Indians in Amsterdam: the 2026 guide to the neighbourhoods, IN Amsterdam, the temples and the community

Amsterdam is a city of 941,873 people (1 January 2026), growing by seven or eight thousand a year, and India is now among its seven largest source countries of new arrivals alongside the United States, Italy, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and Turkey. Its Indian community — 10,895 residents of Indian background on 1 January 2026, the most of any Dutch municipality — has two faces. In Zuid, around the Zuidas business district, in De Pijp and Oost, and across the border in Amstelveen, live the knowledge migrants of Booking.com, Adyen, Uber, ING, ABN AMRO, TCS and the other Indian services firms. In Zuidoost — the Bijlmer — lives the older Hindustani-Surinamese community, which built the Lord Shiva temple on the Hoogoorddreef, the Devi Dhaam mandir, the Taibah mosque and the Shirdi Sai temple, and runs the tokos of the Amsterdamse Poort. The two meet at the temples, at ISKCON in De Pijp, at the Durga Pujas across the Amstelveen line and at the cricket grounds.

Everything national — the knowledge-migrant permit, the 30% ruling, health insurance, tax, the licence rule — is in the Netherlands guide and applies here unchanged. The Amstelveen guide covers the suburb where most Amsterdam Indians do the weekly shop, and where many end up living.

The rest of this page goes through the city in the order you will meet it: the neighbourhoods and their 2026 rents, the first two weeks of paperwork, work and the trams, food, worship and the festival year, cricket, what things cost, the municipal taxes and the parking permit, daily life, schools, health, a first-year timeline, and then the groups and the app. Numbers carry the year they were published. Where a place has only a directory listing and no published hours, we say so rather than guess.

Amsterdam is a ring of canals inside a ring of nineteenth-century districts inside a ring of post-war ones, with the Zuidas business district on the southern edge and Amstelveen beyond it. The city does not publish a count of Indian-background residents per district, so what follows is the character of each area and where the community visibly is: the temples, the grocers, the schools and the offices.

What each district rents for in 2026

Pararius put Amsterdam at €28.69 per square metre for a new free-sector tenant in the second quarter of 2026 — up 2.6% on a year earlier, against a national average of €20.94 (about €1,882 a month) and €25.72 for the province of Noord-Holland. Numbeo's September 2026 crowd figures are €2,319 for a one-bedroom in the centre and €1,724 outside, €3,561 and €2,688 for a three-bedroom. The spread by district, from a 2026 letting-agency estimate, is what decides where families land:

Buying

Many Indian families buy after the first year or two, because Dutch mortgages run to 100% of the price and the 30% ruling counts in full. Prices per square metre in the second quarter of 2026: Amsterdam-Zuid had the highest median at €9,687, Oud-Zuid ran to €11,000–13,000, De Pijp €8,500–10,000, Oost €7,000–8,500, while Zuidoost's median transaction was €396,000, or €4,719 per square metre — about €3,850 below the city average. Numbeo's September 2026 figures are €9,261 per square metre in the centre and €6,016 outside. This is why Zuidoost, Diemen and Almere are where Amsterdam's Indian families buy, and why Zuid and De Pijp are where they rent.

Renting in Amsterdam

The rules are national — a deposit of at most two months, no agency fees, permanent contracts, the points system that caps regulated rents at €1,228.07 for 2026 contracts, the Huurcommissie for disputes, and registration at your address as a right and a duty — and are set out in the Netherlands guide. The Amsterdam specifics: competition is the fiercest in the country and a relocation agent who hears of flats before Pararius does is worth the fee; "no registration" listings are illegal and common; furnished flats carry a large premium; and a resident parking permit carries a waiting list in the Centrum, Zuid and West but none in Zuidoost, Noord or Nieuw-West — the prices and waits are in the taxes and parking section. Check your postcode on the city's map before buying a car.

