Employers scrambling to secure farmhands and hospitality staff for the 2026 season were given just six hours of opportunity on 20 November when the Czech Embassy in Cairo quietly opened its online calendar for long-term visas for seasonal employment. Between 10:00 and 16:00 EET the mission accepted a maximum of five applications—the entire monthly quota for Egypt—before shutters came back down.
Seasonal-work visas let non-EU citizens live and work in Czechia for up to nine months in agriculture, food processing, tourism and related sectors that struggle to attract local labour. Successful applicants must leave the Schengen Area once the visa expires and may only change employers within the same sector. Demand from Egyptian workers has soared since pandemic border curbs were lifted; recruiters estimate at least 100 candidates compete for each available slot.
![Czech Embassy in Cairo grants only five seasonal-work visa appointments in surprise six-hour window]()
The micro-quota illustrates how Prague’s migration-management system has tightened since July 2025, when the government scrapped most “walk-in” employee-card submissions outside its Targeted Economic Migration Programmes. Egyptian applicants once able to file 30 employee-card requests a month are now funnelled into the seasonal-work channel where supply cannot keep pace with demand.
For Czech companies the bottleneck is acute. Growers of early-spring strawberries in South Moravia typically hire hundreds of pickers and must finalise contracts by January to organise housing and insurance. Immigration counsel are urging employers to coordinate closely with licensed recruiters, pre-prepare contracts in bilingual format and upload documentation in the exact PDF sequence demanded by the embassy; incomplete files will be rejected without recourse until December’s quota opens.
Industry groups warn that if administrative hurdles persist, businesses could shift contracts to neighbouring Poland or Slovakia, both of which offer larger seasonal-work quotas and longer booking windows. The Confederation of Industry has asked the Interior Ministry to delegate initial screening to accredited agencies to raise throughput without compromising security checks.
Seasonal-work visas let non-EU citizens live and work in Czechia for up to nine months in agriculture, food processing, tourism and related sectors that struggle to attract local labour. Successful applicants must leave the Schengen Area once the visa expires and may only change employers within the same sector. Demand from Egyptian workers has soared since pandemic border curbs were lifted; recruiters estimate at least 100 candidates compete for each available slot.
The micro-quota illustrates how Prague’s migration-management system has tightened since July 2025, when the government scrapped most “walk-in” employee-card submissions outside its Targeted Economic Migration Programmes. Egyptian applicants once able to file 30 employee-card requests a month are now funnelled into the seasonal-work channel where supply cannot keep pace with demand.
For Czech companies the bottleneck is acute. Growers of early-spring strawberries in South Moravia typically hire hundreds of pickers and must finalise contracts by January to organise housing and insurance. Immigration counsel are urging employers to coordinate closely with licensed recruiters, pre-prepare contracts in bilingual format and upload documentation in the exact PDF sequence demanded by the embassy; incomplete files will be rejected without recourse until December’s quota opens.
Industry groups warn that if administrative hurdles persist, businesses could shift contracts to neighbouring Poland or Slovakia, both of which offer larger seasonal-work quotas and longer booking windows. The Confederation of Industry has asked the Interior Ministry to delegate initial screening to accredited agencies to raise throughput without compromising security checks.
