Austrian Certificate of Conduct (Strafregisterbescheinigung): 2026 Guide

Anyone applying for a job, a volunteering role, a visa, or certain licences in Austria will eventually be asked for a Strafregisterbescheinigung, the official certificate of conduct issued from the national Strafregister (criminal record register). It confirms whether the person named on it has any relevant convictions, and it is the document most Austrian and many foreign employers mean when they ask for a "police clearance certificate."

The rules changed on 1 January 2026, when a new flat fee replaced the old itemised charges. This page explains where to apply, what the certificate does and does not show, how long a conviction stays visible before it is tilgt (legally erased from disclosure), and the special version required for roles involving children.

Information last verified on 22 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Austrian law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

What the Strafregisterbescheinigung is

The Strafregister is the Austrian government's central database of criminal convictions. The Strafregisterbescheinigung is not a copy of that database. It is a certificate, issued on request, that reports the applicant's own convictions in a filtered form.

Under § 10 Abs 1 Strafregistergesetz (SRG), mayors and Magistrate, the Landespolizeidirektion, and Austrian representations abroad must issue this certificate on application, listing the convictions of the applicant recorded in the Strafregister. Two limits follow directly from that provision and from the Tilgungsgesetz. First, only the person the certificate concerns can request and receive it. Second, some categories of data are excluded even for that person: certain court-supervision markers, activity-ban records, and terrorism or war-crimes supervision entries are not shown on the ordinary certificate, and any conviction that has already reached its Tilgungsfrist is left off entirely.

For most everyday purposes, an Austrian employer, landlord or foreign consulate asking for a "certificate of good conduct" or "police clearance" is asking for this document.

Where and how to apply

You can apply for the ordinary Strafregisterbescheinigung in one of three ways.

• In person at your Gemeinde. In any municipality where the Landespolizeidirektion is not itself the local Sicherheitsbehörde, the Bürgermeister (or the Magistrat in a statutory city) issues the certificate. This is the most common route for residents.
• At a Landespolizeidirektion. Every Austrian federal state has one, and it can issue the certificate directly.
• At an Austrian representation abroad. Austrian embassies and consulates can issue the certificate to citizens and, where relevant, other applicants living outside Austria.

Online, with ID Austria. The ordinary certificate can also be requested electronically through oesterreich.gv.at, Austria's citizen portal, using ID Austria (the national digital identity) or EU Login for applicants using another EU member state's electronic identity. This route is faster and, since the 2026 fee reform, also cheaper.

The special certificates, covering child and youth welfare roles, care roles, and the terrorism and war-crimes category, cannot be requested online. They require a written request from the employer or organisation, confirming why the certificate is needed, physically attached to the application. That attachment requirement is what rules out the fully electronic route for these versions.

The 2026 fee reform: what changed and what it costs now

Before 1 January 2026, applicants paid several separate charges: an Eingabengebühr, a Beilagengebühr, sometimes a Zeugnisgebühr, plus a separate Bundesverwaltungsabgabe. Older figures still circulating online, such as 25 euros plus a further 30.70 euros, or smaller combinations like 18 euros and 10.30 euros, reflect that pre-2026 system and are no longer current.

The Abgabenänderungsgesetz 2025 replaced all of that with a single flat Pauschalgebühr, effective for every application filed on or after 1 January 2026. There is no longer a separate Bundesverwaltungsabgabe on top.

Worked example. Someone applying in person for the ordinary certificate pays 26 euros. If the same person instead logs into oesterreich.gv.at with ID Austria and submits the request electronically, the fee drops to 18 euros, an 8 euro saving for the identical document. An applicant who needs both the ordinary certificate and, separately, the special certificate for a childcare job, and files both on paper, pays 26 euros plus 29 euros, or 55 euros in total.

Voluntary-work applicants are treated differently again. Anyone applying to work with a recognised Freiwilligenorganisation, a spendenbegünstigte Einrichtung (an organisation eligible to receive tax-deductible donations), or a recognised church, using the standardised form for that purpose, receives the certificate free of charge.

Because the flat-fee system only started this year, many pages that predate 2026 still describe the old itemised charges. Any source quoting a Bundesverwaltungsabgabe as a separate line item alongside the Gebühr is describing the superseded regime.

What the certificate shows, and what it leaves out

The Strafregisterbescheinigung lists the applicant's convictions recorded in the Strafregister, with several built-in exclusions.

It never shows a conviction that has already been tilgt (legally erased from disclosure under the Tilgungsgesetz). It also does not show data recorded under § 2 Abs 1 Z 7, 7a, 8 or 9 SRG, which covers narrow categories such as court-supervision markers for sexual-integrity offences, terrorism or war-crimes supervision markers, activity bans, and certain EU information-exchange annex data. These categories exist in the Strafregister for specific administrative and judicial purposes, not for disclosure to the person themselves or to a general employer.

It is worth keeping the two terms apart. The Strafregister is the government's underlying database. The Strafregisterbescheinigung is the document handed to an applicant, a filtered extract of that database rather than a printout of it.