The national sequence — the sponsor's TEV application, the MVV, registration within five days, the BSN, the residence card, health insurance within four months, the TB test within three — is in the Netherlands guide. Amsterdam's particulars:

The documents, and the traps

The five-day registration window is counted from arrival, not from finding a permanent flat: if you are in temporary housing, register there and change address later, because a change of address is a formality and a late registration is not. An unmarried partner needs the same apostilled paperwork as a spouse and a signed declaration of the relationship for the IND. If the landlord is an individual and you are a lodger, the City Office wants the owner's written consent for you to register — a landlord who refuses is usually renting illegally, and the Netherlands guide explains why you should walk away.

Two things Amsterdam does differently from the rest of the country. First, the City Offices deal with an enormous volume of internationals and take first registrations without an appointment, which is faster than most municipalities but means a queue on Monday mornings; go on a Thursday afternoon. Second, the city runs the expat centre as a shared front desk for eight municipalities, so a family living in Diemen or Almere whose employer is a recognised sponsor registers in the WTC, not at their own town hall.

Work

Amsterdam is the country's tech, finance and headquarters city. Booking.com moved into its new headquarters on the east side of the Oosterdokseiland, behind Centraal station, in the summer of 2023 and employs about 17,500 people worldwide; Adyen is headquartered here with 4,345 staff across 23 countries (2024); Uber's European hub, ING, ABN AMRO, Philips' headquarters, the Zuidas law and consulting offices, TCS, Infosys, Cognizant and the other Indian services firms, Schiphol's logistics belt in Haarlemmermeer, the universities (UvA, VU) and the Amsterdam UMC make up the rest. The companies that sit on the Diwali Festival Amstelveen committee — TCS, KPMG, Cognizant, Sun Pharma, Smartshore and Briddge alongside the municipality and amsterdam inbusiness — are a fair proxy for where the region's Indian professionals work. Indian knowledge migrants here are, as everywhere in the Netherlands, mostly in IT and data; English is the working language of all of it.

Before you accept an offer, check that the employer is in the IND's public register of recognised sponsors — four registers (work, exchange, study, research), updated monthly — because only a recognised sponsor can file the knowledge-migrant application. The salary thresholds, the 30% ruling and the search period after a job ends are national and in the Netherlands guide.

Getting around: the network

GVB runs five metro lines, fourteen tram routes, 46 bus routes and ten ferry routes, and carried 273.8 million passengers in 2025. Check in and out with a bank card or phone (OVpay): the daily cap for GVB travel is €10.50 (2026), the one-hour ticket is valid on every GVB line including Amstelveen, Uithoorn, Diemen, Schiphol and Weesp, and the old 90-minute ticket was withdrawn on 1 January 2026. Fares rose 3.86% on average for 2026; Numbeo's crowd figures put a single ride at about €3.40 and a monthly pass at about €104. The Randstad Noord zone season ticket is being replaced by an OVpay product called Randstad Noord Vrij. Amsterdam Centraal and Zuid are the stations — Schiphol in 15–20 minutes, Utrecht in 27, Eindhoven in 80.

The trams to Amstelveen changed on 29 March 2026

This matters to every Indian family in the region, and the old descriptions are now wrong:

Metro 52 (Noord–Zuid) runs to Station Zuid; metro 50 and 54 to Zuidoost (Bijlmer ArenA, Kraaiennest); metro 50 to Isolatorweg for the Westpoort gurdwara; and the ferries to Noord are free.

Bikes and cars

The bicycle is the city's transport: buy one, buy two locks, learn the lanes. About 11,000 bikes were reported stolen in Amsterdam in 2025 — 12.8 per 1,000 residents, against 4.8 nationally, with e-bikes the most targeted — so insure an e-bike and lock everything to something fixed. An OV-fiets from any station costs €4.80 per 24 hours in 2026 (€4.55 at some), with a €5-a-day surcharge from the fourth day. A car is a liability in Amsterdam: the permit waits and prices, the low-emission zone inside the A10 and street parking at up to €7.50 an hour are in the taxes and parking section. Most Indian families do without one and use car-share for the weekend. An Indian licence cannot be exchanged unless you hold the 30% ruling — the rule is in the Netherlands guide.

