What the 2025 Dutch Startup Visa Numbers Actually Say

The figures, as the report prints them

*De Staat van Migratie 2026*, from the Ministry of Asylum and Migration, is the government's account of migration in 2025. Figure 14, on printed page 44, is sourced to the IND. It covers applications and decisions on innovative startups:

The report does not publish a separate count of startup permits granted. It publishes the approval percentage next to the decision count. Do not multiply 21% by 960 and treat the result as an official grant total. The report does not print that product.

The same paragraph gives the government's explanation, in these words: the increase in applications and the approval percentage of 21% "hangen samen met" (are connected with) improper use of the startup scheme in order to obtain procedural residence ("oneigenlijk gebruik van de startup-regeling om procedureel verblijf te verkrijgen").

Procedural residence, in this setting, means lawful stay while an application is being processed. The report presents that as the account of the 2025 pool. It is not a finding about any named founder. It also does not say how many of the 1,070 applications the IND classified as improper, and it does not publish a separate approval rate for applications it treated as genuine businesses.

How to read 21%, and how not to

Three limits sit in the table itself.

Decisions are not the same cohort as applications. Figure 14 counts applications and decisions in separate columns. It does not say that the 960 decisions in 2025 were decisions on the 1,070 applications filed in 2025. The same is true of 280 decisions and 340 applications in 2024. A surge in filings can land in a later year's decisions. An approval percentage beside the decision column is a rate for decisions taken in that year, not a rate for the filing cohort of that year.

The rate describes the pool, not one file. The report ties the low 2025 rate to the composition of the pool: improper use, alongside genuine applications. A founder who meets the scheme is not assigned a 21% probability by this table. The IND still decides the individual file. RVO advises the IND on the startup route. Neither body publishes a personal success score.

Nearby percentages in the same chapter are different statistics. Figure 17 records objections. For the labour category, the share of objections upheld was 17% in 2024 and 57% in 2025. The report attributes that jump to a joint court case about the level of the application fee, not to startup decisions. Do not paste 57% next to the startup scheme.

The report also says the startup scheme was evaluated earlier, and that the recommendations from that evaluation will be worked out in 2026. Figure 14 does not turn those recommendations into a new approval rule. Check the live IND and RVO pages before you file. This article records what those pages said when it was reviewed on 23 September 2026.

What a genuine startup file still has to show

The scheme did not disappear in the 2025 numbers. The same section of the report describes it as a temporary residence permit for a founder setting up an innovative business in the Netherlands, with a facilitator. The founder gets one year to establish the business and build it further, must meet the general conditions, and must file a step-by-step plan with a recognised facilitator. The facilitator and the startup must be in the Chamber of Commerce trade register. The startup must be demonstrably innovative.

RVO's conditions page, checked by RVO on 19 June 2025, lists five conditions:

1. Work with a reliable, expert facilitator recognised by RVO.
2. An innovative product or service.
3. A step-by-step plan from idea to business.
4. Both the founder and the facilitator registered with the Kamer van Koophandel.
5. Sufficient means to live in the Netherlands.

IND application form 7558, version 2026/2, makes those conditions operational. You may qualify if you show the product or service is innovative, technological or not; you have a reliable and expert facilitator; RVO gives the IND a positive recommendation on that innovation and on the facilitator's reliability and expertise; both parties are registered with the Chamber of Commerce; you have lasting and sufficient means of support when you apply; and there is no family relationship up to the third degree between you and the facilitator.

The step-by-step plan on that form has to cover three things:

• Your role and tasks. The role must be active. Shareholder or financier alone is not enough.
• The steps you will take in the first year to move from idea to business.
• Why the product or service is innovative. The form says it is innovative if it has at least one of three features: it is new to the Netherlands; it uses new technology in production, distribution, or marketing; or it uses a new organisational set-up and way of working. The form's examples include a self-developed product, a new product-market combination, and social innovation. The word "innovative" on a cover page is not one of the three features.

The signed facilitator agreement has to describe facilitation that is built for this founder, not a generic package. The terms must not block a healthy development of the business. The facilitator may not hold a majority interest in the startup. On expertise, the form asks for at least two years of experience facilitating innovative startups, and for at least two people who can do that work, unless RVO gave a positive recommendation on that facilitator in the year before the application. In that case the form says you need not file the expertise and reliability evidence again.

Means of support are evidenced according to who pays: the founder, the facilitator, or a third party. The euro threshold is the IND income rule in force on the day you apply. Do not borrow a highly skilled migrant salary figure and put it in a founder file. See Is my business innovative enough? and What is the RVO step-by-step plan?.

The startup year is not extended

Staatscourant 2025, 11576, the regulation of the Minister of Asylum and Migration of 8 April 2025, published 9 April 2025, restates the legal position. A founder under article 3.30, sixth paragraph, of the Aliens Decree 2000 receives a permit that cannot be extended, for a maximum of one year. The provision cited is article 3.58, first paragraph, under c, of that decree.

The next residence purpose is work as a self-employed person, under article 3.30, first and second paragraphs. In the note's own words, after the first year the person must meet the conditions of the self-employed scheme. That is a new application, not a renewal of the startup permit. Read What happens after the Dutch Startup Visa year?.

