Expatica: The largest online resource for overseas living

Expatica is an online home away from home for the foreign community. As a must read book for English speaking expatriates and international professionals around the world, Expatica offers tailored guides for expatriates that contain basic information about moving, working, and living abroad. With its in-depth features, tools, and more, Expatica brings the foreign community closer together.

Expatica Communications BV provides foreign nationals from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates with the information they need. Their new countries have become their homes.

In addition to our comprehensive English guide on taxation, housing, employment, education, and general life as a foreigner - written by experts and real-life foreigners and fact checked by our editors - Expatica provides many tools to make the movement as smooth as possible:

This directory provides a list of foreign friendly service providers in all fields, from accountants to international schools and everything in between.

Housing Search allows users to browse properties and apartments rented or purchased in their new country/region.

Job Search allows foreign nationals to find the perfect new job or simply check the job market situation.

Expatica was founded by two Dutch entrepreneurs (one foreigner and one local) with the same idea: to provide an online news portal for foreigners.

The story behind the website

On a cold Monday in 2000, Canadian foreigner Bram Lebo waited for over half an hour at a tram stop in the Netherlands. That morning, the station was empty, only a few foreigners like him. No one knew that the public transportation workers in the Netherlands were on strike that day. Because these foreigners could not read or speak Dutch, they were left in the darkness of the tram stop, waiting for the never coming means of transport. Disappointed, Bram believes it is necessary to help foreign nationals in the Netherlands understand what is happening.

Elsewhere in the Netherlands, Mark Welling is busy developing his website business, which he started in 1998. He joined this trend before the Internet became too full. When searching for a new target audience, he quickly realized that foreign nationals in the Netherlands lacked the necessary information to adapt to the new environment.

Both of them are researching the same idea, but have not yet met. In the end, they heard about each other, established contact, and decided to establish Expatica together.

In the same year, Expatica was established, and Mark's friend and colleague Antoine van Veldhuizen also joined in. Over the years, the demand for information on expatriates has increased in more countries, and Mark and Antoine have expanded Expatica to 11 countries. Unfortunately, Expatica lost Antoine in the 2014 MH17 plane crash; His memory remains the driving force behind his vision for Expatica.