Last updated: 3 October 2026.
A student from India applying for a master’s degree in Australia can no longer bring a husband, wife or child on the same visa, and that has been the rule since 2 October 2026. Of all the Australia student visa changes announced in September, this is the one that reaches into the family home, and it is already in force.
Many of the explainers written after the announcement still say that no start date has been set. That was true for a fortnight. On 1 October the Migration Amendment (Student Visa Reform) Regulations 2026 were registered on Australia’s Federal Register of Legislation, and they took effect the next day, together with three companion instruments. If you are married, planning for a February or July 2027 intake, and counting on your spouse to work in Australia while you study, the plan you made a few months ago has to be made again. What follows sets out what changed, Australia’s reasons, who is caught and who is not, and how to apply well under a test that turned away close to half of Indian applicants in August.
Before 2 October and after
The table sets the old rules against the new ones for the situations Indian families ask about most. The right-hand column comes from the instruments and their explanatory statements, read on the day they took effect.
| Your situation | Until 1 October 2026 | From 2 October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Married, applying for a master’s or bachelor’s degree | Partner and children could apply with you, or join you later | They cannot be included, and family cannot be added to your visa after it is granted |
| Application lodged before 2 October | Old rules | Still decided under the old rules |
| Family already in Australia as your dependants | Covered by your visa | They can apply again as your dependants |
| Doctoral (PhD) student | Family could come | Family can still be included, but only in the same application |
| Course fully funded by a government outside Australia | Family could come | Family can still be included, but only in the same application |
| Pacific or ASEAN passport, or a Defence or Foreign Affairs student | Family could come | Family can still be included, but only in the same application |
| In Australia on a graduate (485), visitor or working holiday visa and wanting to study | Could apply for a student visa from inside Australia | Must apply from outside Australia |
| Wanting to change provider in your first year | Possible after six months of the main course | Possible only after 12 months, until 30 June 2027, unless your provider releases you or another exception applies |
Two parts of the September announcement are not yet law, and it helps to keep them apart from the rest. The Home Affairs minister, Tony Burke, also said that family members could no longer be attached to graduate visas, meaning the Temporary Graduate (subclass 485) visa that most Indian students count on after their degree; I could find no instrument putting that into force on 2 October, and no date has been published. Separately, the Department of Education’s explanatory statement on student transfers says a rule requiring students to obtain a new student visa before changing provider ‘is intended to take effect in mid-2027’, and Burke has said students ‘can go up the qualification scale, but only up the qualification scale’. News reports mention a fee for that new visa, but no amount appears in any instrument I could find. Treat both as coming.
Australia’s reasons, in its own words
Australia is entitled to decide who studies there and on what terms, and its government has explained itself at some length. The explanatory statement to the new regulations is direct: ‘The Student visa program is not intended to be a means of facilitating family reunification in Australia.’ Its stated aim is to stop the student visa being used to prolong a temporary stay by moving from one visa to another.
In his National Press Club speech on 17 September, Burke said migration after the pandemic had reached a peak that ‘was too high’, and put the principle this way: ‘We need immigration. We just need to make sure that it is targeted for the needs of Australia in numbers and across the different categories.’ On families already in the country he was equally clear: ‘we’re not going to be breaking up families onshore.’
None of this is a cut in the number of students Australia wants. The national planning level for new international students in 2027 is 295,000, the same as in 2026. The Assistant Minister, Julian Hill, told a migration conference on 2 October, as SBS News reported, that ‘Australia welcomes genuine students seeking a premium Australian education’, while adding that the government would keep managing the size and shape of the onshore student market. Read together, the message is consistent: come, and come for the course.
The change has a cost, and Australia’s own education sector has said so. Phil Honeywood, who leads the International Education Association of Australia, told The PIE News: ‘We will definitely lose talented young people as a result of today’s announcement.’ The government’s answer, in its explanatory statement, is that separation will usually be temporary, since student visas last about two years on average, and that family members ‘are not prevented from applying for their own separate visas’.
Why ASEAN students keep the right and Indian students do not
Indian readers will notice that students from Southeast Asia and the Pacific can still bring their families. The explanatory statement gives the reason: those exceptions ‘support Australia’s strategic interests and bilateral partnerships’ with its nearest neighbours. The same line runs through Australia’s fees. When the student visa charge rose from AUD 2,000 to AUD 2,500 on 1 July 2026, applicants from ASEAN countries, the Pacific Islands and Timor-Leste stayed on the older rate. It is a regional foreign-policy choice made before this rule and applied consistently, and I would not read it as a verdict on Indian students.
There is a second strand, and it would be unfair to leave it out. Since 8 January 2026, according to reports in Gulf News and elsewhere, India has sat in Evidence Level 3, the tier for which Home Affairs asks for the most supporting documents, alongside Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan. The department said the move would help it manage ’emerging integrity issues’ without shutting out genuine students. Home Affairs has described the reason only as integrity concerns, and most Indian applicants apply in good faith; the extra document burden now falls on every applicant, including those whose papers are entirely in order.
Can the two-income plan still work?
For the reader this piece is written for, a married professional in their late twenties with a job in India, the old plan went like this: one of you studies, the other travels on the same visa, finds work, and the second income pays the rent in Melbourne or Sydney while the first pays the fees.
Under the new rules, that plan is gone for an Indian master’s student.
What remains is a set of slower choices, each of which can work if you choose it with open eyes. The first is to go alone, for a fixed term. You will need to show living funds of AUD 29,710 a year, which is the benchmark migration agents cite from Home Affairs (about ₹19.9 lakh at ₹67 to the Australian dollar, 2 October 2026), on top of tuition and the AUD 2,500 visa charge (about ₹1.7 lakh). While your course is in session you may work up to 48 hours a fortnight, which is one part-time wage. A spouse who keeps a salary in India can make that sum easier, and the Genuine Student test counts ties to family and employment at home as part of your circumstances. Describe them as they are.
