Most of what we write about touches one direction of travel: Italian chefs and hotel staff heading to the United States, and the visas that make that possible. But Italy runs a hiring system of its own, built to bring foreign workers into its own restaurants and hotels. It is called the Decreto Flussi, and the numbers behind it for 2026 tell a story worth understanding, because they show just how tight hospitality staffing has become everywhere, not only abroad.
The Decreto Flussi is Italy's annual quota decree, the mechanism that sets how many non-EU workers can legally enter the country for employment each year. The 2026-2028 edition authorizes 497,550 total entries across three years, with 164,850 of those allocated for 2026 alone. It is a large, carefully rationed system, split across regions, sectors and nationalities, and it exists precisely because Italian employers, like employers everywhere in hospitality, cannot fill every open role from the domestic labor pool.
A Seat Reserved for Tourism
Within that broader allocation, tourism and hospitality get a dedicated lane. For 2026, 15,075 quota positions were set aside specifically for seasonal subordinate work in tourism, split between countries with migration cooperation agreements, requests from national employer associations, private employer requests, and a smaller pool for multi-year exemptions. Applications opened on a single click day, February 9, a detail that says a lot about demand: when the window opens, employers move fast, because the seats fill quickly.
The process itself runs through the employer, not the worker. An Italian hotel or restaurant that wants to hire from abroad files for a nulla osta, a work authorization, through the Sportello Unico per l'Immigrazione using the Ministry of the Interior's online portal. Officials are required to issue seasonal authorizations within 20 days and non-seasonal ones within 60. A newer rule adds real discipline to the system too: if a nulla osta is granted but the worker never collects the actual visa within six months, the authorization is automatically cancelled, freeing that slot for someone else instead of letting it sit unused, which is exactly what happened to thousands of positions in past years.
Two Directions, One Tight Market
Put together, the picture is a hospitality labor market pulling in two directions at once. Italy is actively recruiting foreign staff to keep its own hotels and kitchens running, while many well trained Italian professionals are, at the very same time, looking at opportunities abroad. That is not a contradiction so much as a sign of how universal the staffing pressure has become, and it is exactly the space we work in every day: helping qualified Italian hospitality talent find real roles with employers overseas, and helping those employers navigate the visa steps that make a hire like that actually land. Systems like the Decreto Flussi are a reminder that whichever direction the talent is moving, the paperwork matters just as much as the placement.
Wherever the border sits, the job is the same: get the right person in front of the right employer, and get the paperwork right the first time.
Data referenced from Italy's Ministry of Labour and Social Policies and 2026 legal analyses of the Decreto Flussi published by ImmigraFacile and ILF Law Firm.