Spain's migration flow agreements and the origin countries in 2026

Orden ISM/1547/2025 of 23 December, which governs collective hiring at origin for 2026, steers vacancies preferentially towards eight countries holding an agreement on the regulation and management of migration flows and, subsidiarily, towards twelve countries with collaboration instruments. It runs until 31 December 2026.

The order was published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado on 30 December 2025. That list is not a diplomatic curiosity. It determines where a selection panel actually exists, where a labour attaché takes part in the process, and where the consulate is set up to issue visas at volume.

The two lists in article 19.2

Article 19.2 adds that the list grows with any country signing an agreement while the order is in force. Article 19.4 explains what being on it does in practice: selection is run by a panel made up of representatives of the Dirección General de Gestión Migratoria or the labour attaché office of the diplomatic mission, the competent bodies of the origin country, and, at the employer's choice, its own representatives or a business organisation. The offering employer must take part where the volume of the vacancy or the professional profile requires it, and wherever practical tests are to be held.

The same Dirección General de Gestión Migratoria maintains information channels with the authorities of those countries and promotes jobseeker databases at origin, under article 19.2. That is why a Huelva berry campaign with Moroccan workers can be assembled in weeks and an equivalent campaign without an agreement cannot.

What happens with a country on neither list

It is not excluded. Article 23.c) of the same order provides that where named vacancies are directed at workers from countries with which Spain has signed no legal instrument on migration flows, the labour units process them under the general procedure for such vacancies, having first obtained authorisation from the Dirección General de Gestión Migratoria. It adds expressly that the absence of such instruments is not an obstacle to processing or to a decision.

For the corridors Werklist works in, that is the decisive sentence. Nepal and India appear on neither list. The Philippines does appear, but on the second one, the collaboration instruments, which does not carry a selection panel constituted with origin country bodies on the same terms as an agreement. A Spanish employer assembling a Nepali welding crew or an Indian warehouse shift cannot lean on the structure of preferential collective hiring, although the order does not shut the door on a named vacancy with prior authorisation.

The workable route in those cases is the ordinary regime: an initial residence and work authorisation applied for by the employer at the immigration office of the province where the workplace sits, with the national employment situation evidenced either through the catalogue of hard to fill occupations or through the certificate of insufficiency of jobseekers, followed by a visa at the consulate with jurisdiction over the worker's residence. It is slower, it is priced per file rather than per campaign, and it carries none of the joint processing that makes the collective route efficient at volume.

What the order demands of any collective vacancy

Collective hiring is not open to small operations. Article 2.4 requires a minimum of ten posts per vacancy, though it allows two or more employers to pool vacancies to reach that figure. Article 2.5 requires the posts in one vacancy to share homogeneous characteristics and lists what must coincide: the country the hire is directed at, the occupation code, the employer, the province of the workplace, the start date and, in circular migration, the end date, the campaign phase and the type of processing.

Article 5.1 closes the circle with the grounds for refusal. Collective hiring is refused to a company that in the two immediately preceding years breached the guarantees in articles 4 and 7 of the order, withdrew after the Dirección General de Gestión Migratoria had authorised the selection process in the origin country without sufficient cause, or breached contractual obligations under the Estatuto de los Trabajadores. A withdrawal after a selection panel has flown to Tangier or Bogotá weighs for two campaigns.

How these pieces combine with the seasonal instrument is set out in the seasonal authorisation and the nine month limit, and the map of agreements Nepal holds with European destinations in Nepal's bilateral labour agreements. Werklist checks which list a country sits on before the vacancy is drafted, and sets out that order of work on our employers page.

Eight agreement countries and twelve collaboration countries leave most of South Asia outside. Knowing that on day one changes the design of the project; knowing it in month three changes the campaign.