How do I check the language levels on my CV?

This answer sets out what the cited ordinances and official information sheets say and is not legal advice. Whether you need a proof of language competence in your own procedure, and which certificate is accepted, is decided by the competent authority: your canton of residence for residence permits, settlement permits and ordinary naturalisation, and the State Secretariat for Migration for facilitated naturalisation. Cantonal practice differs, and the fide office states expressly that it is not authorised to take decisions on the basis of the list. For a job application the point is different again: an employer is not bound by these levels at all.

This matters more to readers arriving from outside Switzerland than to anyone else, because the intuition you bring is wrong in both directions. There is a formal Swiss apparatus for verifying a language level, which is more than most countries have. But it was built for residence permits and naturalisation, it tests everyday communication, it stops at B1, and it ignores English entirely.

Meanwhile the labour market asks above that ceiling almost every time. Across the adverts we hold that name any language at all, 96.8 per cent require at least one of those languages above conversational level. In the English-language adverts it is 97.4 per cent. Your Cambridge certificate or your IELTS score has no standing in a Swiss permit file — and no Swiss certificate exists for the level a Zurich employer is asking of your German.

Checking your language block therefore means three separate things: finding out which proof you are already entitled to, calculating the rest by the rule the federal authorities use, and dating whatever certificate you name.

• Work through the four routes in order. Three of them are documents from your own life rather than a test: mother tongue, three years of compulsory school in that national language, or upper-secondary or tertiary education in it. Many people qualify and never claim it.
• For naturalisation the same four routes carry different thresholds — five years of compulsory school instead of three, and the education must have been completed, not merely attended. The oral requirement is B1 and the written one A2.
• Do not expect a Swiss certificate for English, or for any language other than German, French, Italian and Romansh. The federal list is organised by national language and has no English section.
• The list of recognised certificates is not published in English. The fide portal offers it as a German document and states plainly: this document is not available in English.
• Calculate a written level the way the authorities do: where a certificate reports reading and writing separately, the lower level counts. Reading A2 with writing A1 is written A1. Where the two are far apart — reading B1, writing A1 — the middle level counts, so A2.
• Use the free official model test for the fide test as your self-check. It is downloadable, comes with solutions, splits reading and writing from speaking and comprehension, and is packaged in two level pairs, A1–A2 and A2–B1.
• Check the date on any certificate you list. A certificate counts as recognised if it was on the list on the day the application was filed, and the list is revised every three months. Entries have been dropped.
• Note that Switzerland recognises no state certificate above B1. Even the fide dossier, which is built for people already at B1 or above, awards B1 and nothing higher.
• If you hold no recognised certificate but do speak the language, the fide dossier route accepts work references that are meaningful about your language use. In Switzerland an Arbeitszeugnis — the employer reference letter — is language evidence in an official procedure.
• Say what «mother tongue» means before you write it. The migration authority defines it as a language learned in early childhood without formal instruction, spoken very well, used frequently, and carrying a particular emotional attachment.

The market figures were counted on 31 August 2026 from the active adverts held by SwissJobs.app. The basis is the structured field that records, per advert, the languages required and the level required in each; it is derived from the advert text when the advert is captured. Levels are held in four classes: basic knowledge (A1–A2), conversational level (B1), professional working level (B2–C1) and native level (C2). Where an advert names the same language twice, the higher level counts, and counting is per advert rather than per entry. «Above conversational level» means professional working level or native level. Percentages refer to the adverts that name at least one language; the language region is determined by the language the advert is written in, not by the location. We publish shares, never absolute stock figures. The distribution of individual language requirements, and the question of which level the Swiss market asks for, are already analysed in our answer on language levels; this page therefore counts only the highest level per advert, which is a different measure. The legal statements come from the versions of the ordinance on admission, residence and gainful employment of 12 June 2026 and of the Swiss citizenship ordinance of 1 August 2026 on Fedlex, both German-language originals, as neither ordinance has an English edition. The proofs, levels, deadlines and prices come from the federal fide portal, from the list of recognised language certificates in its edition of 1 July 2026 with annexes I to III, and from the migration authority FAQ on proving language competence; all retrieved on 31 August 2026.