Amsterdam's Indian restaurants are in De Pijp and the centre; its full Indian supermarkets are one in Slotervaart and five in Amstelveen. Addresses were checked in September 2026; hours change, so look before you go, and treat these as pointers rather than endorsements — the live directory beneath this section is where the community rates them.

Groceries

Albert Heijn and Jumbo carry rice, pulses and a spice shelf; the Albert Cuyp and the Dappermarkt have the vegetables; the Turkish and Moroccan shops of West sell halal meat; Dookan ships from the Czech Republic in three to five days. Several smaller Asian grocers around Oost carry an Indian range, but none published an address we could confirm, so ask in the groups. For sweets there is no dedicated mithai shop-front in the city that we could confirm: Little India stocks mithai, and a handful of home-based makers sell through Instagram and deliver nationwide (Divine Bites, made in Schiedam, ships across the country).

Restaurants

Every kitchen above has a vegetarian menu; ISKCON's Sunday feast in De Pijp is a free prasadam dinner for anyone who comes, and its Friday dinner club asks a €6 donation.

The national council of Hindu organisations lists five mandirs in Amsterdam, and the city also has a Shirdi Sai temple, two gurdwaras, the region's largest South Asian mosque and Sathya Sai bhajan groups. Hours below were read from the temples' own pages or the directories in September 2026; the two places with no published hours are marked.

Mandirs and the Sai temple

The Sri Sathya Sai organisation runs three Amsterdam groups: Zuidoost bhajans every Sunday at 13:30, a second centre with fortnightly Sunday bhajans 13:00–14:00 and a children's class, and a third with Thursday bhajans 19:15–20:15; addresses are given on request through the national organisation.

Gurdwaras

• Shri Guru Nanak Gurdwara Sahib, Schakelstraat 21, 1014 AW, Westpoort (metro 50 to Isolatorweg): open daily 06:00–19:00 with evening prayer at 18:00; on Sundays Punjabi classes 10:30–12:00, kirtan and katha from about 11:30 to 13:00, then langar around 13:30; 020 684 0776. Its own website was down when we checked.
• Gurdwara Maan Sarovar Sahib, Baarsjesweg 281–282, West — still listed by the Dutch and world gurdwara directories in 2026; programme times are not published, so ask in the groups.
• The Guru Ram Das Ashram at Den Texstraat 46 is a 3HO kundalini-yoga centre in the Sikh tradition, not a Punjabi congregation.

The Taibah mosque

Masjid Taibah, Kraaiennest 125, 1104 CH, Zuidoost — 150 metres from Kraaiennest metro — was built in 1985 and enlarged in 1998 to hold about a thousand worshippers; with its two domes and four minarets it is known as the white pearl of the Bijlmer. It is Sunni (World Islamic Mission), its congregation is Surinamese, Indian and Pakistani, and it works in Dutch and Urdu; 020 698 2526. Its 2026 programme included the Urs Sharief on 7 August and a Milad-un-Nabi series from 13 to 24 August at 19:00, closing with the Juloos on 5 September, all livestreamed.

Associations

• Hoichoi, the Bengali Community of the Netherlands (KvK 66973856), holds its Durga Puja at the Diamant Party Centrum in Amstelveen — 2026 is its tenth year there — and Bengali cultural evenings through the year.
• Anandadhara, the other Bengali association, has held its puja at the VRA cricket ground in past years; its site carried no 2026 programme when we checked.
• The Netherlands Telugu Community (NLTC, founded 2017, Amstelveen; KvK 67812988) runs Sankranthi, Ugadi, Srinivasa Kalyanam, Bathukamma and Dasara, an International Yoga Day, a cricket league, volleyball, throwball and chess leagues and a charity run.
• The Netherlands Marathi Mandal began in 2011 as the arts group Rasmin and became a mandal in 2015: Ganeshotsav, Gudhi Padwa, a digital Diwali magazine, Kojagiri and Marathi theatre. A separate Maharashtra Mandal Netherlands ran a Ganeshotsav with a dhol-tasha procession on the Amstelveen Stadsplein in 2025 and held its 2026 edition in Aalsmeer on 20 September.
• The Netherlands Tamil Sangam (Stichting, based in The Hague) teaches Tamil at every level, Bharatanatyam, Silambam and instruments in six cities including Amsterdam and Amstelveen.
• Gujarati Samaj Netherlands is based in Amstelveen and announced a Navratri garba for 2026 on its Facebook page; the venue and dates were not readable when we checked.
• No Malayali association could be confirmed in the city; Onam 2026 was a commercial sadhya at Dot In on 6 September followed by a comedy night. The Indian students' associations of the UvA and VU, the Hindoe Raad and the Hindustani organisations of Zuidoost are the others; cricket has its own section.

