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5 August 2026

Will You Be Invited in the First 189 Round of 2026-27?

We project an 8,400–9,400-invitation first 189 round, then work out the points cutoff and date of effect it reaches in every occupation — including the 12 occupation groups that cannot be invited at all.

Superseded on 2 September 2026. This is the 5 August freeze, kept as published. It was followed by the September update; the round was not held in September, and the prediction tool now runs on the October update.

It depends far less on the size of the round than on which occupation you are in.

Find your occupation

Every ANZSCO unit group, open and closed — search by name or 4-digit code.

Showing 87 occupation groups

How to read the columns. Cutoff is the score of the last person invited; the date beneath it is the date of effect tie-break — at the cutoff score, only EOIs dated on or before that date are reached. The two right-hand columns run the same projection at both ends of our round-size range: If 8,400 is the pessimistic case (a smaller round reaches fewer people, so the bar is higher) and If 9,400 the optimistic one. So: at or above the If 8,400 figure you are projected in even on the pessimistic case; between the two you are borderline and the round size decides you; below the If 9,400 figure this round is projected to pass you by. ALL means the whole queue is invited regardless of score.

A note on timing: this projection is published roughly two months ahead of the expected round (due by 30 September 2026), built from the 2026-08-03 EOI snapshot with inflow projected forward to September — the two-month horizon our pool model is graded at every month. When the early-September snapshot lands, we will freeze a fresh version on the 189 prediction tool; this article keeps the August numbers so the two freezes can be compared after the round.

65–105
range of projected cutoffs across occupations
26
groups where everyone eligible gets invited
12
groups with zero places — cannot be invited

The spread is the point. Projected cutoffs run from the 65-point minimum to 105 points, median 65. A single “189 cutoff” number has not been a meaningful idea for years — the same round can invite an electrician at the minimum and pass over a 100-point university lecturer.

Every figure here counts only EOIs at 65 points or above. 65 is the pass mark for the points test — Home Affairs is explicit that “if you do not obtain a score of 65 points you will not be invited to apply for this visa”. A further 21,322 EOIs sit in the 189 pool below 65 points. They appear in the headline pool figures you will see elsewhere, but they cannot be invited at any score, so we exclude them from every queue, allocation and cutoff on this page.

Who cannot be invited at all

For 63.6% of the eligible pool, the answer is already settled and it is no. 12 occupation groups have no 189 places remaining for 2026-27 — prior-program grants have consumed the whole ceiling — and they hold the biggest queues in the system: 101,481 eligible EOIs between them.

This is the real story of the 189 pool. The queues everyone talks about — Software and Applications Programmers (24,532 waiting), ICT Business and Systems Analysts (12,672), Accountants (11,067), Civil Engineering Professionals (10,222), Chefs (9,537) — are long precisely because the invitations stopped. Adding points does not help when the allocation is zero. If you are in one of these groups, 189 is not your pathway this year; state nomination (190/491) is where to look.

How to read your row

Three worked examples, from the widest-open group to the tightest:

Electricians3411
1,688
FY places
88
EOIs waiting
88–88
round 1 invites
ALL
cutoff if 8,400
ALL
cutoff if 9,400

The most open group in the table, and the most robust answer on the page: far more places than people (1,688 estimated places against a queue of just 88 eligible EOIs), so the whole projected queue clears at both ends of the range. Everyone at or above the 65-point minimum is projected to be invited. If this is your group, your score is not what is holding you back — having an EOI in at all is.

Registered Nurses2544
10,990
FY places
11,667
EOIs waiting
2,152–2,483
round 1 invites
75
2026-03-24
cutoff if 8,400
75
2026-04-19
cutoff if 9,400

The largest allocation of any group by a wide margin, but the queue is deep too, so the line falls at 75 points at both ends of the range. This is the clearest example of why the date of effect matters more than the score here: the cutoff score does not move, but the date behind it slides from 24 March to 19 April depending on round size. At 80 points or above the date is irrelevant; at exactly 75, those four weeks are the whole question.

Early Childhood Teachers2411
816
FY places
11,136
EOIs waiting
160–184
round 1 invites
90
2026-05-07
cutoff if 8,400
90
2026-05-19
cutoff if 9,400

The hardest common case. 11,136 eligible EOIs compete for an estimated 816 places all year, of which only a fraction land in round 1 — pushing the cutoff to 90 points at both ends of the range. That is well above the 85 this group actually needed in both rounds of 2025-26, and a reminder that a first round drawing on a year’s accumulated queue is the tightest one you will face.

