How to get an Australian partner visa: the complete 2026-27 guide

The five things to know before anything else

• Every partner visa is two visas in one application: a temporary visa first (subclass 820 onshore, subclass 309 offshore), then the permanent visa (subclass 801 or 100) about two years later. One application, one charge, two decisions.
• The combined government charge for the onshore 820 and 801 is $9,365 (published 1 July 2025 figure; charges were indexed again on 1 July 2026, so confirm the current amount before lodging).
• Partner visas have been demand-driven since 2022. There is no annual cap and no queue of capped places working against you.
• For de facto couples, registering the relationship with your state registry before lodgement removes the requirement to prove 12 months of living together, and gives the Department a primary document instead of an inference. It is the highest-value single move in partner visa preparation.
• The evidence job never finishes at lodgement. The permanent stage tests whether the relationship is genuine and continuing at the date of decision, on fresh evidence, roughly two years after you apply.

The foundations

What the Australian partner visa actually is

The Australian partner visa lets the spouse or de facto partner of an Australian citizen, Australian permanent resident or eligible New Zealand citizen live in Australia permanently. There is no points test, no occupation list, no age limit and no skills assessment. What the Department tests instead is the relationship itself: is it genuine, and is it continuing.

Every partner visa runs in two stages. You lodge one application and pay one charge, but you receive two visas in sequence:

• Onshore: the temporary Partner (subclass 820) visa first, then the permanent Partner (subclass 801) visa. You apply while you are in Australia.
• Offshore: the temporary Partner (subclass 309) visa first, then the permanent Partner (subclass 100) visa. You apply while you are outside Australia.

The two stages sit about two years apart. The temporary stage asks whether the relationship is genuine when you lodge. The permanent stage asks whether it is genuine and continuing at the date of that later decision, which is why the evidence work does not stop when the application goes in. More on that in the stage 2 section below.

Who can sponsor. Your partner must be an Australian citizen, an Australian permanent resident or an eligible New Zealand citizen. Sponsorship is assessed in its own right, including the sponsor’s history, so a sponsor with prior sponsorships or character issues should raise it early rather than hope it goes unnoticed.

Married or de facto. Both streams lead to the same visa. Married couples evidence the marriage plus the substance of the relationship. De facto couples generally need to show 12 months of de facto relationship before applying, unless the relationship is registered with a state or territory registry. That registration option matters enough that it gets its own treatment in the evidence section.

Engaged but not yet married. The Prospective Marriage (subclass 300) visa is the third door: it lets an offshore fiance or fiancee travel to Australia, marry within nine months, and then apply for the 820/801 onshore. It is a bridge, not a partner visa in its own right, and it suits a specific situation covered below.

One structural point in your favour: partner visas have been demand-driven rather than capped since 2022. There is no annual quota to miss out on. The application succeeds or fails on the relationship and the evidence, not on program numbers. Partner visas sit within the broader family visa program, which also covers parent and child visas.

Route 1 : onshore

Partner (subclass 820 and 801): applying from inside Australia

If you are in Australia and hold a visa, the onshore pathway is usually the natural route. You lodge the combined 820/801 application, and the timing of that lodgement matters more than most couples realise.

Lodge while you hold a substantive visa. A substantive visa is a normal visa: a visitor visa, a student visa, a work visa. A bridging visa is not one. If you lodge the 820 while your current visa is still valid, the application proceeds on the standard criteria. If you lodge after your visa has ended, or from a bridging visa, extra legal criteria apply before your relationship is even assessed, and they are hard to satisfy. The rule of thumb is simple: lodge before your current visa expires. If you are already without a substantive visa, do not lodge blind. That situation needs individual advice before anything is submitted, and the earlier the better, because one of the relevant criteria involves a 28-day window.

The bridging visa that follows. Lodging a valid onshore application automatically generates a Bridging Visa A (BVA). It sits dormant while your current visa runs, then activates when that visa ends, keeping you lawful for as long as the partner application takes. Two things to check on the day the BVA grant arrives. First, work rights: a BVA usually carries the work conditions of the visa it follows, but the conditions are stated on the grant letter and that letter is the authority, so read it before assuming you can work. Second, travel: a BVA that is in effect ends the moment you leave Australia, and it will not bring you back.

