Italy

How do Chinese citizens apply for the Italy Digital Nomad Visa?

Worth knowing: A Chinese ordinary passport cannot enter the Schengen area visa-free, so this route always starts at a counter in China with a type D national visa, and the Italian side is unusually strict about which counter. Italian missions in China keep national visas out of the VFS network: the Embassy in Beijing states that D applications are submitted directly at its Visa Section, Chongqing says the same about its own counter, and the only booking channel is Prenot@mi. The proof-of-qualification limb is where a Chinese file gets heavy. A Chinese degree has to be notarised at a Notary Public Office, translated into Italian by that same notary office, apostilled by the MFA or a provincial FAO, and backed by the CSSD/CHSI online verification report and credentials report from chsi.com.cn before the Beijing Embassy will issue a Declaration of Value on it. Since 7 November 2023 the Italian missions in China have stopped legalising Chinese documents altogether, so the apostille is the only chain that works and there is no consular fallback if the FAO refuses. The fee is fixed in law at EUR 116 for a national work visa, but the missions in China publish and collect it in renminbi at the quarterly consular exchange rate: the Beijing table for the first quarter of 2026 puts 'Visto per lavoro, piu' di 90 giorni' at CNY 958. On the money side, Italy and China have a double-taxation treaty in force (the 1986 convention, replaced by the 2019 one which entered into force on 19 February 2025), but no social security convention at all, so nothing totalises and nothing exempts.