After you graduate
Rules read 19 Aug 2026
What Romania's own immigration authority currently publishes. Not a ranking, not a guarantee, and not the same as what any agent or forum will tell you. Whether someone actually obtains residence depends on occupation, points, funds and policy that can change between application and graduation.
Work during study
Romania's General Inspectorate for Immigration (IGI, under the Ministry of Internal Affairs) states that a foreign student wanting to supplement their income during their studies can take up work without needing a separate employment authorisation (aviz de angajare), but only under a part-time individual employment contract, with working hours capped at a maximum of 6 hours a day.
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Post-study work visa
Prelungirea dreptului de ședere temporară pentru studii, în vederea căutării unui loc de muncă (post-study extension of the temporary study residence right for job-seeking) . Up to 9 months
IGI states that the temporary right of residence for study purposes may be extended by 9 months after graduation, for the purpose of looking for a job and completing employment formalities, or to start a business, on presentation of documents proving completion of studies. This is separate from a shorter, distinct extension of up to 6 months that IGI also publishes for finalising outstanding school/university paperwork or authenticating study documents, which is not for job-seeking.
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Route to permanent residence
IGI states that under Government Emergency Ordinance no. 194/2002 on the legal regime of foreign nationals, the residence period held for study purposes counts at half its length toward establishing eligibility for long-term residence — a rule notably similar to Spain's 50% rule elsewhere in this dataset. To have a long-term residence application approved, the applicant must cumulatively: hold a valid right of residence other than the one originally held for study purposes (i.e. have already transitioned to another status, typically work-based, by the time of applying); have held temporary residence in Romania continuously for the 5 years before applying (with study years counted at half, per the rule above); not have been absent from Romania for more than a 10-month total or 6 consecutive months within that period; have no removal order pending against them; prove health insurance, sufficient means of support, and housing; and know Romanian to at least a satisfactory level.
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Route to citizenship
Romanian citizenship by grant (acordare la cerere) is governed by Article 8 of Law no. 21/1991 on Romanian citizenship (republished), the country's underlying legislative text. It may be granted, on request, to a stateless person or foreign citizen who: was born on, or has lived lawfully on, Romanian territory for at least 8 years, or at least 5 years from the date of marriage if married to and living with a Romanian citizen; proves loyalty to the Romanian state through their conduct and declares they have not acted against public order or national security; is at least 18; has secured lawful means for a decent living in Romania; is known for good conduct and has no conviction that would make them unworthy of being a Romanian citizen; knows the Romanian language and has basic knowledge of Romanian culture and civilisation sufficient to integrate socially; and knows the provisions of the Romanian Constitution and the national anthem. Article 8(2) halves that residence period for an internationally-recognised personality, a citizen of an EU member state, a recognised refugee, or someone who has invested more than €1,000,000 in Romania. This numbered list of conditions does not include a requirement to renounce the applicant's original nationality — this dataset found no clause in Article 8 addressing dual nationality either way.
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New entry added 19 August 2026. Two Romanian government domains added to IMMIGRATION_DOMAINS in scripts/verify.mjs: igi.mai.gov.ro (Inspectoratul General pentru Imigrări, under the Ministry of Internal Affairs — Romania's immigration/residence authority) and sri.ro (Serviciul Român de Informații, the Romanian Intelligence Service, whose site hosts a reference copy of the Citizenship Law's full text — used only because the actual citizenship authority's own domains were unreachable, see below). Collection note, flagged for a future collector: Romania's actual citizenship authority, the Autoritatea Națională pentru Cetățenie (ANC), publishes at cetatenie.just.ro, and the country's official legislative portal is legislatie.just.ro — both domains were confirmed genuinely unreachable from this environment via curl ('Could not resolve host' for cetatenie.just.ro, TLS handshake failure for legislatie.just.ro) and via the claude-in-chrome browser fallback (both loaded to a browser error page), similar to the gov.za unreachability documented elsewhere in this dataset for South Africa. A reachable government-portal alternative was used instead: serviciipublice.gov.ro (Romania's national public-services catalogue, run by the Authority for the Digitalisation of Romania) confirmed that citizenship-by-request is granted under Article 8 of Law no. 21/1991 by the ANC, with an average processing time of 180 days (240 maximum) and no fee, but its own page explicitly stated required-documents information was 'currently unavailable,' so it was not used as the substantive citation — the actual numbered Article 8 text was instead sourced from a copy of the law hosted on sri.ro. Collection note on the PDF itself: sri.ro's copy of Law 21/1991 has a font-encoding defect where the Romanian letter ă (a-breve) is inconsistently rendered as ã (a-tilde, a letter that does not exist in Romanian) in the extracted text — confirmed as a genuine PDF font/glyph-mapping defect (not a charset/downloading issue) since correctly-rendered ă also appears elsewhere in the same extraction; every ã was corrected to ă before archiving, following the established pattern elsewhere in this dataset for fixing confirmed character-encoding defects rather than preserving corrupted text. inDemandOccupations is left null: no shortage-occupation list was found tied to these routes on igi.mai.gov.ro. naturalisationStatus set to 'published-route': Law 21/1991 publishes a real, lettered set of residence-length, conduct, language and civics conditions — per the doc comment on ResidencyPathway.naturalisationStatus this field records only whether criteria are published, not how demanding Romania's 8-year ordinary route is in practice. citizenshipTerms records the Article 8 period of 8 years’ lawful domicile. Article 8(2) halves it for an internationally recognised personality, an EU citizen, a recognised refugee, or someone who has invested more than €1,000,000 in Romania. dualCitizenshipAllowed is null: Article 8’s numbered conditions do not address renunciation either way.
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