Hire a Japanese Chef in Germany: §11, §26, §18a or §6

Germany has four legal bases for bringing in a cook from Japan, and picking the wrong one wastes months. Two years of culinary school plus two years' work fits the specialty cook rule (§11 BeschV). Long practical experience without that schooling fits the Japan-specific §26 provision. A recognised qualification points to §18a, and a well-paid senior chef to §6. Two of the four need a priority check first, so plan advertising before the start date.

1. Which route fits your candidate

Start with the candidate's paper trail, not the job title: each route's qualification test differs.

§11 and §26 both require a BA priority check; §18a is approved without one (§39(2) AufenthG), and §6 sets none out either, though the BA still checks pay and conditions under both. If your candidate could fit two rows, check both: §6 has no site cap or nationality restriction beyond the qualification test, so check it even for a candidate who would also qualify as a specialty cook.

2. The specialty cook rule (§11 BeschV)

§11(2) BeschV lets the BA approve full-time employment in a specialty restaurant for up to four years, first approval capped at one year, with a priority check. After four years, the same person cannot be approved again until three years have passed. The BA's leaflet on specialty cooks (September 2025) sets the detail:

• The restaurant must mainly serve one country's cuisine, to that country's recipes, presented as upscale. Snack bars, fast food, canteens, catering and delivery-only operations do not qualify.
• Cap: two specialty cooks per site, with exceptions for a wider benefit such as local apprenticeships. Nationality: the cook must match the cuisine's home country, so Japanese for a Japanese restaurant.
• Qualifications: at least two years of vocational cook training plus two years' practical work in qualified establishments. Six years of work alone is accepted only where the home country has no vocational cook training, a hard case for Japan, which does run such schools.
• Pay: benchmarked against the "Chef de partie / Alleinkoch" collective agreement grade; state gross pay in the contract. Timing: no BA fee; approval "usually takes several months".

The qualification test is where Japanese applicants most often stumble: many good cooks trained entirely on the job, not at a two-year school, which pushes them towards §26 instead.

3. Any employment for Japanese nationals (§26 BeschV)

§26(1) BeschV names a short list of countries, Japan among them, whose nationals the BA can approve "for any employment regardless of the employer's location", subject to a priority check. The ordinance sets no qualification requirement and no two-cook cap, making it the practical fallback when training does not fit §11's two-year school requirement.

This is discretionary ("kann"): the BA still checks whether priority candidates (German, EU and comparable) are available and whether pay and conditions match local norms. The BA's ZAV is the named contact for specialty cook approvals; ask which basis it would apply before filing, since §11 and §26 sit close enough together that the BA's read of the file decides which one moves.

4. Skilled and experienced worker routes: §18a and §6

§18a AufenthG: recognised skilled worker

The candidate's foreign qualification must be recognised in Germany as equivalent to German vocational training, a separate procedure that can take months, so start it in parallel. The job must be skilled work, though it need not match the training exactly. Applicants over 45 arriving for the first time need gross pay of at least €55,770 (2026) or adequate pension provision.

§6 BeschV: experienced workers

This route skips formal recognition. The BA's April 2026 newsletter sets the conditions: a state-recognised vocational qualification of at least two years (or a degree), two years' relevant experience at skilled level in the last five years, and gross pay of at least €45,630 in 2026, waived where the employer pays a collective agreement rate. A competent German body must confirm the qualification's home-country recognition. For a well-paid senior chef this is often the cleanest route, rewarding the school-plus-experience combination directly, without §11's cap or §26's discretion.

5. What the priority check actually wants

§11 and §26 both carry a priority check, and the BA gives no fixed formula for what counts as a sufficient search, so build a file rather than guessing at the minimum:

• Advertise 4 to 6 weeks on the BA's own job board (jobboerse.arbeitsagentur.de) and EURES, which reaches the EU labour market the BA checks against, plus one general German platform.
• State the role precisely: "Japanese cuisine specialty cook, sushi and washoku, minimum two years' training and experience" screens out unqualified applicants and shows why a general EU cook is not a match.
• Log every applicant: name, date, qualification claimed, and why they were or were not suitable. A log with no suitable applicant after a real search is what the check is designed to produce.
• Keep the adverts themselves (dated screenshots), in case the BA asks for the underlying postings.

6. Pay: what a cook costs by grade

The statutory minimum wage is €13.90/hour from 1 January 2026, rising to €14.60 on 1 January 2027, but that floor is not what the BA accepts for a sponsored cook: it compares your offer with local pay, and for a specialty cook, with the "Chef de partie / Alleinkoch" collective agreement grade. Germany's hospitality agreements are set by state, so the figure depends on where you are.

We could not extract a single official national median from the BA's Entgeltatlas. The best compiled estimate, built from DEHOGA and ver.di grades (checked August 2026, not an official statistic), puts gross pay at roughly:

The same estimate puts Munich, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf around 10-15% above these figures, and Leipzig or Dresden around 10% below. Treat these as a starting point, not a contract figure: check the actual collective agreement for your state, or the Entgeltatlas directly, since the BA compares your offer against its own data regardless of what you use to get there.

7. Total cost and government fees

The BA charges no fee under any of the four routes. Visa and residence permit steps carry modest fees that vary by mission and state; check with the German mission in Tokyo, or the local Ausländerbehörde if the chef enters visa-free under §41 AufenthV. Salary and relocation are the real cost drivers:

See our relocation guide for what a relocation package typically includes.

8. Timeline by route

Start recognition (§18a) or advertising (§11, §26) at least 16 weeks out; §6 can move faster with no priority check.

General information gathered from official sources in September 2026, not legal or immigration advice. German approvals are case by case; confirm current fees, thresholds and evidence standards with the BA, the local Ausländerbehörde or a qualified adviser before acting.