Here is what that looks like in practice. A Registered Nurse (nec) with 85 points opens the prediction tool and gets this card:

FROZEN 6 AUG 2026 · POOL PROJECTED TO SEP 2026Next 189 round · expected by 30 Sep 2026
Registered Nurses (nec)25449985 pts
✓
You're projected to be invited
your 85 points clear the 75 cutoff at any round size
Your group's queue · 12,251 eligible EOIs· = 158 EOIs · green = invited this round
YOU
Ahead of you
~21
Cutoff
75 pts
DOE cutoff at 75
24 Mar 2026 –
19 Apr 2026
Your group invitations (2544)
2,152–2,483
Your occupation invitations (est.)
1,129–1,303
ImmiTrend
immitrend.com.au/189-prediction

The verdict card from the prediction tool — yours computes from your own points and Date of Effect, and can be shared as an image.

For your own position rather than your group’s, use the 189 prediction tool, which works from your exact score and date of effect, or the live pool by points.

Why the range is more reassuring than it looks

Running the projection at both ends produces a genuinely useful result: for the large majority of occupations, the cutoff score does not move at all. A thousand invitations either way changes only the date-of-effect tie-break.

68
7
same cutoff score at both ends — only the date of effect movescutoff score shifts across the range
Of the 75 groups where a cutoff can be computed, how many hold the same cutoff score at both 8,400 and 9,400 invitations.

68 of 75 groups keep the same cutoff score across the whole range; only 7 see it shift, and never by more than 5 points. On top of that, 26 groups clear their entire queue even at the pessimistic floor — a “yes” that does not depend on the round size at all. So while we cannot backtest this projection, we can show that its answer is insensitive to the uncertainty in its main input. That is not the same as being right, but it does mean being wrong about the round size would mostly not change your answer.

How this is calculated

Four steps, each of which can be checked:

  1. Predict the round size. Across the three normal program years, 78.0% of invitations become lodged applications and 97.5% of decisions are grants, so each invitation delivers about 0.76 of a place. Run that backwards from the official 21,090 planning level: 21,090 ÷ 0.76 ≈ 27,747 invitations across the whole year. Round 1 has carried 30.2% of a year’s invitations on average (34.7% in 2024-25, 25.6% in 2025-26), which gives 8,400–9,400. Backtested on 2024-25 at +3.32%. Everything below is then run twice, once at each end.
  2. Split it across occupations. Each unit group gets a share proportional to its estimated 2026-27 places, capped so no group is allocated more invitations than it has eligible EOIs waiting. Capped surplus is redistributed across the rest.
  3. Project the pool to the round month. The round is expected by 30 September, so allocating against today’s pool would assume zero inflow between now and then. Instead, each score band gets the inflow our monthly-graded pool forecast predicts for September (a one-to-two-month horizon, where it beats the naive baseline). New EOIs append behind today’s at the same score, so dates of effect still come from live data.
  4. Find the line. Within each group, rank the projected September queue by score first and date of effect second — the department’s own ordering — then read off the last row the allocation reaches. That row’s score is the cutoff and its date is the date-of-effect tie-break.

The round-size input everything above is built on:

8,400–9,400
invitations
8,400
range floor
~9,000
point estimate
9,400
range ceiling

Expected by 30 Sep 2026. Round size backtests to +3.3% on 2024-25. The per-occupation projection does not — see below.

One reason a first-round projection sits higher than you might expect: the first round of a program year is consistently the hardest to clear, because it draws against a queue that has been accumulating since the previous year’s last round. The average minimum score across all invited occupations falls after round 1 in both years we can measure:

Program yearRound 1Round 2Round 3Drop after R1
2024-2583.481.2no 3rd round−2.2
2025-2684.080.579.4−4.6
Average minimum points across every occupation invited in each round. In both program years the bar falls after round 1 and never rises again.

Two numbers on this page look like they disagree, so let us reconcile them: the historical round-1 average above is 83–84, while the median of our projected cutoffs is 65. Both are right. The historical average counts only the ~61 occupation groups the department actually called — the competitive ones — while our table spreads a much larger round (8,400–9,400 against last year’s 6,887) across all 75 groups with places, including wide-open ones where the whole queue clears. Weight our table by queue size and the picture matches: the big competitive groups project at 75–90, right where history says round 1 lands.