The festival year in 2026

Dates are on the festival calendar. The Radha Krishna Mandir's 2026 programme runs Maha Shivratri (15 February, 18:00 to midnight), Chaitra Navratri (19–25 March, 18:00–21:00), Ram Navami (26 March), Hanuman Jayanti (1 April), Shrawan Maas (23 August), Krishna Janmashtami (4 September), Ganesh Chaturthi (14 September), Sharad Navratri (11–19 October, 18:00–21:00) and Gita Jayanti (20 December). Holi fell on 3–4 March 2026; the region's ticketed colour festival is Amstelveen's Indian Colour Festival in the Emergohal, held on 14 March in 2026. Onam was 6 September at Dot In. Durga Puja: Hoichoi at the Diamant Party Centrum in Amstelveen, Friday 16 to Tuesday 20 October 2026, with day tickets from €15 and a five-day pass at €135 for adults, and Agomoni's puja in Hoofddorp the same week. The Diwali Festival Amstelveen — the region's big public Diwali — is on Saturday 31 October 2026, 12:00–19:00, on the Handelsplein in the Amstelveen Stadshart, free, its eighteenth edition; Diwali itself is 8 November 2026, with Lakshmi puja at the temples. Guru Nanak Jayanti is kept at both gurdwaras. ISKCON has run a Ratha Yatra through the city in past summers; no 2026 date was published when we checked. The events posted near Amsterdam are listed below as they are added.

The Royal Dutch Cricket Association (KNCB) was founded in 1890, took its royal charter in 1958, has been an ICC associate since 1966 and is headquartered in Amstelveen; 57 clubs played the 2026 domestic season. The Amsterdam region's clubs are majority South Asian, always recruiting, and the surest way for a newcomer to find friends in the first month.

The Netherlands Telugu Community runs its own NLTC Cricket League beside the KNCB competitions, and most of the clubs above field a Saturday social side where a newcomer who has not held a bat since college can play in a fortnight. Bring whites and your own kit for the first practice; Kashmir Food Store in Amstelveen sells cricket equipment beside the atta, which tells you everything about the town. The cricket season is April to October; the winter is indoor nets, the kabaddi and badminton nights of the associations, and the football that the Dutch children will pull yours into anyway.

The national picture — prices above Belgium and Germany, below the Nordics, rent the variable that decides everything — is in the Netherlands guide. Amsterdam's own numbers, from Numbeo's contributors (updated 27 September 2026), the Pararius rental monitor and the schools' and municipality's 2026 tariffs:

Two budgets

A single knowledge migrant in a one-bedroom outside the centre spends roughly €3,000–3,300 a month all-in in Amsterdam, the highest in the country; a couple in De Pijp about €4,200; a family of four in a three-bedroom in Zuid, Oost or across the line in Amstelveen about €6,500–7,500 before international-school fees — which is why so many families end up in Amstelveen, Diemen or Almere, where the same house costs a third less, and why a family with two children at a private international school is spending €40,000–60,000 a year on schooling alone unless the employer pays.

Energy is the line that surprises Indian newcomers: a Dutch household used about 1,040 cubic metres of gas and 2,430 kWh of electricity a year in 2026, billed monthly on an estimate and settled once a year, and a badly insulated pre-war flat in De Pijp can double the winter bill of a new-build in IJburg. Salaries are not indexed automatically as in Belgium and Luxembourg, but the 8% holiday allowance is a legal floor, a thirteenth month is common in IT and finance, and the 30% ruling — 30% of salary tax-free in 2026, 27% from 2027 — is what makes the first five years' arithmetic work. Compare offers on net-of-tax terms and ask whether the employer grosses up.