Travelling while you wait. For that, there is the Bridging Visa B (BVB). You apply for it before travelling, it carries a travel facility with a return-by date, and you re-enter on it while the partner application is still processing. Apply close to the actual trip rather than months out, so the facility brackets your travel dates. The facility end date is a re-enter-by date, not a limit on how long you can stay away.

Handled properly, the onshore pathway means the couple stays together in Australia for the whole processing period, usually with work rights, which is exactly why lodging while lawful is worth planning around.

Route 2 : offshore

Partner (subclass 309 and 100): applying from outside Australia

The offshore pathway is the same relationship case moved across the border: the same four pillars of evidence, the same witness declarations, the same two-stage structure. What changes is where you are, and the paperwork that follows from geography.

Presence at lodgement. The defining feature of the 309 is that the applicant must be outside Australia when the application is made. The rules on where you must be when the visa is granted have shifted in recent years, so check the current arrangement on the Home Affairs subclass 309 page as part of your planning rather than relying on what applied to someone else’s case.

Departing to lodge. Being in Australia does not lock you out of the offshore route. Where an onshore application is blocked, for instance by a section 48 bar after a visa refusal, a common approach is to depart Australia briefly and lodge the 309 while offshore, having first arranged a Bridging Visa B if a pending application makes one necessary. Whether this beats waiting out the onshore problem is a case-by-case call, and one worth getting advice on before booking anything.

Police checks scale with your geography. Plan for clearances from every country you have lived in for 12 months or more in the last 10 years, not just your country of citizenship. An applicant with time in Australia typically needs an Australian Federal Police check as well as the home-country clearance. Start these early: the slowest police certificate is very often the item that sets the pace of the whole application.

Medicals. Health examinations are arranged through the approved panel for the country you are living in. If you completed a valid health examination in Australia within the last 12 months, it may be reusable rather than repeated.

Staying connected while you wait. A pending 309 does not stop the applicant visiting Australia. A Visitor (subclass 600) visa is the standard stopgap so the couple is not separated for the whole processing period. One caution: if a visitor visa is granted with condition 8503 (no further stay), it restricts what can be applied for from inside Australia, so check the conditions on any visitor grant before making plans around it.

When offshore beats onshore. Choose the 309 when the applicant is genuinely living overseas, when an onshore bar blocks the 820, or when the couple plans the move to Australia around the visa rather than the other way round. Couples relocating together should audit their existing overseas evidence against the four pillars before they move; it is much easier to collect documents while you still live where the evidence is.

Route 3 : engaged couples

Prospective Marriage (subclass 300): the engaged couple's route

The subclass 300 is the fiance visa. It lets an offshore applicant travel to Australia to marry their Australian partner, then apply for the 820/801 onshore. It exists for couples who genuinely intend to marry but cannot yet show the married or 12-month de facto relationship the partner visa tests.

The engagement comes first. The 300 presupposes a real, existing engagement at lodgement. Planning to propose after the visa is granted, or after arrival, is the wrong way round and it undoes the application.

The NOIM is the core document. A Notice of Intended Marriage completed with an Australian marriage celebrant is the central evidence of intent. The celebrant’s record supports the application, and the same celebrant usually performs the ceremony. Alongside it sit the same building blocks as a partner application: statements from both partners, witness declarations on Form 888, and evidence across the four pillars as far as your circumstances allow. Dependent children can be included on the 300 and carry through to the later partner application.

The nine-month window is hard. Once granted, the 300 gives you nine months to enter Australia, marry, and lodge the 820/801. The marriage certificate is the document the onshore application then turns on. The practical discipline is to prepare the 820 during the 300 period so it is ready to lodge promptly after the wedding, because a 300 holder who does not marry within the window has no partner pathway from the visa. It is a bridge with a hard end date, not a fallback.

Cost note. A 300 holder lodging the subsequent 820/801 generally pays a reduced second charge rather than the full combined partner charge. Confirm the current subclass 300 charge and the reduced 820 charge in the Home Affairs fee schedule before budgeting, because both index every 1 July.

