Processing times moved a lot since June. Here are the real numbers.

We re-checked every subclass against the Home Affairs processing times tool this week and compared it to what they published in June. Both sets are their figures, four months apart.

Median days to a decision

Slower since June:

• 186 Transition Pathway: 270 to 649 days
• 482 Core Skills: 83 to 131 days
• 820 Partner, onshore: 600 to 679 days

Faster since June:

• 189 Points-Tested: 180 to 61 days
• 190 Skilled Nominated: 395 to 132 days

Unchanged at the median:

• 500 Higher Education: 16 days, but the 90% mark dropped from 210 days to 109

Two opposite things are happening

Points-tested permanent residence got much faster. 190 has gone from a bit over 13 months to around 4.

Employer-sponsored permanent residence got much slower. 186 Transition has gone from about 9 months to over 21. If you lodged a 186 planning around the figure published in June, that number no longer holds.

The 500 Higher Education line looks flat but is not. The median is unchanged, while the slow tail shortened by more than three months.

If you are on a 482, the stream matters more than the headline

Home Affairs publishes the 482 streams separately and they are nothing alike.

• Core Skills: 131 days at the median
• Specialist Skills: 37 days at the median

The headline 482 number does not describe a Specialist Skills application. We were getting this wrong ourselves until a user wrote in to point it out, and it is fixed now.

Source

Figures are from the Home Affairs processing times guide, checked on 5 October 2026, compared against their published figures for June 2026. These are published times for recently decided applications, not predictions.

Visafold is not a migration agent and this is not advice about any individual case.