Indians in The Hague: the 2026 guide to the Hindustani city, the embassy, Shell and the international institutions

The Hague — Den Haag, 's-Gravenhage on the documents — is a city of 569,468 people (1 January 2026) on the North Sea coast, the seat of the Dutch government and parliament, of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, of Shell and of nearly every foreign embassy in the country, including India's. A quarter of its jobs are in government or international institutions. Six in ten residents have a migration background (59.9% on 1 January 2024), and it is a city of two Indian communities that between them go back a century and a half.

The older is the Surinamese-Hindustani community. People of Surinamese origin were 8.4% of the city in 2020 — roughly 46,000 people of every Surinamese background, Creole and Javanese as well as Hindustani — and Hindus were 4.6%, about 26,000 people; the Hindustani community, which also has Muslim and Christian members, is the largest in the Netherlands and the group that shaped this city more than any other South Asian one. Their ancestors left Bihar and Uttar Pradesh for Suriname as indentured labourers from 5 June 1873 and came to the Netherlands around Surinamese independence in 1975. They built the Transvaal district's Paul Krugerlaan into the Hindustani shopping street of the country, nine mandirs across the west and south of the city, the Divali torch procession to the two monuments on the Hobbemaplein, the Holi Hangámá and the Milan Summer Festival in the Zuiderpark, the largest multicultural open-air festival in the Netherlands.

The newer is the Indian expat community — 6,407 residents of Indian background in the city on 1 January 2026, plus 2,138 in Delft, 1,465 in Leidschendam-Voorburg and 641 in Rijswijk — who came for Shell, the ministries, the institutions, the IT services firms and TU Delft, and who live in Ypenburg, Leidschenveen, Bezuidenhout, Voorburg and Rijswijk. Around both are Pakistani (3,612 residents in 2019), Sri Lankan Tamil, Nepali and Bangladeshi neighbours with their own associations, covered in their own section.

Everything national — the knowledge-migrant permit and its 2026 thresholds, the 30% ruling, health insurance, tax, the licence rule — is in the Netherlands guide and applies here unchanged. This page is the local layer: addresses, days, hours, prices with their year, and who organises what.

The Hague runs from the beach at Scheveningen through the government quarter and the nineteenth-century districts to the Vinex new-builds of Ypenburg and Leidschenveen on the far side of the A4 and A12. Rents are Numbeo's September 2026 figures (one-bedroom €1,463 in the centre, €1,150 outside; three-bedroom €2,475 and €2,034) and the Pararius average of €22.42 per square metre for a new free-sector tenant — a fifth below Amsterdam. Rekenmaat's indicative free-sector rents for The Hague, checked on 1 January 2026 against platform and NVM data, give the size bands most people actually search in:

No reliable 2026 average exists per wijk for Ypenburg, Leidschenveen or Bezuidenhout, so the per-area figures below are ranges from listings and the groups rather than statistics.

Renting in The Hague

The rules are national — a two-month deposit cap, no agency fees, permanent contracts, the points system that caps regulated rents at €1,228.07 for 2026 and the Huurcommissie, registration as a right and a duty — and are in the Netherlands guide. The Hague's market is softer than Amsterdam's; the Vinex houses are where Indian families buy after two or three years, and Zoetermeer is where they look when Ypenburg is too dear. Two local things to check before signing: whether the street has resident parking (most do; the car-free new-build zones at Palaceplein, Binckhorst, Energiekwartier and CS-Oost issue no permits at all), and whether a GP within the postcode has an open list — the city's GP shortage is the worst in the country, and the health section explains the Hadoks finder that answers that question in a minute.

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. The Hague's particulars:

Two things newcomers get wrong here. First, the five-day registration clock runs from arrival, not from finding a permanent flat: register at the temporary address and change it later. Second, the International Centre is for the employees of the region's companies and institutions; a partner arriving on a family permit later, or a student whose slot round has closed, goes to the ordinary Stadsdeelkantoor desk by appointment on denhaag.nl — the same registration, a different queue.

