The 186 Visa: Three Streams, and Five Ways Past the Age Cap

One visa, three quite different bargains

The Employer Nomination Scheme visa, subclass 186, is Australia’s permanent employer sponsored visa. It is permanent on grant, which puts it in the small group of permanent skilled visas alongside the 189 and the 190. Its Direct Entry pathway is also unusually wide: on the Department’s own occupation list, that pathway is reached by 457 occupations against 212 for the points tested 189.

What it is not is one visa. It has three streams, and they ask for such different things that the useful question is never whether you qualify for the 186. It is which of the three you are actually in, because that decides whether the gate is a skills assessment, two years of employment history, or a document signed between your employer and the Commonwealth.

Direct Entry: the stream with no prior sponsorship requirement

This is the stream with no prior sponsorship requirement, and it is the most document heavy of the three.

Your occupation must be on the Core Skills Occupation List. Most applicants need a positive skills assessment showing they have the skills to work in the nominated position. And unless exempt, most applicants need at least three years of relevant work experience in their occupation.

There is a linkage in those last two worth knowing, because it saves people a great deal of work. The Department states that applicants who are exempt from the skills assessment requirement are also exempt from the work experience requirement. So the exemptions are not a small administrative saving. They remove the two hardest evidentiary gates on the stream at once.

Three exemptions apply to the skills assessment on Direct Entry. Being nominated as an academic, meaning a university lecturer or faculty head at Academic Level A, B, C, D or E, by a university in Australia. Being nominated as a scientist, researcher or technical specialist by an Australian government scientific agency. Or currently holding a Special Category (subclass 444) or New Zealand Citizen Family Relationship (subclass 461) visa and having worked for the nominating employer, in the nominated position, for at least two years in the three years before you applied.

You also need to be licensed, registered or a member of a professional body where that is mandatory in the state or territory you intend to work in. It is a visa criterion, and it turns on the rules of the state you are moving to rather than on anything the Department publishes.

Temporary Residence Transition: the stream that counts your history

This is the route for someone already in Australia on a sponsored temporary visa, and its central requirement is not a test you can sit. It is a record.

You must have been employed in eligible sponsored employment for a total of two years in the three years before the date you apply. The Department defines eligible sponsored employment tightly: full time, undertaken in Australia, undertaken while holding a subclass 482 or an eligible bridging visa, and undertaken in an occupation you were granted the 482 to perform.

Two provisions inside that definition are more generous than most people expect, and both are worth planning around.

If you have held more than one 482 in the three years, sponsored employment can be counted in any occupation you were approved to work in, not only your current one. And if you changed employers in that period, sponsored employment can be counted from the date an approved nomination was lodged, if you started working with them before the nomination was approved. That second one recovers weeks or months that applicants routinely write off.

On the nomination side the stream is stricter. Your employer must have been the last person to sponsor you to work full time on your 482. And the Department is blunt about a mechanical trap: it cannot link a new nomination to an existing visa application, so if the nomination changes after you have lodged, the option is to withdraw the application and lodge a fresh one against the new nomination.

English is the other place this stream is tighter rather than looser. You need at least competent English, and since 16 November 2019 there is no exemption to the English language requirement for this stream at all.

You must also currently be the primary visa holder of a 482 in any stream, or a bridging visa associated with a 482, 186 or 187 application where your last substantive visa was a 482. A secondary applicant on someone else’s 482 does not qualify through this stream.

Labour Agreement: the stream where the terms are negotiated

The third stream applies where your employer is party to a labour agreement with the Commonwealth. You must currently work, or plan to work, for that employer under the agreement, and the agreement itself provides the guidance on the English, experience, skills and other attributes required for the position.

One instruction on that page is worth quoting because it runs against every instinct: the Department says it might ask you to get a skills assessment, and then tells you not to get one unless asked. On this stream, doing the work in advance can be the wrong move.

The age cap, and the five ways past it

Every stream carries an age limit of 45 at the time you apply, and the exemptions are the most under-used knowledge in Australian employer sponsorship. There are five distinct routes around it, and which ones are open to you depends on your stream.

Academic nomination. On the Temporary Residence Transition stream the exemption covers a university lecturer or faculty head at Academic Level A, B, C, D or E nominated by an Australian university. On Direct Entry the age exemption is drawn more narrowly, at Academic Level B, C, D or E, even though the Direct Entry skills assessment exemption runs from Level A. So a Level A academic on Direct Entry is exempt from the skills assessment but not from the age cap. If you are in that position, the stream you use matters.

Scientific nomination. Being nominated as a scientist, researcher or technical specialist at ANZSCO skill level 1 or 2 by a government science agency or an Australian university exempts you on both streams.

New Zealand citizens and their family members. On Direct Entry, holding a Special Category (subclass 444) or New Zealand citizen’s family member (subclass 461) visa and having worked for the nominating employer, in the nominated position, for at least two years in the three years immediately before applying is an exemption. The Department notes that those two years exclude periods of unpaid leave.

Regional medical practice. On the Temporary Residence Transition stream, a medical practitioner who has, in the three years immediately before applying, worked in that occupation in a designated regional area for at least two years as a 482 holder is exempt, provided the nominated position is also in a designated regional area.

