RelokeaIs your profession regulated in Switzerland?
Most professions are practised freely in Switzerland. For the rest, diploma recognition is mandatory before you may work — and the competent authority differs from one profession to the next. Enter your profession: the answer comes from the same engine our members use, with the authority’s official link.
How to read this result
- “Free” does not mean “without conditions”: you still need a valid residence and work permit, and the employer remains the judge of your skills.
- Federal and cantonal often stack up in healthcare: diploma recognition is federal, the licence to practise is cantonal — and the latter must be redone on every change of canton.
- The title sometimes changes name across the border: a French “kinésithérapeute” practises in Switzerland as a physiotherapist. The check handles these equivalences.
What this page does not do (and where the free tool stops)
This check answers one question: is your profession regulated, and by whom. It does not build your file. Here is what the guided support adds — verified line by line in our code before being written here, restrictions included.
- Your application letter, drafted — for 33 professions across healthcare, psychology, teaching, speech therapy, engineering and architecture, the module drafts your recognition request and addresses it to the authority competent for your profession. You copy the postal address from the official page we point you to, then download it. It is drafted in French, German or Italian — the correspondence language of your work canton, which you can change.
- The cantonal office, named — for healthcare professions you get the exact name of the competent office in your canton of work and its official link: “Valais — Service de la santé publique”, not “ask your canton”. All 26 cantons are covered; Basel-Landschaft points to an online counter and remains flagged provisional.
- Tickable steps — and what the authority actually publishes — the federal steps in order, plus the cantonal steps for the 20 professions requiring a licence to practise, with your progress saved. Official fees where they exist (Swiss Red Cross, MEBEKO, SERI, CHF 550 to 1,000); elsewhere, the official channel to request them. Timelines stated by the Swiss Red Cross — four weeks of PreCheck, then four months at most. The other authorities publish none, and we tell you so instead of inventing a figure.
- The third-country route, when it applies to you — if you declared a nationality outside the EU/EFTA, two extra steps appear for professions under the Swiss Red Cross, PsyCo and the EDK: the free-movement agreement does not apply to you, and your file is examined individually. EU/EFTA profiles never see them.
If your profession is free — which is the case for most — you need nothing beyond this page. We would rather tell you here. And our recognition reference list covers 34 professions: beyond them, the guided support points you in the right direction without pretending to know your procedure by heart.
Want the full map? Our guide details the families of regulated professions, the federal/cantonal logic and the false friends between French and Swiss job titles.