We prove the existence of a versal equisingular unfolding of a given holomorphic foliation $F$ with isolated singularities on a compact complex surface. Under suitable cohomological assumptions the parameter space is isomorphic to the product of the spaces parametrizing the (local) versal equisingular unfoldings of the germ of $F$ at its singular points. As an application it is shown that any equisingular unfolding of a germ of polynomial foliation on $(\mathbb {C}^2,0)$ is still polynomial.