Netherlands · Europe
Moving to Eindhoven
Eindhoven quick facts
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Cost of living in Eindhoven
Can you move to Netherlands?
Pick your passport to see whether you can enter Netherlands — and what it takes to stay.
Entry rules come from github.com/imorte/passport-index-data, updated 17 February 2026. They change without notice — confirm with the official immigration service before booking.
Getting set up in Netherlands
Residence permit, BRP registration and the BSN that unlocks everything
Two routes converge on one number. EU, EEA and Swiss citizens simply register their Eindhoven address and receive a BSN. Everyone else needs a residence permit first, and for professionals here that is almost always the employer-filed kennismigrant permit, which only an IND-recognised sponsor can lodge. Eindhoven has no IND desk of its own — the nearest is 's-Hertogenbosch — but the Holland Expat Center South puts the municipality and the IND in one building, so registration, biometrics and permit collection can happen in a single appointment. Until the BSN exists you cannot legally be paid, insured or fully banked.
Read the full step-by-step guideExchanging a licence inside 185 days, and why a car works better here than in the Randstad
The clock that matters starts at your BRP registration date, not your arrival. A non-EU/EEA licence lets you drive here for 185 days from registration; after that you may not drive at all until a Dutch licence is in your hand, even if the application is already with the RDW. EU and EEA licences are not on that clock. Non-EU licences only swap without a test from a designated country, and often only for category B. The large exception: anyone holding the expat ruling, plus their partner and adult children at the same address, can exchange any valid foreign licence with no test at all — which in a city where most internationals arrive on that ruling makes it the normal route rather than the exception.
Read the full step-by-step guideGetting a Dutch IBAN, and living in a country that runs on debit
Dutch banks are legally required to hold your BSN, and the BSN comes from gemeente registration — so the account and the registration are chained together. The standard escape is to open a Dutch-IBAN fintech such as bunq before you land, receive your first salary into it, and add the BSN inside the grace period. Then decide whether you also want a traditional bank. What surprises almost everyone is the payment culture: this is a debit-card and iDEAL country, and a foreign credit card will simply be declined in a great many ordinary places.
Read the full step-by-step guideBuying your own compulsory insurance, and finding a huisarts near a campus
There is no employer plan and no free service at the point of need. Within four months of becoming insurable you must buy a basisverzekering from a Dutch insurer, and it backdates to the date you became insurable, so a late purchase means paying for months of cover you could not use. The basic package is defined by law and identical at every insurer; only price, service and contracted hospitals differ. On top is a compulsory own-risk excess. Then you need a huisarts, who gatekeeps essentially all other care — and around Eindhoven's newer districts that is harder than buying the policy.
Read the full step-by-step guideMobile and home internet: no SIM registration, but the IBAN gates everything
The Netherlands has no SIM-registration regime, so a prepaid SIM is an instant, paperwork-free purchase at any supermarket or phone shop on your first afternoon. A monthly SIM-only contract is much better value but needs a Dutch IBAN for the SEPA direct debit and usually a BSN, so it waits until registration and banking are done. Skip the flagship stores and use an MVNO on the same network. On fixed line Eindhoven is well served — the housing stock is overwhelmingly postwar, so fibre and coax coverage is high and gigabit is cheap.
Read the full step-by-step guideBoxes 1, 2 and 3, the expat scheme, and the bills the city sends separately
Employees are taxed at source through loonheffing, so the annual return is usually a reconciliation rather than a bill. Income is sorted into three boxes: box 1 for salary and your own home, box 2 for substantial shareholdings, box 3 for savings and investments. Box 3 is the one that shocks people, because it taxes an assumed return on your assets rather than the return you actually got. The expat scheme — still universally called the 30% ruling — is the headline perk and the thing most Brainport offers are built around, but both its percentage and its salary norm have been changed repeatedly, so treat any figure you read online as out of date until the Belastingdienst confirms it. Separately, the gemeente and a water board bill you directly.
