Permanent Residence (Skilled Regional) visa, subclass 191
This is the visa at the end of the regional pathway. Hold a 491 or a 494 for 3 years, keep to its conditions, lodge your tax returns, and AUD 630 turns provisional status into permanent residence.
What changes on the day it is granted
The 191 is not another provisional stage. It is the permanent visa, and the regional obligations you have been living under end with it.
Anywhere in Australia
THE CONDITIONS FALL AWAY- Live, work and study wherever you choose
- Conditions 8579 and 8580 end with the provisional visa
- No sponsor, no nominating state, no reporting
Your family, in one application
GRANTED TOGETHER- Partner and dependent children included with you
- A partner formed since your 491 can usually be added
- Everyone included is granted permanent residence at once
The longer view
AFTER THE GRANT- The clock towards citizenship starts running
- Eligible relatives can be sponsored
- A travel facility of 5 years, then a Resident Return visa
Your permanent residence itself does not expire. The travel facility does, after 5 years, and a Resident Return visa is what lets you travel back into Australia once it has. Diarise it on the day you are granted rather than the week you want to fly.
The income threshold that does not exist
Almost every page on this visa quotes a minimum taxable income. Read the criteria and there is no figure in them at all.
What you have been told
AND WHY IT IS WRONG- No sum of AUD 53,900 appears anywhere in the criteria
- No indexed income threshold has ever been prescribed
- No minimum applies to any one of the years
- A low earning year does not defeat the application
The 2019 rules left room for a minimum to be set later by legislative instrument. None was set when the visa commenced and none has been set since. What survives is the paperwork, not the number.
What is actually asked for
THE REAL REQUIREMENT- Notices of assessment from the ATO for 3 income years
- Those years falling inside the 5 years your provisional visa runs
- Returns genuinely lodged, so the assessments exist to produce
- Every other criterion met, from conditions through to character
A missing notice of assessment is fatal to a 191 application. A small figure on one is not.
Why this correction matters. People have taken work they did not want, delayed lodging for a year, or talked themselves out of the regional route entirely because of a threshold that was never in force. It is the single most repeated error on this visa. If anyone quotes you an income figure for a 191, the fair question is which instrument it comes from.
Four things the 191 actually requires
There is no points test here, no occupation list and no invitation round. Everything competitive happened at the 491 stage.
An eligible visa
A subclass 491 or a subclass 494. No other provisional visa leads to a 191, which is why the earlier choice matters so much.
3 years of holding it
Counted from the grant date of that provisional visa, not from the day you landed and not from the day you found work.
Conditions kept
Condition 8579 binds where you live, work and study. Condition 8580 gives you 28 days to produce evidence when it is asked for.
Tax and the usual checks
Three ATO notices of assessment, plus health, character, no outstanding debts to the Commonwealth and no visa refused or cancelled.
The 491 was the hard part. What decides a 191 is not whether you qualify on paper but whether the last 3 years can be evidenced when someone asks.
The 3 years, counted properly
Two questions decide whether you are eligible yet, and people get both of them wrong in the same direction.
When the clock starts
EARLIER THAN YOU THINK- On the date your 491 or 494 was granted
- Not on the date you arrived, and not on your first payslip
- A 491 runs for 5 years, so eligibility at 3 leaves 2 years of room
- An application lodged before the 3 years are complete cannot meet the criterion
Check the grant letter, not your memory. A month of confusion here costs a lodgement fee.
What regional means here
WIDER THAN IT SOUNDS- Everywhere in Australia except Greater Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane
- Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, Canberra, Newcastle and Wollongong all count
- Living in one designated area and working in another is fine
- A holiday or a work trip to a capital is not a breach of where you live
Months of residence outside the designated areas are a different question, and they are the usual reason a regional pathway comes apart.
If you have not started this pathway yet, the decision that leads here is made much earlier. The regional skilled work visa page covers what you are committing to for those 3 years, the state nominated route is the alternative that reaches permanent residence on day one, and it is worth taking 5 minutes to work out your points before choosing between them.
What it costs, and how long it takes
After the charge you paid for the 491, this one is small. The waiting is the part to plan around.
The charge
AUD 630 for the main applicant from 1 July 2026, AUD 315 for each family member aged 18 or over, and AUD 160 for each child under 18.
Around it
Health examinations and police checks again, evidence of 3 years of regional address and work, and any tax return still outstanding, because the assessment has to exist before you lodge.
The waiting
Published figures disagree with one another. Around half of recent decisions were made inside 5 to 9 months, and most of the remainder inside roughly 14 months.
Timing is kinder on this visa than on most. Your 491 still has about 2 years to run when you first become eligible, so a 191 decision does not usually leave you without status. Lodging late in the fifth year is what creates that problem, and it is avoidable.
The part most agents leave out
A 191 is not won at lodgement. It is won across the 3 years before it, in records that either exist or do not.
What actually fails
RARELY THE MONEY- Months spent in a capital city that cannot be explained
- A tax return never lodged, so no assessment exists to attach
- No address trail, because every lease and bill was in a partner's name
- A gap in employment records after a job ended badly
None of these is about income. Each is a record that was never made at the time and cannot be made afterwards.
What to do from year one
THE FILE YOU BUILD- Keep a lease, a bill or a bank statement in your own name at every address
- Lodge every tax return on time, including a year you earned very little
- Collect employment letters when you leave a job, not when you need them
- Answer any request from Home Affairs inside 28 days, because condition 8580 makes that a compliance question
The honest version. A 191 is close to administrative if the 3 years were lived carefully, and genuinely difficult if they were not. That is the opposite of how the regional pathway is usually sold, where all the attention goes on winning the 491 and none on the years that follow it. If you are holding a 491 today, the useful work is building the file, not waiting for the anniversary. And if some of that history is already untidy, say so early. A period that can be explained with evidence is a very different thing from one discovered at lodgement.
How we run it
Four stages, across offices in Nepal and Australia, with the same team from the first read of your file to the grant.
A read of where you actually stand
We check the grant date on your provisional visa, the conditions attached to it, and the income years you hold assessments for, then tell you the earliest date a 191 can properly be lodged.
The evidence file
Address history, employment, tax. We tell you what is missing while there is still time to create it, rather than at lodgement when there is not.
Lodgement, once and complete
Three notices of assessment and the regional evidence attached rather than promised. Requests for more information are what stretch a decision out, and most of them are avoidable.
After the grant
Medicare, the 5 year travel facility, and the point at which sponsoring a relative or applying for citizenship becomes possible for your family.
Common questions
How long do I have to hold a 491 before I can apply for a 191?
Is there a minimum income requirement for the 191 visa?
What happens if I spent time outside the regional area on my 491?
Do I have to keep living in a regional area after the 191 is granted?
How long does a 191 application take, and what does it cost?
Free 491 to 191 readiness check
- We confirm the earliest date your 191 can be lodged
- We check your notices of assessment against the 3 years the visa asks for
- We tell you what evidence is missing while you can still create it
- We are honest about any period that will need explaining
No obligation, and confidential.
Send us your details
We reply within one working day.
Do not find out at lodgement that a year of your file is missing
If you hold a 491 now, 20 minutes will tell you whether the 3 years behind you will stand up, and exactly what to fix in the years ahead.
Charges are indexed each July and published processing figures move every month. Figures checked 7 September 2026.