@william_prm_adler
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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.
The 190 visa 12-month processing time analysis
Due to the length of my post, I will divide it into several parts within the same post, with the sequence number written at the start of each subpost, so everyone can follow easily.
Also, since I have already got my 190 visa granted, I will become less active on this forum and SVG WhatsApp groups, but I may still contributed from time to time.
(Part I)
Before I start writing anything, let me emphasize something again: the processing times on the DOHA webpages are only proxies for visa processing time trend, but they do not directly indicate your likely waiting time.
Why? Because the DOHA webpage processing time is calculated based on the distance between the dates of grant of visas approved or refused during that month (or whatever calculation window) and their respective lodgement dates, meaning, for example, if DOHA is, for whatever reason, allocating more resources processing much older or much newer cohorts, then the processing times may look deceptively fast or slow.
Now let me start defining three concepts.
Concept 1: the lower 12-month processing percentage, also known as the 10/12-month processing percentage.
It calculates by dividing the remaining backlog number of the month at the end of the previous calendar month next year by the number of lodgement of the month.
For example, it divides the backlog number of the August 2022 cohort at the end of July 2023 by the lodgement number of the August 2022 cohort.
If a person lodged on the last day of August 2022 and was granted on the first day of July 2023, then it took him or her 10 full months to be granted.
If a person lodged on the first day of August 2022 and was granted on the last day of July 2023, then it took him or her 12 full months to be granted.
Hence, it is called the lower 12-month processing percentage, because it offers a tight-window definition, and also called the 10/12-month processing percentage, because all these grants take between 10 and 12 full months.
Concept 2: the standard 12-month processing percentage, also known as the 11/13-month processing percentage.
It calculates by dividing the remaining backlog number of the month at the end of the same calendar month next year by the number of lodgement of the month.
For example, it divides the backlog number of the August 2022 cohort at the end of August 2023 by the lodgement number of the August 2022 cohort.
If a person lodged on the last day of August 2022 and was granted on the first day of August 2023, then it took him or her 11 full months to be granted.
If a person lodged on the first day of August 2022 and was granted on the last day of August 2023, then it took him or her 13 full months to be granted.
Hence, it is called the standard 12-month processing percentage, because it offers a standard-window definition, and also called the 11/13-month processing percentage, because all these grants take between 11 and 13 full months.
Concept 3: the upper 12-month processing percentage, also known as the 12/14-month processing percentage.
It calculates by dividing the remaining backlog number of the month at the end of the next calendar month next year by the number of lodgement of the month.
For example, it divides the backlog number of the August 2022 cohort at the end of September 2023 by the lodgement number of the August 2022 cohort.
If a person lodged on the last day of August 2022 and was granted on the first day of September 2023, then it took him or her 12 full months to be granted.
If a person lodged on the first day of August 2022 and was granted on the last day of September 2023, then it took him or her 14 full months to be granted.
Hence, it is called the upper 12-month processing percentage, because it offers a loose-window definition, and also called the 12/14-month processing percentage, because all these grants take between 12 and 14 full months.
Some speculations on the 190 processing time.
Long story short: by the end of the 2026-2027 budget year, both the 50% and the 90% benchmarks for 190 processing time may fall back within 12 months.
Below is the reason.
On 30 June 2026 (some other sources already got their FOI reply), there were 24196 backlogs for 190 visa.
It is important to put numbers in a relative picture.
Let me define a current-backlog-level-to-current-year-planning-level ratio (hereafter: CBCP ratio), which divides the current backlog number (at the end of each month, per FOI reply sheets) using the planning level of the budget year for that month, which is unchanging.
On 30 June 2025, the CBCP ratio was 1.06, but on 30 June 2026, the CBCP ratio dropped to 0.73, quite a sharp drop.
Now compare it to the 189 visa.
If I remember correctly, the 50% and 90% processing time benchmarks for 189 both stayed within 12 months for the last 2 years (correct me if I were wrong), so this are quite useful reference points.
The CBCP ratio for 189 visa oscillated between 0.2 and 0.8 from July 2024 to June 2026, a 24-month period.
Furthermore, during these 24 months, the CBCP ratio stayed within the (0.40, 0.60) range for 9 months, and within the (0.35, 0.65) range for 13 months.
Why the wide oscillation?
Because 189 invitations were issued in large batches every few months, so you can have a sudden surge on pending cases for 189, then gradually, steadily decline to a low point, then the cycle repeats.