Tilgungsfristen: how long a conviction stays on the certificate

The Tilgungsgesetz 1972 sets out how long a conviction remains visible before it is tilgt, meaning it can no longer be shown in any Strafregisterauskunft or Strafregisterbescheinigung. Where a person has only one conviction, § 3 Abs 1 sets four tiers based on the sentence imposed.

Worked example. Someone sentenced to 2 years' imprisonment falls into tier 3, a 10-year Tilgungsfrist. If instead the sentence had been 4 years, the case falls into tier 4, and the period jumps to 15 years, even though the sentence length only doubled.

The clock does not start at sentencing. Under § 2 Tilgungsgesetz, the Tilgungsfrist begins once every imposed prison term, fine, and any freedom-depriving preventive measure has been served, deemed served, pardoned, or is no longer enforceable. If no such penalty was imposed at all, the clock starts instead from the Rechtskraft, the point at which the conviction becomes legally final.

Several rules extend or block Tilgung entirely.

• Multiple convictions tilgen together, not separately (§ 4). If a person is convicted again before an earlier conviction has been tilgt, none of the convictions are removed until all of them qualify together, based on the combined sentence length, with a floor set by the latest conviction's own tier plus one additional year per further outstanding conviction.
• Certain sexual offences extend the period (§ 4a). An unconditional prison sentence for offences listed under §§ 201, 202, 205, 205a, 206, 207, 207a or 207b StGB doubles the ordinary Tilgungsfrist. Other offences in the same part of the Strafgesetzbuch extend it by half. A convicted person can petition the court to end the extension once the base period has run.
• Some sentences never tilgen (§ 5). A life sentence never tilgt, and it blocks Tilgung of every other conviction the same person holds. A sentence of more than 5 years for a serious sexual-integrity offence also does not tilgen automatically, though the sentencing court can grant it on petition no earlier than 15 years after the ordinary Tilgungsfrist would have started.

The two-year gap between Tilgung and actual deletion

A detail readers often miss: Tilgung is not the same moment as physical deletion. Once a conviction is tilgt, § 1 Abs 5 Tilgungsgesetz forbids it from appearing in any Strafregisterauskunft or Strafregisterbescheinigung, and the person is treated as if they had never been convicted for that offence. That part takes effect immediately.

The underlying data, however, stays in the Strafregister database for a further two years after Tilgung, under § 12 Abs 1 SRG, before it is actually deleted. During that two-year window, the record cannot lawfully be disclosed to the person or shown on their certificate, but it has not yet been physically removed from the government's own systems. The only carve-out in the statute for accessing a tilgt conviction during that window covers narrow EU and UK judicial-cooperation exchanges, not ordinary domestic access.

The special certificate for work with children and young people

A separate document exists for anyone applying to work in a role that mainly involves supervising, caring for, educating, nursing or training minors. Its official name, set out in § 10 Abs 1a SRG, is the "Strafregisterbescheinigung Kinder- und Jugendfürsorge." A related version, the "Strafregisterbescheinigung Pflege und Betreuung," is issued under § 10 Abs 1c for care-sector roles. Neither official title includes the word "erweiterte" (extended), even though that term is sometimes used informally to describe them.

An employer or organisation must attach a written confirmation to the application explaining why the certificate is required for the role, under § 10 Abs 1b SRG. Because of that attachment requirement, this certificate cannot be requested through the online portal, only in person or by post.

What makes this certificate different is that certain protections that apply to the ordinary certificate are switched off for it. Specifically, the restricted-disclosure period under § 6 Tilgungsgesetz does not apply to this certificate, so a conviction that is flagged under § 2 Abs 1a SRG as a sexual-integrity or self-determination offence, or recorded under § 2 Abs 1 Z 7 or 8 SRG, can appear here even where the ordinary certificate would stay silent on it during that period. This is also why the child and youth welfare certificate is treated separately from the Tilgungsgesetz's usual disclosure rules rather than being governed by it directly.

It is worth being precise about the statute here, since it is a common point of confusion. There is no § 9a in the Tilgungsgesetz 1972 at all.

§ 9a is a provision of the Strafregistergesetz, and it governs a different matter: disclosures made by the Landespolizeidirektion Wien to specific authorities, such as courts, prosecutors and EU or UK counterparts, about sexual-integrity offences and activity bans. It is not the certificate a private employer requests. The certificate for work with minors comes from § 10 Abs 1a SRG, not § 9a Tilgungsgesetz.

Reading the document

A genuine Strafregisterbescheinigung will either state that the Strafregister contains no relevant convictions or entries for the applicant, or list the specific convictions that are still within their Tilgungsfrist. It will not reproduce data excluded under § 10 Abs 1 SRG, and it will not show anything already tilgt, subject to the special-certificate exception described above.

If an employer, landlord or foreign authority asks for a document confirming "no criminal record" or "good conduct," the ordinary Strafregisterbescheinigung, obtained through a Gemeinde, a Landespolizeidirektion, an Austrian representation abroad, or online with ID Austria, is normally the correct document. A role that mainly involves supervising or caring for minors may instead require the Kinder- und Jugendfürsorge version, which the employer, not the applicant, must formally request in writing.