Bangladesh is a growing participant in the Specified Skilled Worker programme, with JFT-Basic available domestically.
A newer market means more to verify
Where a route is well established, the intermediaries around it are well known and the norms are settled. Where it is newer, they are not — and that is the situation for a lot of Bangladeshi candidates.
Practically, that means doing more of your own checking than you might in a mature market:
Verify the agency. Is it licensed for overseas recruitment in Bangladesh? Can it name the employer, the location and the work? Will it put the total cost in writing?
Verify the field is open. Fields operate under intake caps, and caps close — food service has been suspended to new applications since April 2026. Check before investing a year in a field’s skills test. See the SSW fields.
Verify the test counts. The SSW language requirement is JFT-Basic 200+ or JLPT N4+. NAT-TEST and J.TEST do not satisfy it, and being steered towards one is worth asking about. See which Japanese exams count.
Verify what you are paying for. Large up-front fees financed against future wages are the pattern that produces the debt problems this system is known for. See agency red flags.
None of this means avoid agencies. It means the good ones will answer these questions without irritation.
Finding your centre
Use Prometric’s Bangladesh pages for Specified Skilled Worker tests, not the global Prometric site.
The centre list appears during the booking flow — you have to begin a reservation to see the venues. You can back out before paying.
Centres are concentrated around the main cities; budget travel and, where the journey is long, a night’s accommodation.
The skills test, early
The requirement that most often derails Bangladeshi timelines is not the language test — it is the field skills evaluation test, which may run rarely, or not yet in Bangladesh at all.
Find out when and where your field’s test runs before you build a study plan around a JFT-Basic date. It is the fixed point; everything else bends around it. See the skills test explained.
Centres, fees, dates and payment methods are set locally and change. Your own country’s Prometric pages and the Japan Foundation are the sources that bind. Use them for anything you are about to pay for.
What does not change
Wherever you sit it, the exam is identical: four sections, about fifty questions, sixty minutes, scored 10 to 250, and 200 is the pass. The sections are not separately timed, and there is no per-section minimum — only the total counts.
That means every guide on this site applies to you regardless of where you are. Start with what 200 points actually means.
Before you pay for anything
Find out where you stand. Our free practice test covers all four sections, reports by section, takes about fifteen minutes, and works on an inexpensive phone. It costs nothing, which is more than can be said for discovering the answer at the test centre.
Two full-length, timed tests in the same week, both at 200 or above. Then book.