When to choose it. Pick the 300 only when it fits: you are engaged, the applicant is offshore, and the relationship cannot yet meet the married or de facto tests. If a de facto relationship already exists, the partner visa is usually the better application, especially where registering the relationship can replace the 12-month requirement.

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The evidence

The four pillars: how the Department reads a relationship

The regulations direct decision-makers to four aspects of a relationship, and every strong partner application is built deliberately across all four. The task is not to manufacture anything. It is to document what is already true, in a form a stranger can verify.

1. Financial. How you share money and financial commitments. Strong evidence: a joint bank account that is actually used, both names on a lease or a mortgage, jointly held bills and utilities, each other as insurance or superannuation beneficiaries, transfers between accounts with a history behind them. A joint account opened the week before lodgement proves very little; eighteen months of groceries and rent through it proves a great deal.

2. Household. How you live together and run a home. Strong evidence: correspondence from separate senders addressed to each of you at the same address over time, a lease naming you both, how you split household jobs described consistently in your statements, arrangements for any children in the household.

3. Social. Whether the world around you knows you as a couple. Strong evidence: photographs of the two of you with family and friends at real occasions, with names, places and dates recorded, not a folder of selfies. Joint invitations, travel bookings in both names, being each other’s emergency contact. This is the pillar case officers probe most often when they come back with questions, so make it verifiable: images of the couple alone carry far less weight than images of the couple recognised by others.

4. Commitment. The long-term intention behind the relationship. Strong evidence: how your statements describe your history and your plans, and whether the two accounts are consistent, knowledge of each other’s lives and families, wills or beneficiary nominations naming each other, plans made jointly and documented at the time.

Form 888 declarations. Statutory declarations from people who know you as a couple, on Form 888, anchor the social pillar in almost every application. Two is the working minimum; choose declarants who have genuinely witnessed the relationship over time and can say so specifically. A parent who can describe your last three Christmases beats an acquaintance offering general praise.

The registration move. For de facto couples this is the single highest-value step available. Registering the relationship with your state or territory registry before lodgement removes the requirement to prove 12 months of de facto cohabitation, and it hands the Department a primary document, a government-issued certificate, instead of asking a case officer to infer your relationship from a bundle of circumstantial pieces. If your state offers registration and you have not done it, do it before you lodge.

Build the habit, not the scramble. The couples who find this process easy are the ones who capture evidence as life happens: the photo folder with dates and names kept as you go, the bills filed, the joint account used for real life. The couples who find it painful are reconstructing two years of life the month before lodgement. Nothing in this guide asks you to create anything. Start early and the evidence collects itself, because the relationship is already generating it.

Stage 2

The permanent stage: a live test, not a formality

Roughly two years after you lodge, the permanent stage falls due. This is where a dangerous assumption catches couples: that the hard part ended at lodgement and stage 2 is a rubber stamp. It is not. The permanent visa asks whether the relationship is genuine and continuing at the date of that decision. Historical evidence, however strong, does not answer a present-tense question.

What stage 2 needs is fresh evidence covering the period since the first stage: new Form 888 declarations, and financial, household and social evidence from the gap years. A recycled copy of the original bundle tells the Department nothing about the two years it is actually asking about. Treat stage 2 as its own evidence project, started well before the two-year mark arrives, and the habit-based approach from the evidence chapter carries you straight into it.

If life has moved on, say so. Two years is a long time and the strongest stage 2 files show a relationship that has kept living. Married since lodgement? The marriage certificate is powerful commitment evidence; if a name changed, keep the document trail consistent across everything you submit. Children born to the relationship? Birth certificates naming both of you go to every pillar at once. Moved house, changed jobs, bought property together? All of it is exactly the continuing story the permanent stage exists to test.

Take Departmental letters seriously. If the Department receives information suggesting a relationship has ended, it can write and give a short window, typically 28 days, to respond. Silence in that window can decide the application. Any letter of that kind is a drop-everything moment: get advice the day it arrives, not the week after.

The numbers

The 2026-27 figures that shape a partner visa plan

The figures that shape a partner visa plan, as they stand in July 2026. Visa application charges are the published 1 July 2025 figures; charges were indexed again on 1 July 2026, so confirm the current amount in ImmiAccount or the Home Affairs Visa pricing estimator before lodging.

