What offshore 190 visa applicants should and should not worry
(Part I)
For those already lodged or at least get the nomination, there are a few factors.
First, what will be the allocation level versus planning level for the 2025-2026 budget year? For now, we already know the planning level is 35500 for all primary and secondary applicants, so if the allocation level stays relatively low, resulting in far less than 35500 new primary and secondary applicants, then the existing visa backlog queue will further reduce, and you will not be competing against more and more onshore and offshore 190 visa applicants for limited slots, but will have more and more slots available for you.
For now, it is very likely that there will not be more than 29000 new primary and secondary 190 visa applicants in the 2025-2026 budget year, perhaps even less, so this is a good news, meaning, you just need to wait a bit longer than onshore applicants who lodged in the same or adjacent months, but it is not bleak.
If the first point is true, it is not as bad as it appears.
Second, what will be the allocation level versus planning level for subsequent budget years? The logic is exactly the same, so I am not going to repeat myself here.
Similarly, if the second point is true, then it is not so bleak, just a bit extra waiting time.
Third, will processing priorities change, and in what way? This is a question quite hard to speculate, but I reckon the prioritization of onshore applicants over their offshore counterparts will likely not change drastically.
There may also be a general clean-up of the very old backlogs, such as those lodged before 1 July 2024 but still waiting, considering their size is pretty small, so cleaning them up may not make the processing times look too bad.
(Part II)
For those waiting for invitations, generally speaking, regardless of whether you are onshore or offshore, the State and Territory requirements are going to become higher, so while onshore applicants may have an advantage, especially since certain States and Territories give limited to no slots for offshore applicants, the bar is clearly rising.
@william_prm_adler · 1mo ago
There are numbers on the 189 visa to keep an eye. During the 2024-2025 budget year, there were 17913 lodgements versus 17236 grants for 189 visa. During the 2025-2026 budget year, there were 20730 lodgements versus 17076 grants for 189 visa. So the last two budget years brought 677 and 3654 excess backlogs as a result, or 4331 in total. So far, the processing times are still pretty fast, but the 3-month, 4-month, 6-month, and 6-month moving averages for 189 backlog number have all been slowly creeping up due to the reason I just mentioned above. The fundamental principles are universal: If there are more invitations and less grants in the next budget year, then in general, backlogs up, processing times up; If there are less invitations and more grants in the next budget year, then in general, backlogs down, processing times down; Subgroups (onshore priority, onshore non-priority, offshore, etc) are, in principle, affected in the same direction, but the magnitude may vary drastically. For your case, 189, offshore, lodged mid-June 2026, I would not say your situation looks "particularly bleak" now, I think it is an overstatement, for now, since (1) the numbers are good overall and (2) we do not yet know whether there will lots of new invitations to apply for 189 visa.
@william_prm_adler · 1mo ago
The situations for 189 and 190 are quite different for the last two years. During the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 budget years, 190 backlogs decreased by 14673, whereas 189 backlogs increased by 4331 at the same time. The 189 planning level has been surged to 21090, and I wonder (we can certainly speculate here) whether it is to address the 4331 excess backlogs generated during the last 2 budget years or not. So: If there are more than 21000 lodgements for 189 visa in the 2026-2027 budget year, then it will be not so good (not necessarily "bad", but certainly not "good", obviously) for 189 offshore applicants and 189 applicants overall; If there are less than 17000 lodgements for 189 visa in the 2026-2027 budget year, then it will be quite good news, since the 4331 excess backlogs generated during the last 2 budget years are neutralized; If anything in between, alright, things are moving in good directions, but the good effects may not be so obvious and immediate for certain subgroups of applicants. Remember, though, that you are already invited and lodged your visa, so you are in an infinitely better position than those who are still trying to be invited.
@oggio · 1mo ago
All of this seems very theoritical. As of today (i) processing time are non reliable especially in the context of the new tiering resulting for MD119 as these processing time might reflect for the offshore tier the pre MD119 situation rather than the current one. Indeed, since mid-may there as been zero or close to zero visible grants for offshore throughout 189/190/491. So Nov 25 might mean that they were looking at Nov 25 application pre MD119, it does not mean that they are still currently looking at these application as overall it looks more like a pause of offshore processing. (ii) Regarding the backlog a lot of it, especially regarding 189 considering historically short processing time is likely to come from applicants from countries were background checks cannot be completed and will likely not be able to be finalized in a near future as they are in a middle of open conflicts. Therefore the backlog effect is likely not to be linear but in a few big chunks once the situation resolve. (iii) it boils down to how MD119 will be implemented and to a lesser extent the volume of invitations. Will they continue their current approach to only process onshore as long as there is onshore application in stock or will they start processing in parallel the offshore ones. As of today the first approach seems to remain.
@mwebber · 1mo ago
i lodged 189 from UK june 13th. Clean decision ready simple application for a doctor. I do hope they start looking at offshore in parallell. How can you reconcile the 55k offshore (albeit across all visa types) quota for this year. thanks alot for your time
@hcj21212 · 1mo ago
help push this government to implement the md 119 to visa applications from july 2026. this is just so not fair for people who logged in 2024-2025 seriously. they deserve to be treated fairly.
@hcj21212 · 1mo ago
told u , they are playing with offshore as cash cows. just look. tasmania clearly rejected taking any 491 from offshore. means more invitations to onshore . and ofcourse those who log visas from that invitation will be processed faster , while someone from overseas waiting from 2025-2024. so this means someone who log a onshore visa application in nov 2026 will receive visa much faster then someone who is already waiting from 2025. and he/she still be waiting for it.