Dutch pensions are built in three layers, and an international who spends a decade here typically ends up with a fragment of the first, a fragment of the second, and no idea that either exists.
Both fragments are real money and both follow you out of the country.
The first layer is the AOW, the state pension, which is not funded by contributions you can point to but by residence.
The second is the scheme your employer runs.
The third is whatever you arrange privately.
The AOW is earned by living here, not by working here
This is the point most people get wrong.
AOW entitlement accrues at 2% for every year you are insured in the fifty years before you reach AOW age, and you are insured by living in the Netherlands, whether or not you have a job.
Fifty years gets you 100%.
Run the arithmetic on a typical expatriate career.
Arrive at 32, leave at 47, and you have fifteen insured years, which is 30% of a full AOW.
Every year outside the Dutch system in that fifty-year window takes 2% off.
Full AOW from 1 January 2026 is 1,637.57 euro gross a month for a single person and 1,122.12 euro each for a married or cohabiting couple, with holiday allowance accruing on top at 106.55 and 76.10 euro.
Those figures are indexed twice a year and rise again from 1 July 2026, to 1,662.16 euro and 1,139.39 euro.
The age, and how far ahead it is fixed
AOW age is 67 in 2026 and stays at 67 through 2027.
It rises to 67 years and three months in 2028 and holds there through 2031.
The age is tied to life expectancy as published by the CBS, must be set five years in advance so that people can plan, and cannot be changed once fixed.
Beyond 2031 nothing is decided.
The 2032 figure will be set at the end of 2026 on the life expectancy measured then.
The employer scheme, which is where the real money is
Around 90% of Dutch employees are in a workplace pension scheme, usually because the collective labour agreement for the sector makes it compulsory rather than because anyone chose it.
Contributions are split between employer and employee and come off the gross salary, which is why they are easy to miss on a payslip.
Whatever you accrue in a Dutch scheme stays yours.
Leaving the employer, leaving the sector or leaving the country does not forfeit it.
It sits with the pension provider as a premievrije polis until you reach retirement age, and then it is paid, to a foreign bank account if that is where you are.
What it does not do is find you.
Providers write to the address they hold, and an international who moved three times and then emigrated is exactly the person whose letters go nowhere.
mijnpensioenoverzicht.nl
Everything you have accrued in the Netherlands, AOW and workplace pensions together, is visible in one place.
Log in to mijnpensioenoverzicht.nl with DigiD and you get every scheme you have ever been in, what it will pay, and from what date.
Check it before you leave the country, while you still hold a working DigiD and a Dutch address, and save a copy.
Reconstructing a pension trail from abroad, fifteen years later, from an employer that has since been acquired twice, is a genuinely miserable exercise.
Changing jobs, and the small pensions rule
You are not obliged to move an old pension to a new employer’s scheme.
Waardeoverdracht, value transfer, is optional and whether it helps depends on the funding position and the terms of both schemes.
Small pots are handled for you.
A klein pensioen is an entitlement between 2 and 632.63 euro gross a year in 2026, and providers may transfer these automatically to your current provider without asking, which bundles the fragments into something worth receiving.
Entitlements of 2 euro a year or less simply lapse and are never paid.
Below the 632.63 euro threshold a small pension may also be cashed out with your consent, though generally only at the pension date.
For anyone who has held four short Dutch jobs, this rule is why the fragments are worth checking rather than writing off.
The whole system is being rebuilt, and the deadline is 2028
The Wet toekomst pensioenen came into force on 1 July 2023 and every existing scheme must be converted to the new rules by 1 January 2028.
Transition plans have to be with insurers and pension institutions by 1 October 2027.
The central change is that everyone pays the same premium percentage regardless of age, replacing a system in which older and younger workers effectively subsidised each other across a career.
Employees roughly between 40 and 55 tend to lose from the switch, because their contributions now have less time to compound, and employers may offer compensation for that.
If you are in that band, read what your own scheme sends you rather than the general coverage.
Leaving the Netherlands
Your accrued workplace pension stays and is paid at retirement.