This is very unlike 190, whose CBCP ratio moves largely in a clear direction, except for start-of-the-year and end-of-the-year anomalies, which are normal.
Now we know the planning level of 190 for the 2026-2027 budget year, which is 35500 in total.
We do not know the total 190 allocation for the 2026-2027 budget year yet, but we know TAS and NT have got barely any more 190 allocations, and we have also heard that the 190 level for QLD has not changed, though it is not officially released yet.
Using all these current information, the picture is that 190 will almost certainly not go back to the 16500 level of the 2024-2025 budget year, and will almost certainly not be higher than the 14500 level, and will likely not be higher than the 14000 level.
We use 1.9 as the more generous family size and 1.85 as the more realistic family size, per more recent data.
Using 14000 and 14500 as two potential 190 allocation upper bounds, we yield 25900 (= 14000 * 1.85) as the lower upper bound and 27550 (= 14500 * 1.9) as the higher upper bound.
This yields, assuming all nominations are converted into actual visa lodgements before 30 June 2027, between 14596 and 16246 remaining backlogs on 30 Jun 2027, the end of the 2026-2027 budget year.
Dividing 14596 and 16246 by 35500, we yield 0.41 and 0.46 for 190 visa at the end of the 2026-2027 budget year.
If we consider the fact that there will be nominations issued near or at the end of the 2026-2027 budget year and thus some lodgements will take plane after 1 July 2027, then the CBCP ratio will be pushed even lower, perhaps even below the 0.4 level.
Two caveats.
First, we do not know the total 190 allocation level of the 2026-2027 budget year yet, just speculation, but they are almost certainly below 14500, and definitely not over the 15000 level.
Second, we do not know the planning and allocations for 190 for the 2027-2028 budget year, so the dynamic may change.
However, the point remains that with the current trajectory, most newer 190 applicants may likely be granted within 12 months, even for non-priority ones.
Just a very interesting observation: DOHA seems to be have been processing and issuing 190 grants in a largely time-based (first-come, first-serve) basis for over a month, considering our recent entries of 190 grants are pretty much all between 14 and 16 months, with just a few exceptions. Quite interesting to see, because I do not remember seeing such a prolonged pattern in the past. Correct me if I were wrong.
The June 2024 and earlier 190 cases have dried up, or nearly so.
In my update written on 1 February 2025 (https://smartvisaguide.com/posts/12803), I said since we suddenly saw 7 February 2025 and 3 March 2025 grants in the last three days of January 2025, it means the 190 cases lodged in June 2024 and earlier months likely has dried up.
I crunched some numbers and found it is likely the case.
I went to the SVG database, selected "190", "granted", and "non-priority", and kept loading more until roughly 28 November 2025, near the time of the last FOI reply.
I used the search bar to search keywords "lodged", "2023", "JAN 2024", "FEB 2024", "MAR 2024", "APR 2024", "MAY 2024", and "JUN 2024", because the "lodged" keyword provides an automatic count for all cases granted on roughly 28 November 2025 or later, the "2023" keywords provides an automatic count for cases lodged in 2023 granted on roughly 28 November 2025 or later, and the same for the six "monthly" keywords. I did deduct the occurrences of such keywords seen on the "Recent Activity" and "Most Bookmarked" sidebars.
There are cases which do not directly show lodgement dates but things like "Submitted Documents [blah blah]", "Received s56 Request [blah blah]", etc, and I simply did not click them open and just ignored them, because they should not make a huge statistical difference anyway. It is a bit strange for me in terms of why some cases do not show lodgement dates, but anyway.
Between roughly 28 November 2025 and 12 December 2025, there are 110 grant cases counted, including 74 (67.3%) lodged in June 2024 or earlier and 36 (32.7%) lodged in July 2024 or later.
Between roughly 12 December 2025 and 30 January 2026, there are 114 grant cases counted, including 37 (32.5%) lodged in June 2024 or earlier and 77 (67.5%) lodged in July or later.
The number is significant, because using the latest FOI reply, we can find that for the August, September, October, and November 190 visa grants, the percentage numbers for cases lodged in June 2024 or earlier were 67.0%, 53.4%, 60.9%, and 71.7%, and my estimates using the SVG database extrapolate the number to be around 67.3% for December 2025, well within the normal range, but drastically dropped to 32.5%, which means DHA is definitely pivoting toward July 2024 and later 190 cases, and the only plausible explanation is that the June 2024 and earlier 190 cases are either essentially and practically dried up or nearly so.