Work

The Hague's economy is government, institutions and Shell: the ministries (Defence, Justice and Security, Foreign Affairs, Housing) and their agencies, the international institutions (the ICJ, the ICC, the OPCW, Europol, Eurojust, the European Patent Office in Rijswijk), Shell's Dutch head office, Siemens, the insurers (Nationale-Nederlanden, Aegon), the IT services firms serving them, the Hague Security Delta cluster, and TU Delft and Leiden University's Hague campus. Indian knowledge migrants here are in IT, engineering, energy and the institutions' technical staff; EPO and institution posts are open to non-EU nationals in a way EU-institution posts in Brussels are not. The 2026 knowledge-migrant thresholds — €5,942 gross a month from age 30, €4,357 under 30, €3,122 for recent graduates, the EU Blue Card at €5,942 — the 30% ruling and the search period after a job ends are national and in the Netherlands guide; IND fees rose 4.4% on 1 January 2026.

Getting around: HTM in 2026

HTM runs the trams and buses and the RandstadRail light rail (to Zoetermeer, Ypenburg, Leidschenveen and Rotterdam), all checked in and out with a bank card or OV-chipkaart. The 2026 tariffs:

The 65+ age discount ends on 1 January 2027. If you commute by NS, prices rose 6.52% on 1 January 2026; the Weekend Voordeel and Altijd Voordeel subscriptions were withdrawn in 2026, so compare Dal Voordeel and the employer-paid NS Business Card instead. An OV-fiets rental bike at any station costs €4.80 per 24 hours in 2026.

Stations and airports

Two stations — Den Haag Centraal and Hollands Spoor — with Rotterdam in 25 minutes, Leiden in 12, Amsterdam in 50, Utrecht in 40 and Schiphol in about 36 (the fastest 28, at least four trains an hour). Rotterdam The Hague Airport, for European flights, is RandstadRail metro line E from Centraal to Meijersplein (about 30 minutes) and RET bus 33 for the last five minutes, timed to the metro every quarter-hour. The city is flat and cycle-friendly; the beach is twenty minutes by bike from the centre.

The car

A car is manageable in Ypenburg and Leidschenveen and a chore in the centre. A resident permit costs €99.20 a year for the first car and €346.65 for the second in 2026, plus a €17.70 application fee, up to three per address; you must be BRP-registered at the address and own or lease the car, and an online iDEAL application is active at once. Street parking is €2.75 an hour in most paid zones. An Indian licence cannot be exchanged unless you hold the 30% ruling; the rule is in the Netherlands guide.

The Hague is the best-supplied city in the Netherlands for Indian food, because the Hindustani community has run its shops here for fifty years. 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

• Supermarkt Mittal, Paul Krugerlaan 50 — more than thirty-two years on the street by its own count, 1,700 products and 300 spices, Indian, Sri Lankan, Surinamese and Thai.
• Bharat Kings, Paul Krugerlaan 194 — since 1972, 500 square metres of religious and traditional Hindustani goods: pooja items, sarees, brass, the works.
• India Gate, Hobbemaplein 50 — the toko on the square, since 2009, open seven days.
• The rest of the Paul Krugerlaan: Sharina's Boetiek (no. 252) and SAFCO (no. 134) for Indian clothing, jewellers, sweet shops and a dozen tokos.
• The Hobbemaplein and the streets around it — De Heemstraat, Herman Costerstraat, Hobbemastraat, Hoefkade, Kempstraat — are being redesigned: the municipality opened the participation phase in spring 2026, tram 6 gets a new low-floor tram, and the stated aim is to keep the square a key shopping area while improving traffic safety. No completion date has been published, so expect works.
• Ypenburg and Leidschenveen: Amazing Oriental (Laan van Haamstede 36) and Passage to Asia (Jaap Hoekdreef 66) for the Vinex families.
• Mithai: a Pakistani-run sweet house in a residential Hague street, reported in 2020 as probably the oldest of its kind in the country, makes its own gulab jamun; ask in the groups for the current address rather than trusting a listing.
• Albert Heijn and Jumbo for basics; the Haagse Markt — the largest open-air market in Europe, on the edge of Transvaal — for vegetables, coriander, chillies and mangoes at the lowest prices in the city; Dookan delivers.