Three bills arrive by post in the months after you register, and a fourth if you buy a car. None of them is national, so the Netherlands guide does not cover them.

The municipal taxes in 2026

The waste charge can be paid in one go or in eight monthly direct debits through the city's Mijn Belastingen portal. A two-person household therefore pays about €934 a year in waste, treatment and water-system levies before any property-based charge — one of the reasons the 2024 comparison put Amsterdam's combined waste and sewer bill at €636 against Amstelveen's €533. The Amstelveen guide has its 2026 figures.

The resident parking permit

A permit needs three things: you are registered in the BRP at the address, the car is in your name or on a lease contract in your name, and the property has no parking space of its own. The city cuts the number of permits in each zone by 1.1% every six months (since 1 July 2019), which is why the lists grow. Prices and waits from a 2025 survey of the zones, with the city's own list confirming waits of more than four years in the tightest:

Check your postcode on the city's waiting-list map before you sign a lease with a car in mind. Street parking without a permit costs up to €7.50 an hour in the centre and along the ring.

The low-emission zone

Everything inside the A10 ring is a low-emission zone (the A10 itself is exempt). Diesel cars must be Euro 5 or newer — or more than forty years old — to enter; petrol cars are not restricted; the fine is €130 per entry. An imported diesel from before 2011 is therefore useless in the city. Most Indian families in Amsterdam skip the car in the first year, use Greenwheels or MyWheels for the weekend and buy one, if at all, once they know which zone they live in.

Energy and water

The Dutch energy market is open: you choose an electricity and gas supplier on a comparison site (Independer, Gaslicht) and can switch yearly; the grid operator that owns the meters and handles connections and moves is Liander. Water is a regional monopoly with no contract to shop for — Waternet here; notify the move-in date and the meter reading. Most flats are gas-heated with a combi boiler; new-build in IJburg, Zuidoost and the Vinex districts is increasingly all-electric with a heat pump, which shows up as a higher electricity bill and no gas bill. Set up the smart-meter app on day one — Dutch winters are billed monthly on an estimate and settled once a year, and a wrong estimate is a nasty April surprise. Numbeo's September 2026 figure for an 85 m² flat is €273.28 a month for electricity, heating, water and waste, and €46.22 for broadband.

Waste

Amsterdam collects residual waste in underground containers, with separate containers for paper, glass and PMD (plastic, metal, drink cartons) and — in more and more districts — a pass-operated food-waste container (GFE/T). The city's Waste Guide gives the rules for your address. Bulky waste is collected free: by appointment in the Centrum, Watergraafsmeer and Weesp, on fixed days everywhere else; put it out between 21:00 the evening before and 07:00 on the day, and a fine of €110 or more follows if you dump it at another time. Construction waste, metal, cardboard, batteries, paint, small appliances, mirrors, tiles, tyres and soil are refused at the kerb and go to a recycling point. The waste charge itself is in the taxes section.

Phones and internet

KPN, Odido and VodafoneZiggo are the networks; SIMs are sold with ID at any supermarket and registered in minutes; a 10 GB plan is about €15–20 a month and fibre or cable internet €40–55. The country code is +31; mobiles start with 06. Most landlords leave the previous tenant's fibre in place; ask which provider serves the building before you order.

The bicycle

Two locks, one of them a chain through the frame to something fixed, and insurance if it is an e-bike: Amsterdam's 11,000 reported thefts in 2025 were mostly e-bikes and fatbikes. Register the frame number. Children cycle to school from about eight; the Dutch schools run a traffic exam in the final primary year, and an Indian child who arrives at ten catches up in a season.

The weather and the calendar

Maritime and mild: an annual mean around 10–11 °C, rain and wind in every month, short winter days, a heatwave or two in summer; a good rain jacket beats an umbrella on a bicycle, and Dutch GPs prescribe vitamin D to almost every newcomer from India. Few public holidays — King's Day on 27 April is the one the whole country celebrates in orange — and shops open on Sundays in the city. Amsterdam's own days — King's Day, Pride in early August, the marathon in October — close the centre; plan the airport run around them, and around the Diwali Festival Amstelveen on the last Saturday of October, when the trams south are full.