For more comprehensive and exhaustive information, please visit my original post (link below), and I will copy and paste all my updates to it as well, so liking, bookmarking, and replying all make me more willing to keep updating.
Can someone explain to me why people can get visa grants (whether permanent, temporary, student, tourist, etc) on weekends? If DHA uses manual processing, do DHA staff work on weekends? If DHA uses automatic processing, does it really takes the computers days to process even the relatively simple ones like tourist visas? Pretty sure permanent visas are not automatically processed, not even the 191 visa.
Quick end-of-January 190 processing update:
From 28 January 2025, I have already counted 7 grants for February 2025 lodgements, and on 30 January 2025, I counted 3 grants for March 2025 lodgements.
Also, it seems grants for those lodged in June 2024 or earlier months are tiny in the recent 1 or 2 weeks compared to grants for those lodged in July 2024 or later months.
What does it mean? It means the number of cases for those lodged in June 2024 or earlier months, which was 3271 by the end of November 2025, likely has essentially dried to below 1000 or even below 500 if not lower.
Therefore, we will continue seeing grants for those lodged in November and December 2025 and the first half of 2026, and likely even grants for those lodged between July and September 2026 near the end of the 2025-2026 program year.
For more comprehensive analyses and predictions, see my post below, and I will make updates from time to time. Remember, for all the predictions, the current variables are how many people they will invite and how many people they will grant in the 2026-2027 program year, which is why I have not made predictions above and beyond the 30 June 2026 yet.
Quick 190 visa analyses and prediction based on the Nov 2025 FOI reply.
On 31 October 2025, there were 5497 pending cases for those lodged on 30 June 2024 or earlier.
On 30 November 2025, the number was 3271, a 2200-plus reduction.
We can see the number of remaining cases on 30 June, 31 July, 31 August, 30 September, 31 October, and 30 November 2025 for those lodged no later than 30 June 2024 were 11280, 9848, 8608, 7488, 5497, and 3271, an 8000-plus reduction.
Also on 30 November 2025, there were 19558 pending cases for those lodged during the 2024-2025 program year, and on the same day, out of the 33000 planned 190 visas to be granted, 12091 were already granted, leaving 20909 available for the rest 7 months of the 2025-2026 program year, or roughly 2987 grants per month for the rest 7 months.
The monthly number of cases lodged on or before 30 June 2024 had been pendulating between 1100 and 2300, so even if we use 1000 as a conservative number, assuming they want to just finish off these early cases, then by no later than the end of February, we should see very little of these cases left and thus see a good uptick of number of cases lodged during the 2024-2025 program year to be cleared.
If they want to finish off these early cases even faster, then we would see the uptick even slightly earlier than the end of February, since there were only 3271 cases left by 30 November 2025, and if they decided to reduce the speed to clear these earlier cases, then we also still see an uptick for the processing of 2024-2025 program year cases.
So regardless, we should start seeing uptick of grants for 2024-2025 program year cases no later than the end of February.
Together, there were 22829 pending cases for those lodged on 30 June 2025 or earlier on 30 November 2025, so based on the remaining grant slots, a huge percent of those lodged by 30 June 2025 will be processed by the end of the current program year.
What happened to 491 last program year?
It had a 33000 planning level, yet only granted a bit less than 24000 in total?
Why did they waste so many 491 grant slots when there were already quite huge backlogs there, even though not as horrible as 190 backlogs?
Were there too many 191 backlogs so they wanted to reduce 491 grants to mitigate the works three years later? Or some other reasons?
By the way, do we know how many 191 backlogs are there?
Can someone explain to me why 189, 190, and 491 have quite different refusal rates?
Using the aggregate data from July 2024 to October 2025, I got the following:
For 189, the primary refusal rate was 3.14% if withdrawals included and 3.18% if withdrawals excluded in the calculation;
For 189, the overall refusal rate was 2.63% if withdrawals included and 2.66% if withdrawals excluded in the calculation;
For 190, the primary refusal rate was 1.48% if withdrawals included and 1.50% if withdrawals excluded in the calculation;
For 190, the overall refusal rate was 1.31% if withdrawals included and 1.32% if withdrawals excluded in the calculation;
For 491, the primary refusal rate was 2.36% if withdrawals included and 2.45% if withdrawals excluded in the calculation;
For 491, the overall refusal rate was 2.16% if withdrawals included and 2.25% if withdrawals excluded in the calculation.