Restaurants

Every kitchen has a full vegetarian menu; the Hindustani roti shops are where a newcomer learns what bara and phulauri are. Ratings move: on TheFork in September 2026 Maharani and Chopras both stood at 9.3, but a rating is a snapshot, and the directory below is where members leave the reviews that stay.

The Hindoe Raad Nederland lists nine mandirs in The Hague — two of them ISKCON centres — and two more in Zoetermeer, the densest concentration in the country. Most are Sanatan Dharm or Arya Samaj temples built by the Hindustani community, where the liturgy is in Hindi and Sarnami and a newcomer from India is welcome on any Sunday. Hours below are what the temples published in September 2026; ring or check before a first visit, and dress as you would at home.

The Dew Mandir also teaches Hindi — Wednesdays 17:00–18:30 and Sundays 10:00–12:00, a beginners' and an intermediate group, info@dewmandir.nl — and runs a children's Sanatan Dharm programme called Bhavishya. Hindorama's temple list adds the Brahm Rishi Gieta Ramayan Samaadj, which shares the Dalerveenstraat 9 address with the Radhe Shyam Mandir. Postcodes differ between listings for two temples (the Hindoe Raad prints 2572 LL for the Dew Mandir where the temple's own site says 2562 LL); the street addresses are consistent.

Gurdwaras

The Sikh picture is more than one address, and the guide's earlier single line was too neat. Sikhs in Holland — whose office is at Rijswijkseweg 265 — lists two Hague gurdwaras with separate contacts, one on Scheepersstraat and one on Herman Costerstraat, both in Transvaal. World Gurudwaras lists four Sikh addresses: Gurudwara Vereniging Sri Guru Singh Sabha at Scheepersstraat 54 (2572 AL; "daily prayers, kirtan and langar" on gurdwaras.com, hours not published), Sri Guru Singh Sabha at Withuysstraat 2, Gurudwara Stichting Siri Guru Singh Sabha at 1e van der Kunstraat 79–81 (2521 AS, Laakkwartier, two doors from the ASAN mandir), and the Sri Guru Ravidass Temple at Delftselaan 105, which is a distinct Ravidassia congregation. Which of the Singh Sabha addresses is the main sangat on a given Sunday we could not confirm in September 2026, so treat them as addresses listed by Sikhs in Holland and World Gurudwaras and confirm by phone before travelling; the Namaste directory below is where members post the one that is open. Guru Nanak Jayanti is celebrated in November.

Mosques used by South Asian Muslims

The Mobarak Moskee at Oostduinlaan 79 is the oldest purpose-built mosque in the Netherlands, opened in 1955 by the Ahmadiyya community — whose first missionary, Qudratullah Hafiz, arrived from Pakistan on 2 July 1947 — with sermons in Dutch and then Urdu, and more Pakistani visitors in recent years. The Surinamese-Hindustani Muslim community and the Sunni Pakistani community have their own mosques in Transvaal and the Schilderswijk; we did not verify their addresses for this edition, so ask in the groups or use moskeelijst.nl. Every mosque in the city welcomes South Asian Muslims for Eid.

The temples themselves — nine mandirs, the Sikh addresses and the mosques, with their days and hours — have their own section above. This one is about who organises what, and when in 2026.

The Hindustani organisations

• Stichting Holi Samen (founded 2005) runs the Haagse Holi Hangámá, the city's Holi.
• Stichting VAHON — the Algemene Hindoe Basisschool at Mackaystraat 6, Transvaal, "the first liberal school foundation on a Hindu basis" — organises the Divali torch procession and teaches Hindi once a week from group 5.
• Sarnámihuis, the Hindustani museum and documentation centre at Brouwersgracht 2 (070 365 18 28), co-organises the 5 June commemoration of Hindustani immigration; the municipality has ended its subsidy, so check opening status before visiting.
• Shri Vishnu School, Abraham van Beyerenstraat 56, Schilderswijk (founded 1988), the first Dutch primary school on a Hindu foundation, with dharma lessons, devotional music and Hindi.
• The Sociale Kaart lists the neighbourhood organisations: Haags Ontmoeten Sewa Bhawan (a Hindustani seniors' drop-in in Laak), Stichting Dosti (Segbroek), the women's organisation Sarita, Shanti Transvaal (60+, Tuesdays and Thursdays at buurthuis Mandelaplein) and S.V. Yanaara (Surinamese-Hindustani volleyball).