One reading note: any partner visa figure you find undated should be treated as suspect, including ours, which is why everything above carries a date. Charges index every 1 July and the Department has occasionally moved specific fees mid-year.

The process

How to apply for a partner visa, step by step

The pathway details differ, but the spine of a well-run partner application looks like this:

1. Audit your evidence against the four pillars. Before forms, before fees: financial, household, social, commitment. Where is the file strong, where is it thin, and what already exists that you have simply never collected in one place?
2. Confirm the sponsor’s position. Citizen, permanent resident or eligible New Zealand citizen, and check the sponsor’s history early: prior sponsorships and character issues are assessed, and surprises here are expensive late.
3. Choose the pathway. Onshore 820, offshore 309, or the 300 for engaged couples. Your location, your current visa and any past refusals drive this choice, and it is the decision everything else hangs off.
4. De facto couples: register the relationship. If your state or territory offers registration, do it before lodgement. It removes the 12-month cohabitation requirement and gives the Department a primary document.
5. Brief your Form 888 declarants. Choose people who have genuinely witnessed the relationship over time, and give them the dates and occasions to be specific about. Two declarations minimum.
6. Order police checks and plan medicals. Clearances from every country lived in for 12 months or more in the last 10 years. These are usually the slowest documents, so they go first, not last.
7. Lodge at the right moment. Onshore: while you still hold a substantive visa, before it expires. Offshore: with the applicant outside Australia. Complete, consistent and honest, with both partners’ statements telling the same story.
8. Manage the waiting period. Check the work conditions on the bridging visa grant letter, get a Bridging Visa B before any travel, and answer any Departmental request for information inside its stated deadline.
9. Run stage 2 as its own project. From about the two-year mark, compile fresh evidence covering the period since lodgement: new Form 888s, gap-year financials, the continuing story. Do not resubmit the stage 1 bundle.
10. After the permanent grant, look at the citizenship clock. Time on temporary visas counts toward the four-year residence requirement, so many partner visa holders become eligible for citizenship 12 months after the permanent grant.

Your position

Which pathway is right for you?

You are in Australia now, on a valid visa. The onshore 820/801 is usually your route. The urgent question is timing: lodge while your current visa is still in force, so the standard criteria apply and the bridging visa follows automatically. If your visa is close to expiry, this moves from important to urgent.

You are in Australia without a substantive visa, or after a refusal. Stop before lodging anything. Extra criteria apply onshore in this position, and in some cases the better move is to depart and lodge the 309 offshore. This is precisely the situation where an hour of advice before acting is worth more than any guide, ours included.

The applicant is overseas. The offshore 309/100 is the natural route, with a Visitor (subclass 600) visa as the stopgap for visits while it processes. Couples relocating to Australia together should collect their overseas evidence before the move, while it is still easy to obtain.

You are engaged but not yet married, and the applicant is offshore. The Prospective Marriage (subclass 300) is built for you: entry, marriage within nine months, then the onshore 820. But if you already live together as a de facto couple, compare it honestly against a direct partner application first, because the partner visa with a registered relationship is often the stronger and simpler route.

Already married and overseas. The 309/100 on the married stream. The marriage certificate matters, but the four pillars still decide the case, so the evidence job is the same as for everyone else.

Not sure which fits? That is the normal starting position. A structured eligibility check is the fastest way to turn it into a plan, and if you are local to us, our Brisbane partner visa page covers the in-person option.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Get a frank answer before you lodge

Most partner visa problems are built in at the start: the wrong pathway, a lodgement after the visa expired, an evidence file strong in one pillar and empty in another. A consultation with MigrationBuro covers your pathway choice, your lodgement timing against your current visa, an honest audit of your evidence across all four pillars, and the true cost of your route. If we think your application has a problem, we will tell you plainly and tell you why, because we do not lodge applications we do not believe in. That has been the way we have worked since 2007.

You will speak with a registered migration agent, not a sales team. Andrew Heathcote, MARN 0850840, has been advising on Australian partner and family migration for nearly twenty years.

1300 VISA OZ (1300 8472 69)

MigrationBuro. Registered Migration Agent. MARN 0850840.