Ten countries, ten different gates. France raised its bar in January 2026. Germany quietly repealed a fast-track in October 2025. The Netherlands, oddly, asks for less at citizenship than it does for permanent residence. Japan and China don’t codify a language test at all — which isn’t the same as language not mattering. Pick your country below for the real picture, sourced.
| Country | PR level | Citizenship level | Residency | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇩🇪 Germany | B1 | B1 | 5 yrs | C1 fast-track repealed Oct 2025 |
| 🇦🇹 Austria | A2 → B1 | B1 (→B2 proposed) | 10 (6 shortened) | — |
| 🇨🇭 Switzerland | A2 spoken / A1 written | B1 spoken / A2 written (federal) | 10 yrs | several cantons require more |
| 🇳🇱 Netherlands | B1 (Wi2021) | A2 — lower than PR | 5 yrs | genuine inversion, see guide |
| 🇫🇷 France | B1 (from 2026) | B2 (from 2026) | — | just raised from A2 / B1 |
| 🇮🇹 Italy | — | B1 | — | — |
| 🇪🇸 Spain | — | DELE A2 + CCSE | 10 (2 or 1 for some) | — |
| 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | B1 (ILR) | B1 + Life in the UK | — | — |
| 🇯🇵 Japan | No formal test | No formal test (N4–N3 practical) | 10 yrs (PR) | — |
| 🇰🇷 South Korea | KIIP 5 / TOPIK-linked | KIIP 5 Advanced | — | — |
A dash means we couldn’t confirm a specific figure to the standard we hold this guide to — check the individual country page, which states plainly what is and isn’t verified rather than guessing.
We left China out of the table and the country pages deliberately, rather than publish something that looks equivalent to the other nine and isn’t. Chinese permanent residence — the “green card” — is one of the hardest in the world to obtain, gated by investment thresholds, salary levels, or discretionary “special contribution” approval, not by a language exam. Citizenship is governed by a single broad, largely discretionary article and is, credibly, extremely rare in practice. HSK does matter indirectly — some city-level points schemes, like Shanghai’s work-permit system, award a few points for it — but it isn’t a PR or citizenship gate the way DELE or the Goethe exams are elsewhere in this guide.
Beyond the nine country pages, these cover the questions that cut across all of them.
Four of the ten rows in that table changed, or are actively under discussion, within the last eighteen months. That’s not noise — it’s the direction most of these systems are heading: tighter, not looser. Building your language ability a level above whatever the current minimum is isn’t over-preparing. It’s insurance against exactly this kind of move.