Swiss companies that rely on highly-skilled foreign talent woke up to welcome continuity today (1 December 2025). In a decision adopted in its 28 November meeting and published overnight, the Federal Council confirmed that national ceilings for recruiting professionals from so-called third countries will remain unchanged in 2026. The amendment to the Ordinance on Admission, Residence and Gainful Activity (OASA) keeps the headline quota at 8 500 permits—4 500 B-residence permits for assignments longer than a year and 4 000 L-permits for stays of up to twelve months. The cabinet also rolled over the special envelopes that allow EU/EFTA service-providers posted to Switzerland for more than 120 days to obtain 3 000 L- and 500 B-permits, while UK nationals continue to benefit from a bespoke 1 400 L / 2 100 B package under the post-Brexit Services Mobility Agreement.
Business federations had lobbied hard for a stand-still after net immigration reached a 17-year high this summer. Engineering, biotech and fintech clusters around Zurich, Basel and Lake Geneva are still carrying more than 120 000 vacancies that cannot be filled locally, and the national unemployment rate is hovering near 2 percent. Employer groups warned that any reduction would choke growth just as Switzerland tries to cement its position as Europe’s innovation hub. By contrast, the right-leaning Swiss People’s Party (SVP) demanded deeper cuts, citing pressure on housing and infrastructure.
![Swiss Federal Council Freezes 2026 Work-Permit Quotas, Giving Employers Rare Planning Certainty]()
For global-mobility and HR teams the status quo offers rare predictability at budget-planning time. Cantonal migration offices will publish their individual allocations in the coming weeks—Zurich and Geneva traditionally receive the largest shares—and application portals will open on 2 January. Practitioners should nonetheless prepare early: more than half of the 2025 federal quota had already been consumed by end-September, and several cantons exhausted their sub-quotas before year-end. Authorities continue to scrutinise labour-market searches, salary benchmarking and assignment letters, so complete documentation remains critical.
Looking ahead, observers expect immigration ceilings to feature prominently in the October 2026 federal elections. The SVP has already filed a parliamentary initiative to reduce overall quotas by 10 percent and re-introduce labour-market preference tests that were abolished in 2021. For at least the next 13 months, however, multinationals can map 2026 staffing with confidence that Switzerland’s permit framework will look very familiar.
Business federations had lobbied hard for a stand-still after net immigration reached a 17-year high this summer. Engineering, biotech and fintech clusters around Zurich, Basel and Lake Geneva are still carrying more than 120 000 vacancies that cannot be filled locally, and the national unemployment rate is hovering near 2 percent. Employer groups warned that any reduction would choke growth just as Switzerland tries to cement its position as Europe’s innovation hub. By contrast, the right-leaning Swiss People’s Party (SVP) demanded deeper cuts, citing pressure on housing and infrastructure.
For global-mobility and HR teams the status quo offers rare predictability at budget-planning time. Cantonal migration offices will publish their individual allocations in the coming weeks—Zurich and Geneva traditionally receive the largest shares—and application portals will open on 2 January. Practitioners should nonetheless prepare early: more than half of the 2025 federal quota had already been consumed by end-September, and several cantons exhausted their sub-quotas before year-end. Authorities continue to scrutinise labour-market searches, salary benchmarking and assignment letters, so complete documentation remains critical.
Looking ahead, observers expect immigration ceilings to feature prominently in the October 2026 federal elections. The SVP has already filed a parliamentary initiative to reduce overall quotas by 10 percent and re-introduce labour-market preference tests that were abolished in 2021. For at least the next 13 months, however, multinationals can map 2026 staffing with confidence that Switzerland’s permit framework will look very familiar.
