The Blue Card is the highly qualified version of a Czech work permit. The one thing everybody wants to know is the salary threshold — and it is the one number people keep getting wrong, because it changes every May and three different figures are circulating.
Most people arrive at this page with one question: how much do I need to earn?
For a contract assessed between 1 May 2026 and 30 April 2027, the answer is 73,823 CZK gross per month, or 885,870 CZK gross per year.
That is the answer. The rest of this section is where it comes from, because you will find other numbers online and you need to be able to tell which one is current.
The law does not state an amount. § 42j(1)(b) of Act 326/1999 says your contract must state a gross monthly or annual wage of at least 1.5x the average gross annual wage announced by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. So the threshold is a multiplication, and only one half of it is fixed.
The other half is announced once a year and expires. Under § 182a(2) of the same Act, MPSV publishes that average wage in the Sbírka zákonů "vždy s účinností od 1. května kalendářního roku na dobu 12 kalendářních měsíců" — always effective from 1 May, for twelve months. The current one is Sdělení č. 44/2026 Sb., issued 20 March 2026, which sets the average gross annual wage at 590,580 CZK (based on an average gross monthly wage of 49,215 CZK in 2025) for the period 1 May 2026 to 30 April 2027.
1.5 x 590,580 = 885,870 CZK per year. Divided by twelve, that is 73,822.50, which we round up to 73,823 — rounding down would give you a monthly figure that fails the annual test it is supposed to pass.
If you go and read the announcement, one thing will look wrong. Sdělení 44/2026 Sb. states its own legal authority as "§ 182 odst. 2" of Act 326/1999. In the consolidated text of that Act, § 182(2) is about the Ministry publishing form templates; the duty to announce this wage is at § 182a(2). We have not "corrected" the quotation above, because it is what the instrument says. The discrepancy is in the citation only — the figure, the period and the effect are not in question.
Why this matters more than it sounds. On 1 May 2027 this number changes, and the page you read it on somewhere else probably will not. Three figures are currently circulating in expat forums:
We publish the threshold with the announcement it came from and the date it stops being true, and our own checks refuse to state it after 30 April 2027 until someone has read the replacement. If you are reading this after that date and still see a number, check the Sbírka announcement yourself.
One more trap. MPSV announces two things with almost the same name. The Blue Card figure is the average gross annual wage for the full calendar year, announced under the Aliens Act. There is a separate "average wage in the national economy" for the first three quarters, announced under the Employment Act, currently 48,171 CZK — that one is for unemployment support and related limits and has nothing to do with Blue Cards. Multiplying the wrong one by 1.5 gives roughly 72,257 CZK a month, which is under the real threshold: it would tell you that you qualify when you do not.
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