The Indian and South Asian associations

• The Gandhi Centre, the ICCR's cultural centre, is at Parkstraat 99, first floor (2514 JH; +31 70 322 95 76; culture.thehague@mea.gov.in) — not at the embassy itself — and runs free regular classes in yoga, Hindi and tabla for all ages. The embassy's 80th Independence Day on 15 August 2026 drew about a thousand people to the flag-hoisting.
• Kallol, the Indian Bengali association (founded 2010), holds Durga Puja, Saraswati Puja and Poila Boishakh here; Utsab, registered at Van Vlotenstraat 18 in The Hague, runs the Durga Puja in Capelle and its own Saraswati Puja, Poila Boishakh, Holi and Bijoya Sammilani.
• Netherlands Tamil Sangam is headquartered in The Hague and its Tamil Cultural Development Center runs Tamil language, Bharatanatyam, silambam and mridangam, veena and nadaswaram classes at six locations (Amsterdam, Amstelveen, Eindhoven, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Zaandam); +31 6 2199 5495.
• NRNA NCC Netherlands (the Non-Resident Nepali Association, founded 2006, registered in Haaglanden) and Nepal Samaj Netherland — Dashain-Tihar and Nepal Samvat celebrations, an annual Banbhoj picnic, Dutch and Nepali courses, a benefit evening on 20 September 2026.
• Friends of Bangladesh (Pohela Boishakh, Language Day, Independence and Victory Day events) and Foundation PIN — Pakistanis in the Netherlands, the community hub for Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague.
• Indian Student Association Delft at TU Delft helps with admission and visas and hosts the Indian festivals on campus.
• Cricket: Voorburg CC (Groene Zoom 20, Voorburg — it hosted the T20 World Cup qualifier in July 2025) and HCC (Van Hogenhoucklaan 37, founded 1878), both with junior sections.

Dance and language classes

Four dance schools teach the classical and Bollywood forms: Dansschool Pretima Ke Dewashrie (Bharatanatyam and Bollywood, Binckhorstlaan 36), Dansacademie Natraj (Odissi, Kathak, folk and hatha yoga, run by Rajni Ghiraw), the Bollywood school Ghoenghroe ki Pukar (Televisiestraat 240, founded by Sandhya Manniesing) and Dansacademie Chandra Sukhai (Kathak, Bharatanatyam, Odissi — its site was down when we checked). Kalpanarts is the city's Indian contemporary dance company and staged a Diwali evening with the choir Zangam at Amare on 22 October 2025; watch Amare's programme for 2026. For Hindi: the Gandhi Centre (free), the Dew Mandir (Wednesdays and Sundays), and the Volksuniversiteit Den Haag, whose twelve-week evening course (€320, Tuesdays 18:30 at the Zandvliet Lyceum, Bezuidenhoutseweg 40) starts on 3 November 2026.

