How do healthcare, health insurance and schools work for a foreigner living in Albania?

Albania has a compulsory health insurance scheme run by the fund FSDKSH. Employees and the self-employed resident in Albania pay into it through their contributions; children, students and some other groups are covered by the state; everyone else, which includes a foreign resident living on a pension or on income from abroad, may join voluntarily. The voluntary contribution is 3.4% of a base equal to twice the minimum wage, so 3,400 lek a month in 2026. Benefits start six months after you register and pay; if you register more than three months after losing another cover, the wait is a year.

Insured people register with a family doctor (3.9 million residents were on family doctors' lists in 2024), get hospital care in the public hospitals and pay only part of the price of medicines on the reimbursement list. Anything outside the package is paid in full, and most foreigners in Tirana, Durrës and the south use private clinics for anything non-urgent, paying per visit.

Insurance is also a document. The digital nomad permit requires a policy valid for at least a year; the family and pensioner checklists on e-Albania ask for "proof of health insurance in Albania"; permanent residence requires cover under the Albanian scheme. The property-owner permit lists no insurance in the 2026 rules, but a policy is still the sensible way to bridge the six-month public waiting period. No official list says which insurers or foreign policies are accepted, and the Albanian insurers' prices for such a policy were not published on their pages when this was written, so ask SIGAL, Intersig, Eurosig or Albsig for a quote and keep the policy in Albanian.

Public schools are free, including upper secondary, and the law guarantees the right to education to foreigners and stateless persons on the same terms as citizens; schooling is compulsory for every child resident in Albania from 6 to 16, and the language of instruction is Albanian. Children who arrive young pick the language up in a year; teenagers usually go to an international school.

Tirana has several English-language schools. Tirana International School (QSI) takes children from preschool at two years old to 13 (US grade 8) with no English required, and like the other international schools publishes its fees only on request. Outside Tirana the choice is public school or a private Albanian school; this is one reason families with school-age children settle in the capital and buy a holiday flat on the coast rather than the other way round.