The Civic Integration Exam Abroad (BIB) explained: Dutch A1 before your partner visa, €150, pass with a 6

The BIB has three parts, all taken on a computer at the embassy or consulate:

Knowledge of Dutch Society (KNS): 30 questions in 30 minutes. You see photos, the question is read out slowly, and you choose between two answers. Every question and answer is in the photo book of the official self-study package, so you can read them all at home.

Reading: 19 questions in 35 minutes, on short texts. The level is A1: simple Dutch.

Speaking: 22 questions in 30 minutes: 10 questions you answer and 12 sentences you finish, spoken into a microphone. Also A1. Naarnederland.nl publishes all the questions and sentence starters, and the marking model, dated 15 July 2026.

You can sit all three on one day, about 2 hours with breaks, but you do not have to.

Each part gets a mark from 1 to 10. You pass when you have at least a 6 in all three. KNS and Reading are marked by computer; Speaking is marked by people, using the published marking model.

The result comes from DUO within 8 weeks, by email with a PDF that shows which parts you passed. If you gave your sponsor's email address (your partner's, say) when registering, they get it too.

Failed one part? You register and pay again for that part only. The parts you passed stay valid until you have passed the whole exam.

The pass is valid for 1 year. The MVV must be applied for within a year of passing, or you take the whole exam again.

The fee is €50 per part, €150 for the whole exam. You register with DUO online (a paper form can take up to 10 weeks), pay, and get a confirmation with your candidate number within 5 working days. Then you book the appointment yourself with the embassy or consulate.

You sit it in your own country, or at the nearest Dutch embassy or consulate if your country has none (you may need a visa to go there). If you live in the EU and want to sit it in the EU, you must show you live there; if you live outside the EU, you cannot sit it in the EU.

You can move the date once, and the place once, up to 24 hours before. Cancel at least 24 hours ahead to get your money back.

Bring the appointment confirmation, a valid passport and a recent colour passport photo. Your fingerprints are taken on the day.

The IND lists exemptions. Among them: under 18 or at state-pension age; nationals of the EU/EEA, Australia, Canada, Japan, Monaco, New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vatican City; long-term EU residents of another EU country; and holders of certain Dutch diplomas, including the NT2 State Examination (programme I or II).

If you cannot pass because of a medical condition, or tried and could not for personal reasons, you can ask the IND for dispensation with the MVV application. For a medical case, the embassy assigns a doctor, whose examination you pay for.

The official self-study package exists in many languages. It is free to download, with e-learning, or €25 to buy as a set (manual with word list, the film Naar Nederland, the photo book, a workbook and the e-learning on USB). Practice exams for all three parts are on naarnederland.nl; the Reading and Speaking practice exams are the same length as the real ones, with different questions.

Our reading: KNS can be learned from the photo book, and Reading at A1 rewards steady vocabulary work. Speaking is the part a book cannot check, because nobody hears your answers; it is the one to practise aloud with a person who can tell you what a marker would hear.