The festival year, 2026

Dates are on the festival calendar. The Hague's: - Holi: the Haagse Holi Hangámá — Holika burning at the Dew Mandir on Monday 2 March 2026 (19:00–20:30, fire 19:30–20:15) and the festival on Tuesday 3 March, 13:00–18:00, in the Zuiderpark (entrance Soestdijksekade/Vreeswijkstraat) because the Wijkpark Transvaal is being renovated; white clothes, no alcohol. - 5 June — the anniversary of Hindustani immigration: a wreath-laying at the Nationaal Hindostaans Immigratiemonument on the Hobbemaplein every year, and in 2026 (153 years) an afternoon and an evening show at the Koninklijke Schouwburg with Sarnámihuis, VAHON and Het Nationale Theater. - Milan Summer Festival, Friday 21 August 16:00–23:00, Saturday 22 August 14:00–23:00 and Sunday 23 August 2026 13:00–23:00 at the Anna Polakweg in the Zuiderpark — forty-plus artists on three stages, a hundred food and merchandise stands, closing acts Raymond Ramnarine and Dil-E-Nadaan; ticketed through i-ticketz, and framed as Suriname Heritage Month. - Navratri and Durga Puja: Kallol's 16th Durga Puja, 18–21 October 2026, at Zalencentrum Kristal, Wegastraat 77; the temples keep Navratri, and Sewa Dhaam runs a national programme. - Diwali: VAHON's torch procession on Sunday 8 November 2026 at 18:00, from the school on Mackaystraat through Transvaal to the Divali celebration — free, with a ceremony at the two monuments on the Hobbemaplein; Lakshmi puja at every mandir the same day (Dew Mandir festival pujas run from 16:00 to about 20:30); the embassy's Diwali reception. The "Divali Den Haag" platform cancelled its own 2024 event and had published nothing for 2025 or 2026 when we checked. - Guru Nanak Jayanti at the gurdwaras in November; the embassy's Republic Day and Independence Day gatherings. The events posted near The Hague are listed below as they are added.

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

Two budgets

A single knowledge migrant in a one-bedroom outside the centre spends roughly €2,300–2,600 a month all-in — a fifth less than Amsterdam — once the €412.56 waste tax, the €195.40 sewer charge and the water-board bill are spread over the year (about €90 a month for a tenant, since the OZB and the owners' Delfland levy fall on the landlord). A couple in Bezuidenhout spends about €3,300. A family of four in a Vinex house in Ypenburg spends about €5,300–6,000 before school fees; the International School of The Hague's subsidised fees keep those to roughly €700–1,050 a month per child, where the British School or the American School adds €1,700–2,400 a month per child plus the one-off enrolment and capital fees set out in the schools section.

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.

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 Stedin. Water is a regional monopoly with no contract to shop for — Dunea here; notify the move-in date and the meter reading. Most flats are gas-heated with a combi boiler; new-build in 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.

Waste, and the municipal taxes for 2026

The Hague collects residual waste, paper, PMD and GFT in underground containers per block or wheeled bins per house on a fixed calendar, with glass and textiles to street containers and bulky waste by appointment; the municipality's app knows the collection days for your street. The bills that follow registration, all for 2026:

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.

Parking and the car, 2026

Resident permits are available in most districts without Amsterdam's waiting lists: €99.20 a year for the first car, €346.65 for the second, a €17.70 application fee, a maximum of three per address, BRP registration at the address and a car in your own name or lease required; an online iDEAL application activates immediately, an invoice or direct-debit one takes ten working days or more. The car-free new-build zones — Palaceplein, Binckhorst, Energiekwartier, CS-Oost — issue no permits, so ask before you sign a lease there. The municipality's page also lists a visitors' permit; check its tariff there. Street parking is €2.75 an hour in most paid zones (typically 09:00–17:00 or 18:00–24:00); since 1 April 2026 a set of named streets in the Old Centre and Scheveningen charge a progressive "dynamic" tariff — €7 for the first twenty minutes rising to €50 for a stay of eighty to ninety minutes — designed to stop anyone parking there for long; the shopping zones at Loosduinse Hoofdstraat, Tesselseplein, Almeloplein and Ypenburg charge €1 an hour for the first two hours and €2.75 after. The centre is a low-emission zone for older diesels. An Indian licence is valid for 185 days after registration and cannot be exchanged unless you hold the 30% ruling — the rule is in the Netherlands guide. Most Indian families in the cities manage without a car in the first year; car-share (Greenwheels, MyWheels) and the €4.80-a-day OV-fiets cover the weekend.

