MSIC: 2026 EU|BIC Award finalist

The Moravian-Silesian Region has long struggled with a negative migration balance. Skilled people leave. Young people leave. International professionals who arrive for work find the system hard to navigate: language barriers, administrative complexity, limited guidance, and little support for their families. In 2020, the region had one of the lowest shares of entrepreneurs in Czechia. Its economy needed transformation, but the talent needed was walking out the door.

In 2020, MSIC launched the Ostrava Expat Centre. The centre is a free, bilingual one-stop shop for international talent and their families. A team of four people sits with expats, understands their situation, and helps them find a way forward: a job, a business, help family settle, or simply a sense of belonging in the region.

What is the Ostrava Expat Centre

The Centre offers individual career and business consultations. Those can be online or on-site. They offer tailored job search, reskilling, or mentorship starting a business. The Centre provides a buddy service, pairing new arrivals with people who know the system and the region. It runs practical group programmes, including How to Find a Job and How to Start a Business. The Centre publishes online guides covering job search and business registration in plain, accessible language. There are language meetups to help expats connect with the local community. A podcast series, Expat Episodes, has former beneficiaries tell their stories. It organises large-scale community events: A festival connecting international talent with local employers and a creative market where expat entrepreneurs present their businesses to the wider community. The Centre is also present at university job fairs, providing career consultations directly to international students and researchers. Local organisations that commit to welcoming international talent can obtain the Expat Friendly Services label.

The Centre is embedded in the MSIC innovation ecosystem. It connects expats to the Lab Zero accelerator for international students and to MSIC’s broader network of business experts and mentors. MSIC runs a dedicated three-month entrepreneurship programme runs for aspiring expat entrepreneurs. They combine group workshops on idea creation, business model canvas, marketing, finance, accounting, and legal aspects, with individual mentoring and administrative support including assistance with business registration. The programme was developed within an Erasmus+ project led in partnership with Startup Leiria and PPNT Poznan, both EU|BIC Community members. Two cycles have been completed, engaging 18 participants. All but one are now running their own businesses.

Impact in the Moravian-Silesian Region

In 2024 alone, the Centre delivered 288 consultations and 68 events with 532 participants. A dedicated impact study assessed the programme’s regional impact in comparison with the Brno and the Polish border area, confirming its relevance and effectiveness in a transforming regional economy. The City of Ostrava and the Moravian-Silesian Region use feedback from the international community gathered through the programme to shape regional policies and strategic projects around talent attraction, relocation, and quality of life.

Kishore Kumar Chandra is an engineer at Porsche with a passion for filmmaking. At the start of 2025, he came to the Ostrava Expat Centre looking for guidance on starting a business. With the Centre’s support, he obtained a trade licence. He presented his creative work at the Centre’s events, where his short film received very positive feedback and helped him build his first professional connections in the city. He then joined the three-month business programme in autumn 2025, developing his business model and skills. In March 2026, he officially established Magical Works Production, a creative video production company now active in the regional creative industry.

Future, sustainability, and replicability

The programme targets a deliberately broad range of beneficiaries. International students and graduates of local universities entering the labour market. Skilled professionals working in the region in research and development. People seeking career transitions, including job changes or business creation. And accompanying spouses and partners, who face specific barriers to integration that differ from those of the primary visa holder, including access to part-time work, entrepreneurship opportunities, and meaningful community engagement.

The programme is funded through a Service of General Economic Interest framework agreed with the City of Ostrava and the Moravian-Silesian Region, securing its core services until 2030. In parallel, it draws on external funding through Erasmus+ to develop and expand its offer.

The transferability case has already been tested. Through the FANS Erasmus+ project, MSIC shared its model with PPNT Poznan and Startup Leiria, demonstrating that the combination of career support, entrepreneurship development, and community integration can be adapted to different regional contexts. The model does not require large resources to start. It requires a team willing to treat every expat as an individual, a connection to the regional innovation ecosystem, and an institution prepared to act as the bridge between international talent and the place that needs them.

MSIC will pitch the Ostrava Expat Centre on stage at EBN Congress 2026 in Trentino on 18 June. The audience votes for the winner.