Earnings. Also on the Temporary Residence Transition stream, a 482 holder who worked in eligible sponsored employment for at least two years during the three years ending immediately before applying, and whose earnings in each of those years were at least the Fair Work High Income Threshold, is exempt.

Be precise about that last one, because it is the most misread. It is not a pure pay test. It sits on top of the eligible sponsored employment requirement, so you need the 482, the full time work in Australia, and the granted occupation, and then the earnings condition in each of the two years. Payslips alone prove none of the first three. But for a sponsored professional who has all of them, the age cap stops being a wall and becomes a question about what the payroll already says, and that is worth checking at 43 rather than discovering at 46.

On the Labour Agreement stream the cap moves differently again: unless the labour agreement provides otherwise, you must be under 45. The agreement itself can vary it.

If age or timing is the live question in your case, this is one to put to a person rather than to a tool. Our own eligibility check takes two minutes, but it treats 45 and over as a signal to look outside the skilled routes, which is the right default and the wrong answer for anyone sitting on one of the exemptions above.

Two mechanical rules that end more applications than any eligibility criterion

Neither is about your qualifications.

On Direct Entry and on the Temporary Residence Transition stream, you must apply for the visa within six months of the nomination being approved. Miss it and the nomination is spent. The Labour Agreement stream’s published criteria do not carry that window, so check the agreement rather than assuming either way.

On all three streams, the visa cannot be granted if the nomination is withdrawn or the position is no longer available. Your permanent residence application is, until decision, only as durable as your employer’s intentions and its trading position. The Department also says on all three that it cannot grant the visa where it is aware of adverse information about your nominator or anyone associated with them, unless it is reasonable to disregard that information, so the employer’s compliance record is part of your application whether you can see it or not.

Now the uncomfortable part: the queue

Home Affairs prioritises skilled applications under Ministerial Direction 119, which came into effect on 25 July 2026, ranking on occupation and on where the applicant was when they applied.

Read on 20 August 2026, the Department reported allocating 186 applications for processing as follows. June 2026 for applications supporting Australian law enforcement or defence interests. June 2025 for healthcare and teaching occupations where the applicant was onshore. September 2024 for construction occupations onshore. And July 2024 for everything else, whether the applicant was in Australia or not.

Set that against the Department’s published median for the Skilled (Permanent) category in June 2026, which was 11 months, and you have the single most important thing to understand about this visa. A general applicant on the 186 is currently behind files lodged around two years ago, and comparing the published allocation dates across the skilled visas, that is the oldest general cohort the Department is working through.

One thing to be careful about here, because it is where commentary tends to oversell the 482 route. The 186 allocation dates are published for the subclass, not per stream, so a Temporary Residence Transition applicant and an onshore Direct Entry applicant sit in the same July 2024 bucket. The 482 was allocating October 2025 lodgements for general applicants, which is a much shorter wait, but that is the queue for the 482 itself. Coming through it means the 482 processing time, then two years of eligible sponsored employment, then the same 186 queue as everyone else. The case for entering on a 482 is that it gets you into Australia and working while the permanent application waits, not that it shortens the permanent queue.

The Department does name one thing you control here. For employer sponsored visas it says submitting complete nomination and visa applications at the same time can support more efficient processing.

The mistakes we correct most often

Treating the 186 as one visa with one set of requirements. The three streams gate on entirely different things.

Commissioning a skills assessment on the Labour Agreement stream before being asked for one, when the Department’s own page says not to.

Not checking the skills assessment exemptions before starting an assessment, when qualifying for one of them also removes the three year work experience requirement.

On the Temporary Residence Transition stream, counting only employment in your current occupation, when sponsored employment across multiple 482 visas counts in any occupation you were approved to work in.

Separately, writing off the weeks between starting with a new employer and the nomination being approved, when employment can count from the date the nomination was lodged.

Assuming the age cap of 45 is absolute. There are five separate exemptions, and one of them turns on earnings at or above the Fair Work High Income Threshold sitting on top of two qualifying years of sponsored employment.

Letting the six month window between nomination approval and visa lodgement pass on Direct Entry or the Temporary Residence Transition stream.

Planning a Direct Entry application on the strength of the published category median rather than the published allocation date for a general applicant.

Where this leaves you

If you are already in Australia on a 482 and have two of the last three years behind you, the Temporary Residence Transition stream is almost always the better instrument, because the evidence is already earned rather than still to be assembled. If you are offshore with a willing employer, Direct Entry is the route, and the honest framing is that it is a slow one for anyone outside a priority occupation.

Either way, the questions that decide it are your stream, your age against the five exemptions, and your employer’s willingness to hold the position open for as long as the queue takes. Our MARA-registered advisers test those three before anything is lodged, and read the employer sponsored routes against the points tested ones rather than assuming sponsorship is the faster path. If a permanent move depends on the answer, it is worth a conversation.

Sources

• Department of Home Affairs, Employer Nomination Scheme visa (subclass 186)
• Department of Home Affairs, Employer Nomination Scheme visa (subclass 186) Direct Entry stream
• Department of Home Affairs, Employer Nomination Scheme visa (subclass 186) Temporary Residence Transition stream
• Department of Home Affairs, Employer Nomination Scheme visa (subclass 186) Labour Agreement stream
• Department of Home Affairs, Skilled visa processing priorities
• Department of Home Affairs, Visa processing times
• Department of Home Affairs, Skilled occupation list