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 cities. The beach at Scheveningen is the city's summer and the North Sea wind is its winter; Holi in the Zuiderpark in March, the 5 June commemoration on the Hobbemaplein, Milan in August and the Divali procession in November are the community's own calendar.

The national system — free Dutch schools from four, the split at twelve, the international schools that the state part-funds, childcare that is private and subsidised through the kinderopvangtoeslag — is in the Netherlands guide. The Hague has more international schools than any Dutch city, and the fee gap between the subsidised and the private ones is the single biggest line in a family budget.

International schools, 2026–27

iSchoolAdvisor's 2026 ranges for the city put subsidised primary at €4,500–8,500 and secondary at €6,000–10,000, fully private schools at €18,000–27,000, with €2,000–5,000 a year in extras and one-off application (€250–500), enrolment (€1,500–4,000) and capital levies (€500–1,500) at the private ones — a useful sanity check on any offer letter. The International Centre publishes the full list of international primaries and secondaries in the region.

Dutch schools, and the Hindu primary schools

The free Dutch schools take children from four with newcomer language classes (nieuwkomersklassen). There is no Indian-curriculum or CBSE school, but The Hague has something no other Dutch city has: two state-funded primary schools on a Hindu foundation, open to every child, where dharma, devotional music and Hindi are in the timetable — the Shri Vishnu School at Abraham van Beyerenstraat 56 in the Schilderswijk (founded 1988, the first of its kind in the country, run by Stichting Hindoe Onderwijs Nederland) and the Algemene Hindoe Basisschool (VAHON) at Mackaystraat 6 in Transvaal, where the class teacher gives Hindi once a week from group 5 and the teachers hold Hindi diplomas. Both are ordinary Dutch schools in every other respect. For Hindi outside school: the Gandhi Centre's free classes at Parkstraat 99, the Dew Mandir's Wednesday and Sunday lessons, and the Volksuniversiteit's adult course from 3 November 2026 (€320).

Childcare, 2026

2Samen, the largest Hague provider, publishes its 2026 Den Haag tariffs: full-day daycare (KDV) on the 52-week package at €12.09 an hour for one to three days a week and €11.96 for four or five — a 10.5-hour day works out at €548.28 a month for one day and €2,711.93 a month gross for five; the 46-week package is €12.94, a half-day €11.24, an extra day €12.45, late pick-up €20 per half hour; nappies, fruit, lunch and outings included. After-school care (BSO) is €10.95 an hour Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and €10.38 on Wednesdays, €13.44 on the 40-week package and €12.10 for holiday care. The national maximum the allowance reimburses is €11.23 an hour for daycare and €9.98 for BSO in 2026, so anything above that is yours. Toddler care (peuteropvang, 2.5–4 years) is €11.23 an hour, and every Hague resident gets a municipal contribution towards it (the TKP), including parents with no right to the national allowance; the municipality's separate childcare reimbursement of 4% of the hourly rate is only for people on assistance and must be claimed within two months of signing. Register in pregnancy — the waiting lists in Ypenburg and Bezuidenhout run past a year.

The rules — basic insurance within four months (about €159 a month in 2026, €385 deductible, children free), the GP as the gatekeeper, the TB test at the GGD within three months — are in the Netherlands guide. The Hague's problem is capacity: the Court of Audit found that three-quarters of practices in the Haaglanden region had closed to new patients at some point in the previous year (2025 report), the worst in the country, and Zorgkaart lists 221 GPs in 159 practices for a city of 570,000.

Finding a GP

Hadoks, the Haaglanden GP organisation, runs the one tool that works: a regional "find a GP with open registration" page at zorggroep.mijnpraktijk.nl/z/hadoks, which lists only practices currently taking patients and lets you filter by postcode — a practice takes you only if you live inside its area. Use it the day you have an address, ring the same day, and if it lists nothing near you, ask your insurer's placement line (zorgbemiddeling) and The Hague International Centre's list. A regional "H-team 070" of Hadoks, the municipality, the insurer CZ and the GP association is working on premises for new practices and piloting AI triage, which is the honest way of saying the shortage will not end soon.

