No dedicated digital nomad visa

Does Denmark Have a Digital Nomad Visa? (2026)

Denmark routinely tops the world's happiness and work-life-balance rankings, which makes its immigration stance feel almost contradictory: this is one of the hardest countries in Europe for a self-employed foreigner to get into. There is no digital nomad visa, and the self-employment route that does exist is deliberately narrow. You apply through the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI), but the decisive judgment comes from the Danish Business Authority, which assesses whether your business benefits Denmark — in practice, innovative startups with Danish connections, not solo freelancers serving foreign clients. The Start-up Denmark scheme formalizes this: an expert panel must approve your business idea as innovative before you can even apply for the permit. For most remote workers, then, Denmark is an employer-route country: the Pay Limit Scheme (a high salary threshold, around DKK 514,000 a year and adjusted annually) and the Positive Lists for skilled professionals are the lanes that actually move people. All of this sits inside a society that is genuinely wonderful to live in — Copenhagen's cycling infrastructure, design culture, and social trust are real — but also genuinely expensive, with some of Europe's highest consumer prices and taxes. The honest summary: Denmark is a fantastic place to be hired, a difficult place to be freelance, and not a place to be a nomad on a tourist stamp. If your heart is set on Scandinavia with a lighter immigration touch, Sweden and Finland at least give self-employment a real hearing.