Your AOW is paid abroad too, but with conditions attached that depend on where you go.
In the EU and EEA and in countries with a social security treaty with the Netherlands, the ordinary AOW rates apply.
In a non-treaty country a single person is paid at the lower married rate rather than the single rate, which is a substantial cut.
The list of treaty countries is not intuitive, and it is worth checking against your actual destination rather than assuming.
You can also keep building AOW after you go, through the SVB’s voluntary insurance.
The conditions are strict: you must have been compulsorily insured immediately before leaving, you must apply within a year of that insurance ending, and cover runs for a maximum of ten years except in defined cases.
Reported premiums for 2026 run at 17.9% of income with a minimum of 569 euro and a maximum of 5,693 euro a year.
Whether that is worth buying is arithmetic rather than sentiment.
Ten voluntary years add 20% of a full AOW.
Weigh the premium against that against what the same money would earn elsewhere, and note that the deadline for applying is a hard one.
If you are self-employed, nothing happens automatically
A zzp’er accrues AOW like everyone else, by being resident, and accrues nothing in the second pillar at all.
There is no employer and no scheme.
The third pillar, a lijfrente or a pension-designated savings or investment account, is the standard replacement, and contributions are deductible up to an annual allowance calculated from your income and your existing accrual.
The deductible allowance is the reason to do it through a pension product rather than an ordinary savings account, and the calculation is one of the few genuinely worthwhile jobs to hand to a financial adviser in The Hague.
Employees with a gap in their own accrual, from years abroad or years freelancing, can use the same route.
The one that catches people
The 30% ruling reduces your taxable salary, and a Dutch pension scheme is usually built on pensionable salary.
The ruling is worth a great deal in cash and can quietly cost you accrual, depending on how your employer has defined the pension base.
Ask the HR department which salary figure the scheme uses before you assume the answer, particularly if you expect to stay long enough for the difference to compound.
The same question applies to anyone moving between the many international organisations in The Hague, several of which run their own pension arrangements entirely outside the Dutch system.
Those years accrue no Dutch workplace pension and, if the posting exempts you from Dutch social insurance, no AOW either.
Sources
- Rijksoverheid, opbouw pensioenstelsel: the three pillars of AOW, employer accrual and individual insurance, and around 90% of Dutch workers participating in an employer scheme
- Rijksoverheid, AOW-leeftijd: 67 in 2025 through 2027, 67 years and three months from 2028 to 2031, the age following CBS life expectancy, set five years in advance and unchangeable once fixed
- Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, via Salaris Vanmorgen: the 2031 AOW age fixed at 67 years and three months, and 2032 to be set at the end of 2026
- SVB via MAX Vandaag: gross monthly AOW from 1 January 2026 of 1,637.57 euro single and 1,122.12 euro each for couples, with holiday allowance of 106.55 and 76.10 euro
- Knab and Pensioen.nl: AOW from 1 July 2026 of 1,662.16 euro single and 1,139.39 euro each for couples, and accrual at 2% a year over the fifty years before AOW age
- Rijksoverheid, nieuwe regels voor kleine pensioenen: a klein pensioen defined as between 2 and 632.63 euro gross a year in 2026, automatic value transfer without consent, cash-out with consent below that threshold, and entitlements of 2 euro a year or less not paid at all
- Rijksoverheid, overgang naar nieuwe pensioenstelsel: conversion of all schemes by 1 January 2028, transition plans to insurers by 1 October 2027, a single premium percentage for all ages, and employees aged 40 to 55 as the group most likely to lose out
- SVB and NederlandWereldwijd: voluntary AOW insurance requiring compulsory insurance immediately before departure, application within one year, a maximum of ten years, and the reduction of 2% of AOW for each uninsured year
- Expatverzekering.nl: 2026 voluntary insurance premium of 17.9% of income with a minimum of 569 euro and a maximum of 5,693 euro a year
- NederlandWereldwijd, krijg ik AOW buiten Nederland: treaty and non-treaty countries, and single people in non-treaty countries paid at the married rate
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