There is one appointment that unlocks the country, and until you have been to it you are not really here.
Registering your address with the gemeente puts you in the Basisregistratie Personen, the population register, and produces your BSN.
Without that number you cannot open a bank account, take a salary, buy health insurance or apply for anything at all.
It is free, it takes one visit, and the waiting time for an appointment is usually the slowest part of your first month.
Book it before you have finished unpacking.
Who this applies to
If you are staying four months or longer, you register in the BRP.
If you are here for less than that, you go through the RNI instead, the register for non-residents, which still gives you a BSN but does not register you as living at an address.
Which route you take depends on your nationality and whether you already have a BSN.
The gemeente runs separate procedures for Dutch nationals returning from abroad, for EU, EEA and Swiss citizens, for people arriving on a residence permit, for highly skilled migrants and academic researchers, for international students, and for privileged persons, which is the category that covers a large part of this city’s diplomatic workforce.
The appointment
An appointment is compulsory.
You cannot walk in.
Book online through the gemeente’s own system, or phone 14070 from inside the Netherlands, or +31 70 353 30 00 from abroad.
First registrations are handled at Publiekszaken at the Stadsdeelkantoor Segbroek.
Everyone being registered has to be physically present. That includes babies, small children and elderly relatives.
There is no way to register a family member in their absence, and turning up without one means going home and booking again.
Take with you:
- Valid photo identification. A passport or national ID card. A driving licence is not accepted, which catches people out regularly.
- Proof that you live at the address. A tenancy agreement usually does it, which is one reason to sort out your tenancy before anything else.
- Where relevant: birth certificate, marriage certificate, divorce papers, adoption documents.
Foreign certificates often need legalisation or an apostille and sometimes a sworn translation before the gemeente will enter them.
Sort that out in the country that issued them, because doing it from here is slow and expensive.
What happens next
Registration is normally processed within four weeks.
Confirmation arrives by post and carries your BSN.
It is not instant, and the gap is the awkward part of the first month: your employer wants the number, the bank wants the number, and the insurer wants the number.
If your appointment was only available for a date after you had already arrived, you can be registered retroactively from the date you actually moved in, so a late appointment does not cost you the earlier weeks.
Once the BSN letter lands, everything else becomes possible in a particular order: DigiD to deal with any Dutch institution online, a bank account, health insurance, which is compulsory and backdated to your arrival, and then utilities in your own name.
If you have no permanent address yet
Plenty of people land in temporary accommodation and cannot register there, either because it is not a residential address or because the landlord will not allow it.
The gemeente offers a briefadres, a correspondence address, for exactly this situation.
It is not a loophole for avoiding registration and it is assessed, but it exists and it is the right thing to ask about rather than staying unregistered.
Staying unregistered is the expensive option.
It blocks the BSN, and it can also mean living somewhere that required a housing permit you never applied for.
Moving again later
Once you are in the system, moving within the country is a different and much lighter process: you report the move online rather than booking an appointment.
The gemeente also runs an address investigation when the register and reality disagree, which is worth knowing about if you take over a flat and post keeps arriving for someone who supposedly still lives there.
If you leave the Netherlands, deregister.
People forget, and then discover years later that the Dutch tax office still considers them resident.
The practical order
Book the registration appointment the week you know your address, before the tenancy starts if you can.
Bring every original document and every family member.
Expect the BSN about four weeks later, and do not promise an employer a start date that assumes it will arrive sooner.
If your documents are complicated, the Hague International Centre handles registration for many internationals working here and is worth approaching first, because it is set up for exactly these cases.
Sources
- Gemeente Den Haag, 1e inschrijving BRP voor EU/EER-burgers en Zwitsers: appointment compulsory, all family members present, ID not a driving licence, proof of residence, free, usually processed within four weeks, BSN confirmed by post, retroactive registration where the appointment fell after arrival
- Gemeente Den Haag, verhuizen en migratie: the separate routes for Dutch nationals, residence-permit holders, knowledge migrants and researchers, international students and privileged persons, plus briefadres, RNI and adresonderzoek
- Phone numbers and the Publiekszaken location as published by the gemeente
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