Australia · Residency by investment
Business Innovation and Investment Programme — Significant Investor stream (subclass 188C)
Confirmed closed. The entire Business Innovation and Investment Programme, including the Significant Investor stream (188C, AUD 5m), the Investor stream (188B) and the Entrepreneur stream (188E), shut to new applications on 31 July 2024. Australia has had no residency-by-investment programme of any kind since that date. Applicants who withdrew on or after 31 July 2024 could claim a refund of the visa application charge.
The SIV was the anchor of Australian investment migration for a decade, and its closure is the defining Oceania fact of the last two years. It was not repriced, paused or reformed. It was abolished, and the replacement is a talent visa with no investment threshold at all. Any adviser still quoting AUD 5m for Australian residency is working from a 2024 script.
Qualifying routes
The AUD 5m complying investment framework. Closed 31 July 2024.
Closed 31 July 2024.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- 5M AUD
- Total landed cost
- Not applicable. The programme is closed.
- Route type
- Residency by investment
- Physical presence
- Historically, 40 days per year averaged over the provisional period for the 188C stream.
- Family
- Not applicable. The programme is closed
- Permanent residency
- Existing 188 holders keep the subclass 888 permanent pathway under the rules in force when their 188 was granted. New entry is no longer possible.
- Citizenship
- Not applicable to new applicants.
- Language test
- Not applicable to new applicants.
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- not applicable, closed
- A very large legacy queue survives the closure. Roughly 12,778 subclass 188 applications were still pending at 31 December 2024, against an allocation cut to about 1,000 visas for 2024–25. Existing applicants face years, not months.
- Business Innovation Extension and Significant Investor Extension applications from existing 188 holders are still accepted. But those extension applications are explicitly not eligible for the withdrawal refund.
- There is no successor investment route. The National Innovation Visa carries no investment threshold and cannot be bought.
- Agents in several markets continue to advertise the SIV. It does not exist.