Visa fees have surged in the new financial year. Today we’ll walk through the fees and updates relating to parent migration, along with a few things to keep in mind as those fees climb.
FY2026 Parent Migration Key Change: AoS Rule Update
The routine increase is usually around 2–3%; this financial year it rose 3.53%, which is still reasonable.
The new income requirement applies to any AoS lodged after 1 July 2026. For instance, if you received a request for further information in FY2025–26 but haven’t yet lodged the AoS, the new requirement still applies to you.
The AoS bond is unchanged: for contributory (paid) applications it is $10,000 for a single applicant and $14,000 for a couple; for queued (non-contributory) applications it is $5,000 for a single applicant and $7,000 for a couple.
How to prove you meet the income requirement: the income requirement refers to taxable income (pre-tax income), and you generally need to provide income evidence for two financial years. If you have completed last year’s tax return, provide that return together with this year’s income evidence. As we are currently at the start of the financial year, you should complete your tax return as early as possible.
If last year’s tax return has not been completed, you will need to submit tax records for the two financial years before that. For example, if you receive a request for further information in FY2026–27 but have not yet lodged your FY2025–26 return, you can submit your FY2023–24 and FY2024–25 tax records instead.
If the AoS is refused, Services Australia (Centrelink) will usually notify the sponsor to provide further information and re-lodge within 14 days. Even so, we recommend preparing your documents thoroughly and being ready for a phone interview right from the start, as AoS processing is currently very fast.
Latest Fees for Every Parent Visa Category This Financial Year
Subclass 103/804: main applicant $6,600, additional applicant $3,300
Subclass 143/864: main applicant $6,300, additional applicant $2,125
Subclass 870: sponsorship application $420, three-year visa $6,370, five-year visa $12,440
Visitor visa: offshore lodgement $250, offshore $630
The contribution amount is unchanged, but the timeframe has shifted slightly.
It remains $43,600 per person; previously it had to be paid in full within 28 days of the notice, and in the new financial year this becomes 70 days.
Debunking the Three Big Money-Saving Myths About Parent Migration
Idea 1: Lodge the parents in stages — submit one first to secure a place in the queue and lodge the other later?
Not recommended. Given the way fees are trending this year, lodging later simply means paying more.
The visa fees for the main and additional applicants are calculated at the moment of lodgement, so an additional applicant lodged later may face a higher fee. The contribution is also locked in at the moment the visa is lodged. If the additional applicant lodges later and the contribution happens to rise — even by just 5% — that is an extra $2,180; a 25% rise means an extra $10,900.
So, as long as you are certain both parents want to obtain PR, we recommend lodging both applications together as early as possible.
Idea 2: Save one contribution by applying for the partner visa only five years after the parent visa is granted?
Not recommended — again, it comes down to the cost in time and money.
On time: the parent visa queue runs to more than 17 years, plus a 5-year wait after grant before you are eligible to sponsor, plus around 2 years to process the partner visa — so the other parent waits more than 20 years.
On money: the partner visa fee is currently $11,710. Even at the usual 4% annual rise, it would reach $22,810 in 17 years; and if it climbed 25% over some five-year stretch, it would hit $39,606 in 17 years — closing in on today’s contribution amount.
On top of that, without PR there is no Medicare: elderly parents can only come to Australia on a visitor visa, must buy private health insurance costing a few thousand dollars a year, and start receiving the age pension five years later. On paper, the combined cost of parent plus partner migration already exceeds lodging both parent applications at the same time.
Idea 3: Lodge together, but one parent will not come for now — what if the Subclass 155 fee is too expensive?
PR status itself does not expire — what expires is the travel facility that lets you enter and leave Australia.
If you are returning to Australia briefly to visit family and your travel facility has expired, you can first apply for a Subclass 600 visitor visa to enter, then apply for the Subclass 155 RRV (Resident Return Visa) once you have genuinely settled here.
A visitor visa comes with no Medicare and requires private health insurance, so it suits short stays each year. As long as one spouse meets the Australian residence requirement and supplies evidence of ties, the other spouse’s later Subclass 155 application still has a strong chance of success.
This pathway also suits anyone who only wants to return to Australia for short visits. With the Subclass 155 fee now surging past $1,000, we will cover the Subclass 155 pathway and its pitfalls in detail in a future article.
At present, requests for further information for contributory (paid) applications have reached those lodged in early December 2018, and Queue Letters have reached early April to early May 2024.
Parent migration currently means a long wait, and both visa fees and AoS requirements keep rising year on year — so the sooner you lodge, the sooner your family can be reunited!