Out of hours

Evenings, nights and weekends are the huisartsenpost (Hadoks Acute Zorg, formerly SMASH): ring 070 346 96 69 first — they triage and give you a time. Its two locations are at HMC Westeinde (Lijnbaan 32, centre) and HagaZiekenhuis Leyweg (Els Borst-Eilersplein 275, Escamp). The Spoedapotheek Den Haag, the night pharmacy, is on the Haga Leyweg Spoedplein at Charlotte Jacobslaan 10 (070 210 14 65): Monday to Friday 17:30–08:00, weekends and public holidays round the clock. Life-threatening emergencies are 112, as everywhere in Europe.

Hospitals

HagaZiekenhuis Leyweg is the largest Haga site and the nearest to Escamp and Transvaal; HMC Westeinde in the centre has one of the largest emergency departments in the country and its own RandstadRail stop; the LUMC in Leiden is the university hospital for the region. Children's check-ups and vaccinations run through the consultatiebureau (Centrum Jeugd en Gezin) you are assigned at registration; the GGD Haaglanden does the TB test for everyone from India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh (Sri Lankans are exempt).

The order matters more than the speed, and half of it is national. This is the year as The Hague 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: the Hadoks finder and a same-day phone call, the day you have a postcode.
• "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 Dutch school split at twelve decides more than any international school does; understand it before your child is ten — and know that the two Hindu primary schools are ordinary, free Dutch schools.
• The municipal bills are real money: about €700 a year for a tenant household in waste, sewer and water-board charges in 2026, on top of rent, and they arrive in one envelope.
• The Gandhi Centre is on Parkstraat, not at the embassy — a small thing that costs people an afternoon.
• The groups know first — which grocer has curry leaves this week, which crèche has a place, which GP opened its list. Ypenburg, Leidschenveen, Rijswijk and, increasingly, Zoetermeer are where families buy.

Every Indian who has moved abroad has the same first move: find the WhatsApp group. The Hague has them — "Indians in The Hague", the Shell and EPO groups, the Ypenburg parents, the Telugu, Tamil, Malayali and Bengali ones, the Delft PhD groups, the cricket groups — and two public Facebook groups of the same name, "Indians in The Hague" and "Indians in The Hague (New)". Unusually, it also has a Hindustani community whose networks run through temples, schools and family rather than phones. They are how the community has always run, and 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 Leidschenveen is still taking 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. 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 Rotterdam and the garba in Amstelveen arrive with the same weight as the one in Ypenburg.

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 a Hague member sees The Hague, Delft and Rijswijk 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 ISH waiting list or a GP taking patients is answered once, in a thread the next person finds.
• A directory with reviews of the Paul Krugerlaan shops, the restaurants, tailors, tutors, accountants and driving schools, listed free by the businesses themselves — and the place to post which gurdwara address is open this Sunday.
• The events calendar — Holi Hangámá, Milan, the Divali procession, the Durga Puja, garba and every 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.
• Verified members, moderation, and a report button on everything.

Your first week in the app

1. Install it, sign in, set your location to The Hague and the radius to 10 km. Get the app for iPhone or Android.
2. Join the general Hague group and the one for your language or interest. Read before you post.
3. RSVP to one event in the next fortnight — a temple programme, a cricket practice at Voorburg, a Durga Puja evening.
4. Ask the question you actually have, and say which stadsdeel you are in.
5. When you have found your flat, your GP and your toko, leave a review or an answer for the next person from Chennai or Kolkata.

The groups near The Hague 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.

An Indian newcomer to The Hague inherits a city that other South Asians built first, and it is worth knowing who they are.

