority before flights are booked.