The national system — free Dutch schools from four, the split at twelve, the international-school eligibility rule, the childcare allowance — is in the Netherlands guide. Amsterdam has two tiers of international school with a gap of €15,000 a year between them, and the tier a family can reach decides where it lives.

The Dutch-subsidised tier: AICS

The Amsterdam International Community School (AICS, part of the Esprit group) is IB from primary to diploma and subsidised by the state, which is why its fees are a third of the private schools'. It has two campuses that matter to Indian families: the South Campus at Arent Janszoon Ernststraat 1179 in Buitenveldert (020 577 1240) and the Sandcastle campus at Bijlmerplein 1000 in Zuidoost (020 723 5280), a few minutes from the AMC hospital and the Bijlmer ArenA metro. Eligibility is the national rule: a non-Dutch child whose parent is temporarily employed in the Netherlands, or a Dutch child returning from at least two years abroad or leaving within two. Waiting lists depend on the year group and campus, and an application rolls over to the next year automatically — apply the day you have a contract.

The private tier

A 2026 survey put the city's two tiers at €5,500–9,800 (subsidised) against €16,000–28,500 (private), and Numbeo's crowd figure for a private international primary is €15,459 a year. There is no Indian-curriculum or CBSE school; Hindi is taught on Sunday mornings at the Radha Krishna Mandir in Osdorp, Tamil and Bharatanatyam by the Netherlands Tamil Sangam, and the rest through private tutors and the associations.

The Dutch schools, and childcare

The free Dutch schools take children from four, with newcomer language classes for those who arrive later, and a good Amsterdam primary is a better bet than most families from India expect; the Netherlands guide explains the split at twelve that decides more than any school choice does. Daycare is private and subsidised through the childcare allowance — up to 96% of €11.23 an hour in 2026 for household incomes to about €56,000 — but the full-day price before the allowance is about €2,492 a month per child in Amsterdam (Numbeo, September 2026), and the waiting lists in Zuid, De Pijp and Oost are long: register in pregnancy, and register at three or four centres.

The rules — compulsory basic insurance within four months and backdated to arrival, the GP as the gatekeeper to everything, the TB test at the GGD within three months for arrivals from India — are in the Netherlands guide. Amsterdam's particular problem is the GP.

The GP shortage, and the tools that get round it

ZorgkaartNederland listed 434 GPs for Amsterdam in 2026, and most practices had a patient stop; in December 2024 about 7,000 people were on a regional waiting list. A practice takes you only if you live inside its postcode area, so know your address before you ring. Three postcode tools show which practices are open: kiesjehuisarts.nl (run by the Zeker van Zorg project with two insurers, not yet nationwide), praktijkfinder.nl and the CZ insurer's zorgvinder. Since November 2024 the Zeker van Zorg project — the Amsterdam GP alliance with Dokters van de Wereld, the Kruispost and the Dr Valckenier practice — has distributed uninsured and unregistered patients across practices; ring it if every practice in your postcode says no. IN Amsterdam and your insurer also keep lists. In the meantime, the out-of-hours GP post (huisartsenpost) sees anyone who cannot wait, and pharmacies handle the small things.

The hospitals

An emergency is 112; anything less is your GP, or the huisartsenpost at night and weekends. Hospital A&E without a referral is for genuine emergencies, and the insurer will say so.

Insurance and the TB test

Basic insurance in 2026 averages €159.30 a month, from €142.40 for the cheapest policy to about €185 for the dearest, on top of the compulsory €385 deductible; choosing a voluntary deductible of up to €885 saves up to €22.50 a month, which suits a healthy single and not a family. Children are free. The switching window is November–December each year. The GGD Amsterdam runs the IND-referred tuberculosis screening; its pages confirm the service and the costs but the booking route was not readable when we checked, so use the letter the IND sends you or ring the GGD. Vitamin D, a flu jab in October and a dentist (not covered by basic insurance for adults) are the three things the groups remind every newcomer about.

