Hiring a Thai massage therapist in Poland: the medical register, the permit queue and what 2025 changed

Is Poland still open to Thai therapists?

Polish staffing agencies have started telling their foreign partners that hiring directly from outside the EU has become extremely difficult. For a Thai massage therapist that is half right. The half that is wrong matters more, because the legal route is simpler today than it was two years ago.

Poland is not a new destination for Thai workers. Labour ministry figures show 212 work permits issued to Thai citizens in 2015, 625 in 2019 and 732 in 2022. Next to the 251,525 permits Poland issued to all foreigners in 2025 that is a small number, and a steady one.

Three things changed in 2025. On 1 June a new act on employing foreigners abolished the labour-market test, so a salon no longer has to show that no Polish candidate came forward. The same act let each district head publish a list of occupations for which permits will be refused, and as of March 2026 not a single district had done so. On 1 December the permit fee for anything longer than three months went up from 100 to 400 PLN, and the simplified declaration that Polish employers use for Ukrainian staff now covers only Armenia, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine.

So the route is open. What makes it hard sits on either side of the permit: a medical register that changed what a massage job in Poland can be called, and a queue at the voivode's office that in Warsaw runs to months.

The register a Thai certificate cannot enter

The Act on certain medical professions came into force on 26 March 2024 and made technik masażysta one of fifteen regulated medical professions. The profession may be practised only from the day of entry in the Central Register of Persons Authorised to Practise a Medical Profession, and the title itself is protected by law. People already working had a transition period, extended once, that ended on 26 September 2025. Since then nobody works in the profession without the entry. In September 2026 the register held 16,689 masseurs.

Entry needs three things a Thai therapist does not have. A Polish vocational diploma from a technical or post-secondary school, or a foreign diploma recognised as equivalent under Polish higher-education law. Polish, spoken and written, at the level the work requires. And an electronic application, signed with a qualified e-signature, a trusted profile or a Polish e-ID, with a 100 PLN fee.

None of the three Thai qualifications fits that mould. The 150-hour course behind most spa registrations in Thailand, the 330-hour assistant programme and even the 800-hour clinical Nuad Thai route are not Polish diplomas, and we have found no route in the act that would carry them into the register. A Thai therapist in Poland will not be a technik masażysta, and a file that describes her as one is built to fail.

Where a spa position sits, and why the line is not in writing

This is the part most Polish operators have not looked at closely. The Ministry of Health regulation that lists what a technik masażysta does, in force since 14 June 2025, includes massage of a healthy person for prevention and relaxation, with no referral from a doctor or physiotherapist. Read on its own, that puts relaxation massage inside the profession.

Read next to the ministry's own correspondence, it is less clear. In May 2025 the deputy health minister told the Ombudsman that people who cannot be entered in the register may still provide services to the public as a business under PKD 96.23.Z, spa and sauna activity. That is the ministry pointing massage-trained people without the entry towards spa services, not away from them.

What we have not found is a written statement from the ministry that says plainly whether relaxation massage by a person without the entry falls outside the act or inside it. Until there is one, the line is drawn by how the business is set up and how the work is described, and operators who employ Thai therapists draw it the same way.

The business is a spa registered under PKD 96.23.Z, not a healthcare entity and not a physiotherapy practice. The therapist is never called technik masażysta, and the permit application never uses occupation code 325402, which is that regulated profession. The menu, the website and the booking system sell relaxation, tradition and wellbeing, never the treatment of pain, an injury or any condition. And the position on the permit, the employment contract and the treatment menu all describe the same job.

That is how the line is held in practice. It is not a legal opinion. If your business sits anywhere near healthcare, such as a medical spa, a rehabilitation centre or treatments on referral, get a written opinion from Polish counsel before the permit is filed, and expect it to say that this route is the wrong one for that work.

The permit under the 2025 act

A Thai therapist works on a type A work permit, issued by the voivode of the region where your company has its registered seat. Since 1 June 2025 the application is electronic only, through praca.gov.pl, and an application filed any other way is not considered. Since 1 December 2025 the fee is 400 PLN for a permit longer than three months.

The pay floor is set by the act, not by negotiation. The salary may not be lower than what comparable staff earn and not lower than the minimum wage, which for 2026 is 4,806 PLN gross a month, or 31.40 PLN an hour. Part-time is allowed down to a quarter of full time, with the floor applied pro rata. The market sits above the floor: the January 2026 salary survey puts the median masseur in Poland at 6,000 PLN gross a month, with the middle half between 5,590 and 6,780 PLN. An offer built on the minimum will pass the permit and struggle to keep a good therapist.

The refusal grounds are where small salons get caught. The voivode must refuse if the employer owes social-insurance contributions or taxes without an agreed deferral, cannot show the funds to cover the job, or is not running a business that justifies the hire, for example because it is suspended or in liquidation. A salon that opened this year can still apply, but its permit will be capped at one year. The same cap applies to any job of half time or less.

Two duties come before the first shift. The contract has to be signed in writing before the therapist starts, and a Polish-language copy has to be uploaded through the same system, also before she starts. After that, the voivode has to be told within seven days if she does not start within two months of the permit's start date, stops for more than two months, or leaves more than two months before the permit ends.

Where the months go

The permit is the long step. The labour ministry puts the average wait for a type A decision at 47 days in 2023 and 98 days in 2024, and the average for all work permits in 2025 at 82 days.

Warsaw is slower than the average. The Mazowieckie voivode's office issued 9,400 work permits in the first seven months of 2026, against 35,300 in the first half of 2025, and an employers' organisation quoted in the same report speaks of waits of up to six or seven months. For a salon registered in Warsaw, that office is the biggest single factor in the timeline.

The visa comes after the permit, and it is quicker but tightly rationed. Thai citizens apply in person at the Consular Section of the Polish Embassy in Bangkok, after registering in the e-Konsulat system. New appointments open every Wednesday between 10.00 and 10.30 Bangkok time, and the embassy does not give slots to agencies or any other third party, so the therapist books her own. The fee is 7,444 THB in cash, and the decision comes within 15 days, extendable to 30.

Our side in Thailand runs in parallel with the permit, not after it: establishing which of the three Thai qualifications the candidate actually holds, the Department of Employment approval that registers the placement, and a visa file that goes in complete the first time, because a missed Wednesday costs a week.

Plan for year two before year one starts. A national visa covers a stay of up to one year, so a two-year contract means a temporary residence and work permit filed in Poland before the visa runs out. Since 27 April 2026 that application is electronic only, through the MOS portal. Filed on time and complete, it keeps her stay legal and lets her keep working on the existing permit while it is pending, which matters, because the Polish press reports average waits of around 340 days.

What it costs, and how Poland compares

On the government side the bill is small: 400 PLN for the permit and 7,444 THB for the visa. Under the standard we work to, the therapist pays nothing for her placement, so the visa, the travel and the Thai paperwork sit in our fee to the employer rather than in her pocket.

Next to the other markets we cover, Poland is close to Croatia on cost and far below Germany. The Polish floor of 4,806 PLN is around 1,125 euros a month, against 1,050 euros in Croatia and 3,802.50 euros on Germany's wellness route. Czechia caps the Bangkok embassy at 460 Employee Card applications a year. Poland has no quota at all.

Where Poland loses is time and the professional question. A salon outside Mazowieckie with a clean record, set up as a spa and selling relaxation, is a straightforward file. A Warsaw clinic that wants a Thai therapist on its rehabilitation list is not a file we would open.

Before any of this we ask three questions: where the business has its registered seat, how it is registered, and what the treatment menu says. The answers decide whether a Polish file takes three months or eight, and whether it should be filed at all.