Fursa.

Which visas actually lead to permanent residence

Last checked August 17, 2026

Plenty of routes let you live somewhere. Far fewer let you stay. This is what we have confirmed, and an honest count of what we have not read closely enough to say.

Living somewhere and staying somewhere

A work permit is permission to be somewhere on conditions, for a period, usually tied to an employer or an activity. Permanent residence is the removal of most of those conditions. Between them sits the question that decides whether a move is a job or a life, and it is the question route descriptions are vaguest about.

Vagueness here is not always evasion. Many routes genuinely have no defined pathway — you may in practice be able to switch onto one later, and whether you can depends on rules that will have changed by the time you get there. A route description that promises permanent residence it cannot guarantee is worse than one that says nothing.

The ones we have confirmed

These are the routes where we have read the official rules and found a defined path to permanent residence. As with everything on this site, it is the list we can stand behind rather than the longest list we could assemble.

Routes we have read as leading to permanent residence.

  • Australia

    Victorian State Nomination for the Skilled Nominated visa (subclass 190)

    The federal Skilled Nominated visa (subclass 190), granted by the Australian Government's Department of Home Affairs, allows nominated skilled migrants to live and work in Victoria as permanent residents, but before a person can lodge that federal visa application they must first obtain state nomination from the Vic…

    • Sponsorship not yet read
    • Leads to permanent residence

    View route details

  • Austria

    Red-White-Red Card — Skilled Workers in Shortage Occupations

    Austria's Red-White-Red Card for Skilled Workers in Shortage Occupations, governed by the Settlement and Residence Act and the Act Governing the Employment of Foreign Nationals, admits third-country citizens into occupations the Federal Minister of Labour and Economics promulgates each year in the shortage-occupatio…

    • Employer sponsor required
    • Leads to permanent residence

    View route details

  • Canada

    Agri-Food Pilot

    The Agri-Food Pilot, which allowed experienced non-seasonal workers in certain agriculture and agri-food occupations to gain permanent residence, has ended.

    • Sponsorship not yet read
    • Leads to permanent residence

    View route details

  • Canada

    Atlantic Immigration Program (AIP)

    The Atlantic Immigration Program is a pathway to permanent residence for skilled foreign workers and recent international graduates from Canadian Atlantic institutions seeking to work and live in one of Canada's four Atlantic provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, or Newfoundland and Labrador.

    • Sponsorship not yet read
    • Leads to permanent residence

    View route details

  • Canada

    BC PNP Skilled Worker (Innovate / High Economic Impact priority)

    The British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program (BC PNP) Skilled Worker stream operates as an Express Entry-style registration pool: eligible candidates register, and the province periodically invites the highest-ranked to apply for a provincial nomination toward Canadian permanent residence.

    • Sponsorship not yet read
    • Leads to permanent residence

    View route details

  • Canada

    Global Talent Stream (GTS) work permit

    The Global Skills Strategy (GSS) offers faster, roughly two-week processing for certain highly skilled temporary workers' work permit applications, covering both LMIA-required (Global Talent Stream) and LMIA-exempt jobs, as well as accompanying family members, provided the application is submitted complete and onlin…

    • Employer sponsor required
    • Leads to permanent residence
    • About 2 months

    View route details

  • Cyprus

    EU Blue Card

    Cyprus has transposed the recast EU Blue Card Directive (Directive (EU) 2021/1883) into national law, establishing a legal pathway for third-country nationals to obtain an EU Blue Card residence-and-work permit for highly qualified employment.

    • Employer sponsor required
    • Leads to permanent residence

    View route details

  • Estonia

    EU Blue Card (MINT / shortage-IT threshold)

    Estonia's residence permit for employment, issued by the Police and Border Guard Board under the Aliens Act, is the temporary permit for non-EU/EEA/Swiss nationals working in Estonia — the umbrella covering skilled workers under general conditions, top specialists, start-up employees, scientists and lecturers, EU Bl…

    • Employer sponsor required
    • Leads to permanent residence

    View route details

  • France

    French Tech Visa for Founders (Passeport Talent - Porteur de projet)

    France's French Tech Visa for Founders, part of the "Talent – Innovative Economic Project" (Passeport Talent – Porteur de projet) residence-permit family, requires the founder to demonstrate an innovative economic project to be developed in France with official recognition of its innovative nature by the Regional Di…

    • Sponsorship not yet read
    • Leads to permanent residence

    View route details

  • Germany

    EU Blue Card (Germany)

    Germany's EU Blue Card, its legal basis in Section 18g of the Residence Act (implementing Directive (EU) 2021/1883), is a residence permit for university graduates and third-country nationals with specific professional experience, promoting the permanent immigration of highly-qualified workers.

    • Employer sponsor required
    • Leads to permanent residence

    View route details

  • Germany

    Skilled Worker Residence Permit (Fachkraft) — Vocational Training (§18a) / University Degree (§18b), with IT-Specialist Practical-Experience Substitution under §19c(2) AufenthG / §6 BeschV

    Germany's Skilled Worker Residence Permit lets non-EU/EEA/Swiss (‘third-country’) nationals work in Germany without the EU Blue Card's salary threshold, along two statutory tracks under the Residence Act (Aufenthaltsgesetz, AufenthG): Section 18a for skilled workers with a recognised vocational training qualificatio…

    • Employer sponsor required
    • Leads to permanent residence

    View route details

  • Ireland

    Critical Skills Employment Permit (CSEP)

    The Critical Skills Employment Permit is Ireland's flagship permit for occupations in short supply, issued under the Employment Permits Acts by the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment.

    • Sponsorship not yet read
    • Leads to permanent residence

    View route details

And what we have not read

We track over a thousand programmes and have extracted structured facts for around two hundred. For the remainder we cannot say whether permanent residence is available, and the honest consequence is that this list is a floor rather than a total.

That is worth stating plainly because the alternative is a familiar failure. A site that infers 'leads to PR' from a programme's name will list far more routes, be right most of the time, and be catastrophically wrong for the reader who plans five years around the exception.

If a route you care about is not here, that is a prompt to read its official page rather than evidence of anything. Every route we track links to that page.

There is a second reason the list is short, and it is about the rules rather than about us. A great many permits are silent on settlement because settlement is governed by a separate law with its own residence clock, and whether a particular permit's years count towards that clock is a question the permit's own page does not answer. Germany is the clearest case: the Niederlassungserlaubnis is set out in the Residence Act and carries different qualifying periods depending on which provision you fall under, none of which is visible from the page describing the permit you hold.

So the useful question is rarely "does this route lead to permanent residence". It is "does time on this permit count, and towards what". Those are the terms the date calculators here work in, because they are the terms the published rules are written in.

Common questions

Common questions

How long does permanent residence usually take?
Five years is the most common qualifying period in Europe, though several countries offer shorter paths for specific permits or language levels, and some are considerably longer. The date calculators here work it out for the UK, Germany and Ireland from the published rules.
Does permanent residence mean citizenship?
No. It is settled status without the passport. Naturalisation is a further step with its own residence requirement, usually longer, and often its own language and knowledge tests.
Why is your list of PR routes so short?
Because it only contains routes whose official rules we have actually read on this point. Where we have not read one closely enough, we leave it out rather than infer.