The Surinamese-Hindustani community

The largest Hindustani community in the Netherlands lives here, within some 46,000 Hague residents of Surinamese origin (8.4% of the city in 2020); Hindus are 4.6% of the population, about 26,000 people, and the Hindustani community also has Muslim and Christian members. Its language is Sarnami, a Bhojpuri-descended Hindustani; its traditions are Sanatan Dharm and Arya Samaj in roughly equal strength; its institutions are the nine mandirs, the two Hindu primary schools, the Sarnámihuis, Stichting Holi Samen, VAHON and the Milan festival; and its food — roti, bara, phulauri — is the city's cheapest Indian meal. The community marks 5 June, the day the first ship reached Suriname in 1873, with a wreath-laying at the Nationaal Hindostaans Immigratiemonument on the Hobbemaplein every year. A newcomer from India will find the liturgy familiar and the surnames unfamiliar; the courtesy that goes furthest is to treat the community as hosts, not as a diaspora of India.

Pakistani

The Hague had 3,612 residents of Pakistani background in 2019 (Rotterdam 4,773, Amsterdam 5,817; 25,050 nationally in 2020, up from 14,127 in 1996). The Mobarak Moskee on Oostduinlaan, the country's oldest purpose-built mosque (1955), was founded by Ahmadiyya missionaries from Pakistan and preaches in Dutch and Urdu; the Sunni community has its own mosque in the Transvaal–Schilderswijk area (address not verified for this edition). Tandoorhuis on the Torenstraat and Lasanie Tandoori on the Rijswijkseweg are the Pakistani kitchens; Foundation PIN — Pakistanis in the Netherlands — is the community hub for the three big cities. The Embassy of Pakistan is in The Hague; take its address from its own website.

Nepali

The Non-Resident Nepali Association's Dutch chapter, NRNA NCC Netherlands, was founded in 2006 and is registered in Haaglanden; Nepal Samaj Netherland runs the Dashain-Tihar and Nepal Samvat celebrations, an annual Banbhoj picnic, Dutch-language and Nepali-learning courses and a translation service. Nepal's embassy for the Benelux is in Brussels.

Sri Lankan Tamil

The Netherlands Tamil Sangam is headquartered in The Hague and teaches Tamil, Bharatanatyam, silambam and Carnatic instruments at six locations across the country. Sri Lankans are the one South Asian group exempt from the TB test; the Embassy of Sri Lanka is in The Hague — again, take the address from its own site.

Bangladeshi

Friends of Bangladesh runs Pohela Boishakh, Language Day, Independence Day and Victory Day events; Bangladeshi Bengalis share Kallol's and Utsab's Durga Pujas and Poila Boishakh. The Embassy of Bangladesh is in The Hague.

Everything on this page — registration, rent, taxes, GPs, schools, fares — applies identically to all of them; the Netherlands guide has the national detail and the embassy list.

This section used to carry the schools, the health rules and the neighbours together; each now has its own section, and this one is the map of where things went and what to read next.

In brief

• Schools and childcare — the 2026–27 fees at ISH, the British School and the American School, the two Hindu primary schools, 2Samen's 2026 daycare rates and the municipal toddler-care contribution — are in the schools section.
• Health — the Hadoks open-registration finder, the huisartsenpost on 070 346 96 69 at HMC Westeinde and Haga Leyweg, the Spoedapotheek's hours and the hospitals — is in the health section.
• The Hindustani community and the Pakistani, Nepali, Sri Lankan Tamil and Bangladeshi neighbours, with their associations and mosques, are in the neighbours section.
• The nine mandirs, the Sikh addresses and the mosques, with days and hours, are in the temples section; the associations and the 2026 festival calendar in the section after it.

The embassy and the national rules

The Embassy of India is at Oranjestraat 12 — passports and OCI applications are both submitted at the embassy itself, by appointment — VFS Global stopped taking them on 1 June 2025 (see the OCI card guide); the Gandhi Centre is at Parkstraat 99, first floor, with free yoga, Hindi and tabla classes. The Netherlands guide has the contacts and appointment routes. Everything national lives there and applies here unchanged: permits and the 2026 thresholds, the 30% ruling and tax, housing law, health, transport and the licence, temples nationwide, schools and childcare. The other city guides: Amsterdam, Amstelveen, Eindhoven, Rotterdam, Utrecht.

If something on this page has gone stale — a temple's hours, a tariff, a date — use the report link on the section and we will check it; every figure here carries the year it was published, and the page shows the date it was last reviewed.