Read the full step-by-step guideEach guide has verified costs, timelines, required documents, and the non-obvious gotchas — sourced from official government pages. Last verified August 2026.
Essential Dutch phrases
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What to know before you go
Your formalities run through the expat centre, and it is genuinely better than the alternative
CriticalEindhoven does not have an IND desk — the nearest is in 's-Hertogenbosch, about half an hour up the A2. What it has instead is the Holland Expat Center South, where the municipality and the IND sit in the same building and one appointment covers BRP registration, biometrics and collection of your residence document. If you live in Eindhoven itself the BSN is issued at the appointment; if you live in one of the other participating Brainport municipalities it follows by post within about five working days. That distinction matters, because half the people who move here for ASML actually live in Veldhoven, Waalre, Best or Nuenen.
The job is probably in Veldhoven, not Eindhoven
CriticalASML's main campus is on De Run in Veldhoven, the neighbouring municipality, not in the city. Philips moved its head office to Amsterdam decades ago and what stayed behind became the High Tech Campus, which is on the southern edge of Eindhoven, not the centre. NXP, Signify and Thermo Fisher are spread across the same southern belt. Nothing about this is a problem, but it does mean 'moving to Eindhoven' usually means a 15–25 minute cycle or bus ride south each morning, and it means the municipality you register with may not be the one your employer is in.
Six neighbourhoods are legally closed to room lets and split houses
CriticalFrom 1 January 2026 gemeente Eindhoven tightened its kamerbewoning and woningsplitsing rules, and Limbeek Noord, Limbeek Zuid, Doornakkers Oost, Doornakkers West, Woensel-West and Bennekel-Oost are 'op slot' — no new permits. A transitional scheme running to 1 January 2027 lets long-standing conversions in those areas be legalised, but only if the owner applies and meets conditions. Renting a room in an unpermitted conversion is a fragile tenancy: enforcement lands on the landlord and the way it ends is that you move. Ask which regime the address falls under, in writing.
Health insurance is a purchase you make, not a benefit your employer arranges
CriticalThe Netherlands has no employer plan and no free service at the point of need. You must buy a basisverzekering from a Dutch insurer within four months of becoming insurable, and it backdates to that date, so late buyers pay premiums for months of cover they never used. On top sits a compulsory own-risk excess you fund yourself before the insurer pays for anything other than GP visits. The basic package is fixed by law and identical at every insurer, so the only real variables are price, service and which hospitals are contracted.
Buy-to-let is restricted below a WOZ threshold, which quietly shrinks the rental pool
ImportantEindhoven applies opkoopbescherming: a previously occupied home bought after 1 April 2022 with a WOZ value below the annual threshold — €355,000 for 2026 — may not be let to someone else without a verhuurvergunning, and the gemeente grants those only in exceptional cases. It is aimed at investors and it works, but the side effect for a newcomer is that a large slice of the cheaper stock simply is not available to rent at all. It is one of several reasons the Eindhoven rental market feels thinner than the population would suggest.
This city has no old centre, and that is not an accident
Good to knowEindhoven was five villages until 1920 and a Philips company town after that, and the RAF bombed the Philips works in December 1942. What is left is polycentric, low-rise and industrial: Strijp-S is a converted factory complex, the Evoluon is a 1966 flying saucer, and the best building in town is a museum of modern art. If you arrive expecting canals and gables you will be disappointed for about a fortnight and then discover that Dutch Design Week, GLOW and the design academy are what this place has instead — and that they are better than the gables.
Top industries & employers
Semiconductor equipment & chips
ASML (Veldhoven), NXP Semiconductors, Nexperia, Photonic Integration Technology Center, Smart Photonics
ASML's lithography machines are the single point of leverage in the global chip supply chain, and its campus sits on De Run in Veldhoven with a second Eindhoven site cleared for development. Everything else in the region is somewhere in its supply chain or its talent pool.