The calculation formulas are (grant_p) / (grant_p + refusal_p + withdrawal_p), (grant_p) / (grant_p + refusal_p), (grant_o) / (grant_o + refusal_o + withdrawal_o), and (grant_o) / (grant_o + refusal_o + withdrawal_o) for the four scenarios, with "p" and "o" standing for primary and overall here.
With over 20K cases for 189, 40K cases for 190, and 30K cases for 491, I believe these numbers should be statistically significant.
Why are we seeing the lowest refusal rates for 190, medium refusal rates for 491, and highest refusal rates for 189 applications?
Other than nurses, teachers (early childhood, primary, secondary), allied health professionals (medical technologies, physiotherapists, anesthesists, etc), and social workers, what occupations are being treated as de facto priority occupations now for 189, 190, 191, and 491 visas? I have been seeing carpenters, welders, and many construction-related applicants getting granted lightning fast recently.
When will they start processing this year's 190 lodgements?
I have been tracking 190 grant database here for a while, and I have been seeing grants for 190 applications lodged from July 2023 to June 2024, especially July 2023 to December 2023, in the last month or so.
In contrast, as of 30 September 2025, based on the data provided by FOI requests, only 5 out of the 1610 cases lodged by 30 September 2025 in this program year have been processed.
I have also note seen 190 visa grants for those applied during the current program year in our database here either.
So, when will they start processing this year's 190 applications? Seems very different from the last program year, where they almost immediately started processing current cases.
Should I take a one-year study in nursing, carpentry, social work, or teaching?
I just lodged my 190 visa application, but due to the long processing time for non-priority occupations, I wonder if it would be a good idea to take a one-year study, then wait for 189 invitation, then lodge a 189 visa application.
(Note: This post is pure rage bait, but please engage my bait. Thank you.)
How is the processing time for various visas calculated? Yes, I know it is based on the average between visa lodgements and visa decisions, whether grant, refusal, or withdrawal. But which batches of visa decisions? The decisions last 4 weeks? The decisions last 3 months? Or what? Also, do they use the simple average, some kind of weighted average, some kind of exponential average, or what?
We should be approaching an inflection point this program year.
As noted in, our 190 backlog level has been reduced by around 4000 last program year, down to the near 35000 level.
This year, while we still do not have the State and Territory nomination quotas yet, based on what we have heard, namely the quotas will be reduced by around 22% across States and Territories, we can use 13200 as an approximate number for all 190 nominations. Then using 2 as the approximate family size, we would have no more than 26400 nominations for 190 visa this program year.
Then we will have delays due to documentation gathering and two onshore candidates applying as a couple (primary and secondary), we would have even less actual lodgements. Last program year, a total of roughly 29000 applications for 190 visa were lodged, so this program year, we can also take an educated guess that no more than 25000 applications will be lodged.
Using some very rough math, the backlog should be reduced by at least 8000 by the end of this program year and if we still have 33000 planning level for 190 visa the next program year, then the backlog would be even lower than the planning level, which means even more people will get processed within 12 months.
Regardless, a lot of us who apply for 190 this program year will get processed within 12 months even if we are not priority candidates. Hopefully this helps.
I got my PTE score near the end of February 2023, with 90 for all four subjects. What worries me is that they continue dragging things out to the point of no state and territory nomination even late in February 2026, then my PTE score would have expired.
For your information, I have received an email from the Tasmanian government saying they have granted a provisional application for my nomination application, and they will nominate me once they get the quota. The 85 interim slots they got for 190 have been used up for applicants whose visas are expiring sooner than mine.
So I have two questions:
(1) With my English capability, how much time should I spend to be able to get superior English again, namely equivalent to IELTS 8 for all four subjects?
(2) If I somehow bomb my tests and just keep getting equivalent of IELTS 7, will it invalidate my nomination?
Should I be safe for my situation? I submitted my TAS 190 application last fiscal year and got an email noticing me of a provisional nomination in July, which is three months ago. My TAS 190 application went via the skilled graduate pathway. I just saw changes on TAS 190 rules, but I think since (1) I applied via the skilled graduate pathway, which has not changed in priority attributes, and (2) they have already said I have received a TAS provisional nomination, I should be safe here? Hopefully nothing will go wrong on me.