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Best countries in Europe for English speakers

Where to go7 min · 2026-09-24

The best countries in Europe for English speakers are not the ones where English is the language. Ireland and the UK are left out of this ranking on purpose: of course their ads are in English, and neither tells you anything about the question people actually type, which is where a country that speaks something else still hires in English. So this is a ranking of the other sixteen countries we track, built from the language of 55,370 live job ads on 24 September 2026, with the permit rules and pay floors that decide whether the ad is any use to you once you have found it.

How we ranked them

Every ad on Workcamino comes from an employer's own career page or an official public job feed, never from another job board, and our pipeline reads the language of the ad text itself. The share of ads in English is the honest measure of whether you can apply without the local language; the absolute number is the honest measure of whether there is anything to apply to. Both matter, and they point in different directions. One caveat that shapes the whole table: Norway, Sweden, Germany and France come through their national employment feeds and are close to complete. The other countries come through the career pages of companies we have added by hand, which skews towards international, English-writing employers, so their shares are ceilings rather than averages. The full table, by industry and city, refreshed every night, is on Data & numbers.

The ranking: share of ads written in English

Read the two halves of that chart differently. The top half is what international companies in Southern and Central Europe post, and it says that if you are aiming at those companies, the language of the ad will not stop you. The bottom half is what whole national job markets look like once every hospital, warehouse and municipality is counted, and it says that in Germany, France, Norway and Sweden, nine out of ten jobs are advertised in the local language. Neither half is wrong; they measure different things.

Where the jobs actually are: the absolute numbers

By count, one country is in a league of its own. Germany has 2,360 open ads in English, more than France (907), Norway (430), Spain (374) and the Netherlands (318) together. The cities make the point sharper: Berlin has 1,021 English-language ads, 46 % of everything posted there; Munich 611 (46 %); Paris 710 (62 %); Amsterdam 250 (78 %); Barcelona 198 (87 %); Warsaw 166 (62 %); Madrid 143 (62 %). Oslo and Stockholm, the two Nordic capitals, have 164 and 137, at 10 and 12 %. If your search starts with 'I only speak English', it should start in Berlin, then Paris, Munich and Amsterdam, and only then in the countries with the prettier percentages.

What the population speaks, and what the ads say

The gap between the two is the most useful thing in this guide. The European Commission's 2024 Eurobarometer found that 47 % of Europeans can speak English as a foreign language, up five points since 2012, and seven in ten under-25s can hold a conversation in it. Eurostat's 2022 figures put Sweden at 95.8 % of working-age adults knowing at least one foreign language, the second-highest in the EU. And yet 2.9 % of Swedish job ads are in English. People speak English; workplaces run in Swedish, Norwegian, German and French, and the ad is written in the language of the workplace. The country where both are true at once, the population speaks English and employers hire in it, is the Netherlands, which is why it keeps coming out as the recommendation for a non-EU graduate. Southern Europe is the reverse: fewer English speakers in the population, but a tourism and tech sector that posts in English anyway.

Permits and pay floors in the countries that hire in English

If you hold an EU or EEA passport, none of this applies: you can take any of these jobs tomorrow. If you do not, the ad in English is the easy part, and the table below is the hard part. Every figure links the official page; check it before you negotiate, because the numbers move each January.

The verdict

For a non-EU citizen with a degree and an offer in hand: the Netherlands first, for the combination of a 39 % English share, a fixed salary test and a graduate discount on it; Germany second, with far more jobs and a Blue Card that a new graduate can reach at €45,934, but a harder search outside Berlin and Munich. For a non-EU citizen without a degree: honestly, none of the sixteen. For an EU citizen who wants to live somewhere warm and work in English: Spain and Portugal, where the shares are high, the pay is lower, and hospitality will take you on day one. For anyone with the patience to learn one language, the Nordics reward it more than anywhere else: the moment you have working Swedish or Norwegian, 95 % of a well-paid market opens that the English-only searcher never sees.

What nobody mentions

An ad in English is not an office in English. Plenty of German and Dutch companies post in English to reach a wider pool and then run meetings in the local language; ask in the interview. Promotion is where the language comes back: the first job comes in English, the second, with responsibility for local staff or customers, usually does not. The pretty percentages in the south come with southern pay, and a 66 % English share in Portugal is 176 ads, not a market. And the countries with the lowest shares, Norway and Sweden, are where our data is most complete, so their 3 to 4 % is the real number, while a small country's 60 % is the international slice of it. Compare the shares to choose a strategy, then look at the counts to choose a city.

Workcamino reads every ad for the language it is written in, so you can filter the 55,000 live listings down to the ones you can actually apply to, by country and city, with the count updated every night. Buen camino.

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