The order matters more than the speed, and half of it is national. This is the year as Amsterdam families describe it in the groups, with the national steps linked to the Netherlands guide.

What people wish they had known

• The GP is the bottleneck, not the permit: start ringing practices the day you have a postcode, and use the postcode tools rather than the phone book.
• "No registration" flats are illegal and common; walk away, however good the flat.
• The 30% ruling is negotiated, not automatic: ask in the offer, and ask whether the employer grosses up.
• The trams changed in March 2026: tram 25 no longer starts at Zuid, and tram 5 becomes a shuttle from December — check the GVB planner, not last year's map.
• The Dutch school split at twelve decides more than any international school does; understand it before your child is ten.
• Zuidoost is not what the old guidebooks said: the AMC, an AICS campus, four places of Hindu worship, the mosque, the cheapest three-bedrooms in the city and no parking wait.
• The groups know first — which grocer has curry leaves this week, which crèche has a place, which GP opened its list. Almere, Diemen and Amstelveen are where Amsterdam families buy.

Every Indian who has moved abroad has the same first move: find the WhatsApp group. Amsterdam has hundreds — "Indians in Amsterdam", the Booking and Adyen alumni groups, the Telugu and Tamil and Malayali ones, the housing groups that fill with fraud, the parents' groups for each international school, the cricket groups — and they are how the community has always run. This guide is not going to pretend otherwise.

What the groups are good at, and what they are not

They are fast and warm: ask at nine in the evening which GP in Rivierenbuurt still takes patients and somebody who registered last month will answer before ten. But you need to know somebody to get the link; the links that circulate are stale, and the live ones are where the "flat, pay the deposit first" scams start — Amsterdam housing fraud against newcomers is an industry. A group of 1,000 people has no moderator, so the same three questions are asked every week and the answers scroll away. Every member can see your phone number. And a group does not know where you live: the flat in Almere and the garba in Eindhoven arrive with the same weight as the one in De Pijp.

What Namaste Community does instead

Namaste Community is a free app, built in the Benelux by members of this community, that keeps what the groups do well and fixes the rest. It launched in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg and works in every country.

• Everything is ranked by distance from you — events, groups, questions, businesses and things for sale, within 10, 50, 100 or 200 km, your choice — so an Amsterdam member sees Amsterdam and Amstelveen first.
• Groups with a place and a moderator, joined by people within their radius, with polls, join modes and a member limit; your phone number is never shown, and you can post under your name or an anonymous handle.
• Ask, and the answer stays: the question about the 30% ruling, the parking-permit waiting list or a GP taking patients is answered once, in a thread the next person finds.
• A directory with reviews of grocers, restaurants, tailors, tutors, accountants and driving schools, listed free by the businesses themselves.
• The events calendar — every Diwali, garba, Durga Puja, temple festival and cricket match near you, imported daily and moderated, with an RSVP; the same calendar behind the festival pages.
• Marketplace and rooms from members near you — a bike, a desk, a room in Oost.
• Verified members, moderation, and a report button on everything.

Your first week in the app

1. Install it, sign in, set your location to Amsterdam and the radius to 10 km. Get the app for iPhone or Android.
2. Join the general Amsterdam group and the one for your language or interest. Read before you post.
3. RSVP to one event in the next fortnight — the ISKCON Sunday feast, a cricket practice in the Bos, a Durga Puja evening.
4. Ask the question you actually have, and say which district you are in.
5. When you have found your flat, your GP and your grocer, leave a review or an answer for the next person from Bengaluru or Pune.

The groups near Amsterdam are listed below, ranked by how active they are. If the one you need does not exist yet, start it: it takes a minute, and it shows up here for the next person searching.

Everything on this page — registering, renting, the GP, the trams, the schools, the taxes — applies identically to every South Asian newcomer, and the city's South Asian life was built by people who came long before the knowledge migrants.