Common questions

›When is the next 189 invitation round?

Home Affairs states the first Skilled Independent (subclass 189) round of the 2026-27 program year is expected to be held by 30 September 2026. The most recent round was 4 June 2026, and as at 5 August 2026 no 2026-27 round has been held.

›How many invitations will the first 189 round of 2026-27 have?

We project 8,400 to 9,400 invitations, with a point estimate of about 9,000. That comes from the official 21,090 planning level for Skilled Independent, divided by the lodgement and grant rates Home Affairs publishes in its Migration Program Reports. The same method backtests to within 3.32% on the 2024-25 program year.

›What points score do I need for the first 189 round of 2026-27?

There is no single cutoff. It depends entirely on your occupation: we project cutoffs ranging from the 65-point minimum up to 105 points, with a median of 65. Registered Nurses are projected at 75 points, Secondary School Teachers at 75, and Early Childhood Teachers at 90. Look up your ANZSCO unit group in the table on this page.

›Do I need 65 points for a 189 visa?

Yes. 65 points is the pass mark for the points test. Home Affairs states that if you do not obtain a score of 65 points you will not be invited to apply for this visa. About 21,322 EOIs currently sit in the 189 pool below 65 points and cannot be invited at any round size.

›Why can my occupation not be invited even with high points?

Twelve ANZSCO unit groups have zero estimated 189 places left for 2026-27, because prior-program grants have already consumed their ceiling. They include Software and Applications Programmers, ICT Business and Systems Analysts, Accountants, Civil Engineering Professionals and Chefs. Together they hold 101,481 eligible EOIs — 63.6% of the entire eligible 189 pool. Adding points does not help when the allocation is zero; state nomination (190 or 491) is the alternative.

›What is a date of effect and why does it matter?

Your date of effect is when your EOI reached its current points score. Within a single points score, Home Affairs invites in date-of-effect order, oldest first. So at the cutoff score only EOIs dated on or before a certain date are reached. For most occupations our projected cutoff score does not change across the round-size range — it is the date of effect that moves.

What would make us wrong

⚠This projection has no backtest.

Each layer has its own status: the round size backtests at +3.3% on a real program year, and the pool-projection layer is graded in public every month. But the composite — per-occupation cutoffs and dates — has never been graded end-to-end: our date-of-effect data has a single snapshot (2026-08-03) with no history to test against. Treat the table as a well-constructed estimate, not a measured one. This round is its first public test.

  • The place estimates are estimates. Official 2026-27 occupation ceilings are not published yet, so the allocation rests on our own modelled figures. If a group’s real ceiling differs, its whole row moves.
  • Proportional allocation is an assumption. The department does not publish how it splits a round across occupations — per-occupation invitation counts are not released at all. We assume a group’s share of the round matches its share of places; the real split may be lumpier.
  • The pool projection is itself a forecast. Queues are the 2026-08-03 pool plus the inflow our monthly-graded model predicts for September. That model beats the naive baseline at this horizon, but it can miss — and 19 small groups without forecast coverage use the static pool instead. If the round lands in August rather than September, cutoffs ease slightly.
  • The model cannot say “not invited” for an open group. Proportional allocation gives every group with places at least a few invitations, but round 1 of 2025-26 invited only 61 of the unit groups we track. Some of our smallest allocations — a handful of invitations to a niche group — may in reality be zero, with those invitations flowing to the bigger groups instead.
  • This covers the first round only. Not rounds 2 or 3, not the full year. Once the first round is held the pool changes materially and this projection is superseded, not updated.

We’ll grade this

Both claims are on the record: the round size, and every cutoff in the table above. And because this version was frozen two months out, it will not be the only one on the record: the September re-freeze joins it, and both get compared against the official results — so you will be able to see whether two extra months of data actually sharpened the prediction. One note on how the grading works: Home Affairs publishes minimums per 6-digit occupation, while our table projects per 4-digit unit group — so each row will be graded against the lowest published minimum among its occupations, which is what “the score of the last person invited in the group” corresponds to. (In practice the department usually sets one minimum across a whole group — all 15 nursing occupations shared 80 points in the last first round.) When the round is held, the next issue of our forecast scorecard will publish what we projected against the per-occupation minimums Home Affairs actually released — which are published, so every row here is checkable. Method background: how we test our forecasts. Live round history: all invitation rounds.

Related:189 invitation chancesEOI pool distributionInvitation roundsBrowse occupations
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