Short answers: which level you need, and how long it lasts
What changed on 1 January 2026?
Anyone selling goods or providing services in Lithuania must ensure that customers are served in the state language. This is Article 7¹ of the Law on the State Language, in force since 1 January 2026.
Which level is required?
For foreigners who serve customers directly — the basic category, which corresponds to A1. The level is set not by the law itself but by Government Resolution No. 827 of 26 November 2025.
Is A1 enough for me?
For two years. After that, to keep working in trade and services, you need the first category — A2.
When do those two years start?
On the day you were first issued a document confirming or granting the right to live in Lithuania. If that happened before 31 December 2025, the count starts on 1 January 2026 — so the deadline is 1 January 2028.
Who is asked — the employee or the employer?
Both, in different ways. The employer must ensure that employees who serve customers directly hold a document confirming the required category. If you work for yourself and serve customers in person, the certificate has to be yours.
Is A1 for work the same as A2 for documents?
No, and confusing them is expensive. Permanent residence and citizenship require A2. More than that: if you sat the exam for permanent residence and came out with A1, no A1 certificate is issued at all.
What the law actually says
Article 7¹ is short, and every word in it matters:
Legal and natural persons selling goods and (or) providing services in the Republic of Lithuania, other organisations and their subdivisions… shall ensure direct customer service in the state language at the level of Lithuanian language proficiency established by the Government.
Three things follow from this.
The requirement is framed around the action, not the job title. Not "a shop assistant must", but "whoever sells goods or provides services". That covers a nail technician, a courier, a gym trainer and a taxi driver alike, whatever the contract calls the role.
The level is not named in the law. The law defers to the Government, so the actual figure lives in a resolution — which is exactly why the retellings disagree with each other.
The exceptions are listed in the law itself, and there are only two: people who sell in Lithuania temporarily and do not do it as a regular occupation, and cases under Article 55 of the Law on Science and Studies, where the language requirement would be an unjustified restriction on the right to work.
Which level your job needs
The categories and their mapping to levels come from Government Resolution No. 1688, as amended by Resolution No. 827.
| Category | Level | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | A1 | Foreigners serving customers directly, for the first two years. Also foreigners holding a seasonal work permit |
| First | A2 | Services, trade, transport: shop assistants, waiters, drivers |
| Second | B1 | Education, culture, healthcare, social protection |
| Third | B2 or higher | Managers, civil servants, teachers. C1 or C2 proficiency counts as the third category |
The first two rows describe the same people: the basic category is where a foreigner starts, the first category is where they have to arrive within two years.
Two years: how to count yours
This is the most practical part, and the one usually left out.
The clock starts not from the date the law came into force and not from the day you started working, but from the first document that gave you the right to live in Lithuania.
- Document first issued before 31 December 2025 → the count runs from 1 January 2026, so your deadline is 1 January 2028.
- Document issued later → the two years run from its date.
The resolution has a separate line for seasonal workers: for foreigners with a seasonal work permit the basic category applies without that two-year limit.
What exactly will be asked of you
The resolution spells this out, and the wording is more useful than it looks.
If you are an employee. The duty sits with the employer: the company must ensure that staff who serve customers directly hold a certificate or another document confirming the required category. So the company is asked — and the document is yours to have.
If you work for yourself and serve customers in person, the certificate must be yours, and the responsibility is yours too.
Either way the practical conclusion is the same: what counts is a document, not "I understand Lithuanian well enough".
About temporary protection — honestly
Government announcements and the retellings that followed said that foreigners with temporary protection status are exempt from the requirement. We read both the law and the resolution in full — there is no provision granting such an exemption in either. The only exceptions in the law are occasional selling and the cases under the Law on Science and Studies.
That does not prove the exemption doesn’t exist: it may live in another act. But until we have seen the provision, the honest answer is that you should not count on it, and should check your own case with the Migration Department.
Is it worth going straight for A2
Often, yes.
The price difference is small: 52 € for the basic level against 57 € for the first. The difference in what you get is not small at all: A1 has to be re-confirmed in two years, while A2 covers both work and the path to permanent residence, and never expires.
The way to weigh it: if you are in Lithuania for the long run and expect to apply for permanent residence, A1 is an extra sitting and extra money. If the task is to keep your job right now and your Lithuanian is at zero, A1 buys you two years.
How the exam itself works — three parts, score thresholds, how long it takes — is covered separately: how the Lithuanian A2 exam works. If you have already sat it and the result wasn’t what you hoped for — what to do next.
How to register for the Lithuanian exam A step-by-step guide from scratch: screenshots, video instructions and current data.Where to start preparing
A1 is an everyday minimum: introduce yourself, name your job and address, understand a price and a time, answer a simple question from a customer, ask someone to repeat. It is reachable in a few weeks of half an hour a day, provided you work through exam topics rather than reading a textbook front to back.
A practical order: first see where you are now, then close the weak topics in short daily sessions.