RVO's transition page, last checked by RVO on 14 February 2022, says the same thing in operational language: you cannot extend the permit on the startup scheme. To move to the self-employed scheme, RVO says you need the startup residence permit and a statement from the facilitator that the guidance, over at least three months, was completed positively. RVO says that statement stands in for at least the minimum score on personal experience, the business plan, and added value for the Dutch economy, and that you must still meet the ordinary self-employed conditions on the IND site. The page is older than the April 2025 regulation. If the two ever diverge, the IND decides the permit, and the later regulation is the safer text on what the follow-on permit requires.

The first self-employed extension is a separate rule

The April 2025 regulation does not lengthen the startup year. It changes the means test at a later moment: the first extension of the self-employed permit that directly follows a startup permit.

The ordinary sustainability test looks backward. The explanatory note describes a founder who, at extension, must have drawn at least the minimum from the business for 18 months before the extension, with those means still available a year ahead. A startup year often produces little or no profit, because the year is spent on the plan, investors, and market work. Looking back 18 months from the first self-employed extension would often fail that test even where the business has a credible next two years.

For that first extension only, the regulation says means from self-employment are also treated as sustainable when the Minister finds that the continuity and solvability of the business are sufficiently safeguarded. The Minister asks RVO for advice and, the note says, usually follows it. RVO looks at whether there is enough market potential for the coming two years despite low gross profit or a low salary paid out, using annual accounts, forecasts, and the Chamber of Commerce registration. Contracts or a business plan can support the forecasts. Every later extension goes back to the ordinary means test.

That is a cash-flow and continuity question at the first self-employed extension. It is not a second startup year, and it is not a waiver of the innovation, facilitator, or points assessment on the original applications.

Self-employed, DAFT, and the 1,520 are not this scheme

The report's section on self-employed admission, immediately before the startup section, is a different IND test. There must be a substantial interest for the Dutch economy, scored on three parts: the founder's personal experience, the business plan, and added value for the Netherlands. The points system is not universal.

The report says American and Japanese founders can rely on the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty or the Dutch-Japanese trade treaty, which have more favourable provisions. It records 1,090 DAFT applications by Americans granted in 2025. It does not give a matching count for the Japanese treaty. It says Turkish self-employed founders are not assessed under the points system, because of the EU-Turkey Association Agreement. It does not, in that paragraph, describe the test that replaces the points. Use the live IND self-employed page for the route that matches nationality. US founders should also read Startup Visa vs DAFT.

A different number is easy to misread as the startup result. The labour-migration dashboard in the opening of the report, marked IND | 2025, counts residence permits granted to non-EU migrants in that labour panel:

The line is labelled self-employed, not startup. Figure 14 is the startup scheme, and it is reported as applications, decisions, and an approval percentage, not as this 1,520. Do not cite 1,520 as startup visa approvals. The dashboard marks the labour panel as +2% compared with 2024. That mark is on the panel. The report does not publish a +2% for the startup scheme. The knowledge-and-talent panel beside it is a separate set of permits, marked -6% compared with 2024.

One more product sits in the startup section and is still not the founder permit. The pilot residence permit for essential startup personnel runs until 1 June 2028. It is for an employee a young company needs. It is not an extension of the founder's one-year permit. The report says an evaluation is being studied before any decision on making that pilot permanent. See Did the Netherlands extend the essential startup personnel permit?.

What August 2026 does not update

The IND's monthly figures for August 2026 say the service received 1,100 new labour-migration applications that month and took 820 decisions. The IND defines that category as permits for paid employment, work as a self-employed person or startup, cross-border services, and Dutch-American Friendship Treaty applications. The page does not publish a startup-only approval rate. Those two totals cannot support a claim that startup approvals have recovered since 2025, or that they have fallen further.

What to do with the 2025 figures

Use them as a reason to test fit before you spend a year on the wrong route.

• If the file cannot explain the founder's active role, at least one of the three innovation features, the Dutch market, the first-year steps, the facilitator agreement, and the means, it is the kind of file the 2025 pool was full of. The report's integrity point is about that pool. It is not a reason for a complete file to stay unfiled.
• If the business is real but not innovative in the RVO sense, or there is no suitable facilitator, the startup scheme is the wrong first permit. Self-employed, DAFT, or the Japanese treaty may fit. Nationality, the business, and the evidence decide that. The word "startup" on a deck does not.
• Plan the year as a year that ends. The startup permit is not extended. The self-employed application, the facilitator statement, and the later means test are separate milestones. The April 2025 change helps only at the first extension of the self-employed permit that follows, and only on the sustainability of means.

NLVentureDesk looks at route and readiness before a full startup file: the claimed innovation, the founder's role, the facilitator relationship, the means, and a plan for the year and for what replaces it. If another route fits better, that should be clear before the application is built. The IND decides. We do not.

Official sources

• Ministry of Asylum and Migration, De Staat van Migratie 2026 (PDF)
• Staatscourant 2025, 11576 (9 April 2025)
• RVO: conditions for the foreign start-up residence permit
• RVO: moving on to the self-employed scheme
• IND form 7558, application for residence as a start-up (2026/2)
• IND monthly figures on regular migration, August 2026
• IND start-up residence permit
• IND residence permit for a self-employed person