Hire a Japanese Chef in Spain: Job Offer Route, Pay, Timeline

Spain has no chef visa. Restaurant cooks are not on the shortage occupation catalogue (only ship's cooks are), so the employer must prove the job cannot be filled locally: register the offer, keep it live at least eight days, and get a certificate of insufficient candidates before applying for the work authorisation. Pay starts at the SMI (€1,221 a month, 2026) but Madrid's hospitality agreement puts a real cocinero closer to €1,250-€1,415 depending on the establishment class, and a skilled Japanese cook should expect more than that. Budget many months end to end, and use a working holiday hire as the faster first step while the sponsored route runs.

1. How Spain decides whether you can hire from abroad

The route is the initial temporary residence and work authorisation for employed work (autorización inicial de residencia temporal y trabajo por cuenta ajena), applied for by the employer. Spain's migration ministry sets out three ways to show the labour market allows the hire: the job is on the catalogue of hard-to-fill occupations; failing that, the employer registers a job offer and gets documentation that recruitment failed; or an international agreement exempts the worker (the ministry names Chile and Peru; Japan is not among them).

2. Why restaurant cooks are not on the shortage catalogue

The catalogue for the third quarter of 2026, published in the BOE on 2 September 2026, is short: professional athletes and coaches, merchant navy jobs, electricians, aluminium and metal carpentry fitters, crane operators. The only cooks on it are cocineros de barco, ship's cooks, for coastal provinces plus Lleida and Madrid. Restaurant cooks and chefs are not on it, and SEPE's province-by-province catalogue for the first quarter of 2026 shows the same pattern everywhere: every cook entry is a ship's cook.

3. The job offer route: advertising period and certificate

Because restaurant cooks are not on the catalogue, the employer registers the vacancy on the Empléate portal and with the public employment service, then obtains documentation that the offer could not be filled. Advisers who work this process routinely describe a minimum of about eight days for the offer to run on Empléate before the employment service can issue a certificado de insuficiencia de demandantes de empleo (certificate of insufficient candidates) confirming no suitable local applicant came forward; we could not confirm this figure on an official SEPE page directly, so treat it as a starting assumption and ask your regional employment service (Comunidad de Madrid, Cataluña's SOC) to confirm the exact period and the exact document it will issue before you rely on it.

What decides whether the offer works: a vague listing for "cocinero" draws local applicants the employment service expects you to consider; a precise one (handling and breaking down whole fish for raw service, preparing sushi rice to a set standard, Japanese language to work with suppliers and a Japanese head chef, years of experience in a Japanese kitchen) is both more honest and more likely to show a genuine gap. Our sushi chef job description can help define the role precisely.

4. The employer's application

The regulations were reformed by Royal Decree 1155/2024, and the SEPE catalogue is now produced under the reformed article 65; if you are working from guidance written before 2025, check it reflects the current rule.

5. Pay: Madrid and Barcelona convenio grades

The 2026 SMI (salario mínimo interprofesional), set by Royal Decree 126/2026 from 1 January, is €1,221 a month (€40.70 a day, 14 payments) or €17,094 a year. That is the authorisation's floor, not a market rate. Madrid's hospitality collective agreement (2024 tables, still in force through 2026 by ultraactividad) sets higher minimums by role and establishment class:

These figures exclude the mandatory monthly convention supplement and meal allowance most Madrid agreements also carry, so treat them as a floor, not the full package. In Barcelona, the 2026 interprovincial hospitality agreement (published in the DOGC, 23 March 2026) groups cocinero with waiter and bartender roles at Level III, Group D (bars and restaurants): €1,607.25 a month, 14 payments; we could not find the separate, higher figure for jefe de cocina in the material we checked, so confirm it with your gestoría or the official REGCON registry before setting that offer.

A skilled Japanese cook, especially one with sushi or washoku training you are recruiting rather than training up, should expect an offer above these convenio floors. See our salary guide by country for how Spanish pay compares internationally.

6. Working holiday: the faster first step

Spain and Japan started a working holiday programme on 1 July 2017. Participants must be 18 to 30, can stay up to one year, and may work to supplement their travel funds within Spanish law. Japan's foreign ministry now lists a maximum of 700 visas a year. For a restaurant, a working holiday cook is a legal hire without the labour market test, but temporary: if you want to keep the person, start the job-offer route well before their year ends, since it cannot be converted from inside Spain without going through the same steps as a fresh hire. See our working holiday guide for Europe for how Spain's programme compares with the rest of the continent.

7. Backward schedule

From first job offer to a cook starting work, plan on many months, not weeks:

Running a working holiday hire in parallel, and starting the sponsored process for a chosen candidate at least three months before their working holiday year ends, avoids a gap in the kitchen either way.

General information gathered from official sources in September 2026, not legal or immigration advice. The catalogue changes every quarter, some figures in this page (the eight-day advertising period, the Barcelona jefe de cocina rate) come from advisers rather than an official page we could verify directly, and procedures vary by province. Confirm with the relevant Oficina de Extranjería, your regional employment service or an adviser before acting.