The Hindustani-Surinamese community of Zuidoost

Zuidoost is the Hindustani-Surinamese heart of Amsterdam — descendants of the indentured labourers who left British India for Suriname between 1873 and 1916 and came to the Netherlands around Surinamese independence in 1975. They built the Lord Shiva Hindu Temple on the Hoogoorddreef, the Devi Dhaam mandir on the Grubbehoeve and the Shri Vishnu Mandir in De Pijp, all affiliated to the Sanatan Dharm Mahasabha; the Taibah mosque at Kraaiennest, whose congregation is Surinamese, Indian and Pakistani and whose sermons are in Dutch and Urdu; the roti shops and the tokos of the Amsterdamse Poort; and the Bijlmer and Groen & Wit cricket clubs on the Karspeldreef. Their Hindi is Sarnami, their Bollywood is the same as yours, and their temples run the Sunday services that Indian newcomers in Osdorp and Zuidoost attend. It is a century of roots that a newcomer can only be grateful for.

Pakistani, Nepali, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi neighbours

The country's Pakistani community is about 27,000 strong; in Amsterdam it shares the Taibah mosque and the Kashmir Food Store in Amstelveen, which is an Indian and Pakistani supermarket with a halal butcher. Nepalis run a striking share of the city's Himalayan restaurants — Sherpa on the Korte Leidsedwarsstraat has been open since 1975, and Lumbini on the Amstel, Surya, Himalayan Kitchen, Kathmandu Kitchen and The Yeti follow — and the Nepali students of the UvA and VU are visible at the ISKCON feast and the cricket nets. Sri Lankan Tamils are fewer here than in The Hague and Rotterdam; we found no Tamil kovil or Buddhist vihara inside the city, and the Netherlands Tamil Sangam's Amsterdam classes are where the Tamil-speaking families of both countries meet. Bangladeshis share the Bengali pujas of Hoichoi and Anandadhara and the Bengali evenings through the year.

Embassies and the national detail

The embassies of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are in The Hague, forty-five minutes by train; Nepal is covered from Brussels; the Netherlands guide has the addresses and the national picture. The Embassy of India is at Oranjestraat 12, The Hague — passports are submitted at the embassy itself and OCI through VFS Global (Parkstraat 99, The Hague, or Radarweg, Amsterdam); the national guide has the contacts. Nobody on this page is anyone else's guest; the same trams, the same GP shortage and the same Diwali on the Handelsplein belong to all of us.

This page grew three dedicated sections in September 2026, so the short version lives here and the detail is one click away.

Schools and childcare, in brief

The Dutch-subsidised AICS (€6,025–9,168 a year in 2026–27, campuses in Buitenveldert and Zuidoost) is the affordable IB option and has waiting lists by year group — apply the day you have a contract. The British School of Amsterdam in Zuid (€20,461–22,976) is private; the International School of Amsterdam and Amity are in Amstelveen. The free Dutch schools take children from four; there is no Indian-curriculum school; Hindi is taught on Sundays at the Radha Krishna Mandir. Daycare is private, about €2,492 a month before the allowance. The schools section has the fee tables.

Health, in brief

Basic insurance within four months (€159.30 a month on average in 2026, €385 deductible), a GP the week you arrive using the postcode tools, the TB test at the GGD within three months; the Amsterdam UMC (AMC in Zuidoost, VUmc on the Zuidas), the OLVG (Oost and West) and the BovenIJ are the hospitals. The health section has the addresses and the tools.

Neighbours, in brief

Zuidoost is the Hindustani-Surinamese heart of the city; Pakistani, Nepali, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi neighbours share the mosque, the restaurants, the cricket and the pujas. The neighbours section has the detail, and the Netherlands guide the embassies.

The embassy and the national rules

The Embassy of India is at Oranjestraat 12, The Hague — passports are submitted at the embassy itself and OCI through VFS Global (Parkstraat 99, The Hague, or Radarweg, Amsterdam); the Netherlands guide has the contacts. Everything national lives there and applies here unchanged: permits, the 30% ruling and tax, housing law, health, transport and the licence, temples nationwide. The other city guides: Amstelveen, The Hague, Eindhoven, Rotterdam, Utrecht.