High-tech systems, machine building & automotive
VDL Groep, DAF Trucks, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Sioux, KMWE, Additive Industries
The regional speciality is not the product, it is the ability to build the machine that makes the product. VDL and DAF are both Eindhoven-headquartered; the supplier network around them is what makes ASML's ramp physically possible.
Photonics, lighting & imaging
Signify, Lumileds, Thermo Fisher electron microscopy, TNO Holst Centre
Philips split into Signify for lighting and kept healthcare imaging; both left descendants here. Eindhoven's electron-microscopy line is a direct descendant of FEI and remains world-leading.
R&D campuses & applied research
High Tech Campus Eindhoven, TNO, Holst Centre, Brainport Industries Campus, Automotive Campus Helmond
The High Tech Campus concentrates a couple of hundred companies and thousands of researchers on one closed site south of the city — the model is shared cleanrooms and equipment, which is why small photonics firms can exist here at all.
Higher education & design
TU Eindhoven, Fontys Hogescholen, Design Academy Eindhoven, Summa College
TU/e is one of the country's four technical universities and feeds directly into the cluster. The Design Academy is the outlier and the reason Dutch Design Week happens here rather than in Amsterdam.
Logistics, aviation & retail HQs
Eindhoven Airport, Brainport Industries, Jumbo (Veghel), Bosch Rexroth (Boxtel)
Eindhoven Airport is the Netherlands' second-busiest and the reason a Brainport engineer can be in a European customer's office by mid-morning. The wider Brabant corridor is the country's densest concentration of distribution employment.
Where to go in Eindhoven
Strijp-S
Neighborhood · Strijp
The former Philips manufacturing complex — 'the forbidden city' when it was closed to outsiders — now a district of studios, bars, a skatepark and a Sunday market.
Local tip: The Klokgebouw and Anton & Gerard blocks host most of Dutch Design Week. Come on a Sunday for the Rotterdamse-style vintage market on the Ketelhuisplein; the weekday version is mostly people working.
Van Abbemuseum
Culture · Centrum, Dommel riverside
A cigar manufacturer's 1936 gift to the city, extended in 2003, holding one of Europe's most serious postwar collections including a deep set of Lissitzky and Beuys.
Local tip: It is free on the last Wednesday evening of the month and it takes the awkward questions about museums seriously — the permanent hang is explicitly re-curated rather than presented as neutral. The riverside terrace behind it is one of the few quiet spots in the centre.
High Tech Campus Eindhoven
Landmark · Southern edge, off the A2
A closed research park of a couple of hundred companies and thousands of researchers, marketed as the smartest square kilometre in Europe and organised around shared cleanrooms.
Local tip: The Strip — the central building with the restaurants — is open to the public, and lunch there is the fastest way to understand who actually lives in this region. Cycle in from the city along the Dommel rather than driving; parking is for badge-holders.
Evoluon
Landmark · Noord-West, Noord Brabantlaan
A 1966 Philips science pavilion shaped like a landed flying saucer, now the Next Nature museum, and the building on every postcard the city ever printed.
Local tip: It was closed to the public for decades as a conference centre, which is why locals over forty are still slightly surprised you can go in. The Philips Museum in the centre — the original 1891 lamp factory — is the other half of the story and takes an hour.
Genneper Parken & the Dommel valley
Nature · South, Genneper Parken
A stretch of park, woodland and river running from the centre out past the open-air museum and the ice rink towards Waalre.
Local tip: The Dommel path is the sane cycle commute from the centre to the High Tech Campus — no traffic lights, and about fifteen minutes. The prehistoric open-air museum next to it is aimed at children and is much better than it needs to be.
Woensel Markt & the Kruisstraat
Hidden gemFood · Woensel, north of the ring
The city's working market square and the Turkish, Moroccan and Syrian food street running off it — the cheapest and best groceries in Eindhoven.
Local tip: Saturday market for produce, the Kruisstraat any day for bread, spices and grilled meat. This is also where you find the greengrocers who stay open when the centre's shops keep Dutch hours, and it is a five-minute cycle from the station.
Emergency numbers in Eindhoven
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