The second is for your spouse to apply for a visa in their own right, which the explanatory statement itself contemplates. That means a visa they qualify for on their own merits: a student visa for a course they want to study, judged under the same Genuine Student test, or a work or skilled visa if their profession and experience fit one. It cannot mean a course chosen only to get through the door. Each applicant’s reasons are assessed separately, immigration history is part of the assessment, and a refusal stays on both your records.
The third is a doctorate. Families of doctoral students remain eligible, so for someone already drawn to research the calculation changes. For someone who wanted a taught master’s and a job, a PhD of three or more years is a different life, and should be chosen for itself.
The fourth is to wait, or to look elsewhere with the same care. Australia is not alone in narrowing this route. In Britain, students starting taught master’s courses from 1 January 2024 can no longer bring dependants; the UK keeps that right for doctoral and research degrees and government-sponsored students. In Canada, since 21 January 2025, a student’s spouse qualifies for an open work permit only if the student is on a master’s of 16 months or longer, a doctorate or certain professional degrees. A couple comparing countries should compare these rules before they compare fees. Some Gulf families are looking closer to home, and today’s Education piece on studying in Dubai or Abu Dhabi sets out what that option involves.
Someone will offer a fifth option, usually for a fee: leave the marriage off the form, or enrol your spouse on a course neither of you expects them to attend. Please do not. Giving false or misleading information to Home Affairs can lead to refusal and, law firms that handle these cases report, a bar of at least three years on further Australian visas, and up to ten where identity is in question. A plan delayed by a year costs far less than that.
Just over half granted: what the August figures say
The new family rule arrives at a hard moment for Indian applicants. According to an ICEF Monitor analysis of Home Affairs data published on 1 October, 51% of offshore Indian applicants were granted a student visa in August 2026, against 72% in August 2025. The overall grant rate for primary applicants was 75.5%, the lowest since 2006–07. Applicants from Bangladesh (34%) and Nepal (13%) saw steeper falls. Earlier in the year, Times Higher Education reported that offshore approval rates for Indian higher education applicants rose from 49% in February and March to 62% in April.
A single month can mislead, because the rate depends on which files happen to be decided that month. I would read August as a warning rather than a forecast. The direction across the year, though, is the same in every figure I have seen.
Applying well after the Australia student visa changes
Most of these decisions turn on the Genuine Student requirement, which replaced the older Genuine Temporary Entrant test in March 2024. The Home Affairs guidance sets out four questions for most first-time applicants (a fifth applies if you have held a student visa or are applying from another visa), each answered in English in no more than 150 words:
- your current circumstances, including ties to family, community, employment and economic circumstances;
- why you want to study this course in Australia with this particular provider;
- how completing the course will benefit you;
- any other relevant information you want to include.
Case officers weigh your circumstances at home, your ‘level of knowledge of the proposed course, education provider and living in Australia’, the value of the course to your future, and your immigration history, including refusals by other countries. I think the 150-word limit is the most useful thing about this test for an applicant with nothing to hide. Six hundred words leave no room for a story that is not yours, and every sentence has to carry a fact. A case officer reading hundreds of these is looking for coherence: a past that leads to this course, a course that leads to work you can name, a provider chosen for a reason you can explain, and money whose history matches your family’s life. A statement written for you by someone else tends to sound like everyone else’s, and polish is not what the test rewards.
In practice, that means writing the answers yourself and asking someone you trust to check the facts. It means knowing your course well enough to talk about it. It means showing funds with a visible history, because Home Affairs asks applicants to explain ‘any recent large deposits’, and reading the conditions of any education loan. It means declaring every earlier refusal, from any country. And if you are married, it means saying so, and saying what your spouse will do while you study. If someone is offering to write your statement for you, our piece on whether your study abroad consultant is working for you is a good place to start, and Education pillar page gathers our other study guides.
What moves next, and when
Three dates matter. The 12-month restriction on changing provider runs until 30 June 2027 and reverts to six months from 1 July 2027. The new visa for provider changes is intended for mid-2027, with its fee still to be set. The family rule for graduate visas has been announced without a date. One more thing to know: some official explainers have not caught up. On 2 October the Study Australia visa guide still said you could include your partner in your application, while the Home Affairs page on changes to student visa application rules had been updated the same morning. When the two disagree, Home Affairs decides your visa.
If your plan for 2027 depends on two salaries in an Australian city, it no longer works under these rules, and October is a far better month to learn that than the week before you fly.
This is general information about the rules as they stood on 2 October 2026, and Australia has signalled more changes to come. Check the Department of Home Affairs pages before you lodge, and for a decision involving your family or your savings, speak to a registered migration agent or an Australian lawyer. When these rules move again, our visa-update alerts will tell you.
Sources
- Federal Register of Legislation, Migration Amendment (Student Visa Reform) Regulations 2026 (F2026L01347), text and explanatory statement: and https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2026L01347/asmade/2026-10-01/es/original/pdf (accessed 2 October 2026).
- Federal Register of Legislation, Migration (Student Visa Applications to Be Made from outside Australia) Instrument 2026 (F2026L01348): (accessed 2 October 2026).
- Federal Register of Legislation, Migration (LIN 20/158) Amendment Instrument 2026 (F2026L01349): (accessed 2 October 2026).
- Federal Register of Legislation, National Code Amendment (Overseas Student Transfers) Instrument 2026 (F2026L01351), explanatory statement: (accessed 2 October 2026).
- Department of Home Affairs, Changes to Student visa application rules (subclasses 500 and 590), updated 2 October 2026: (accessed 2 October 2026).
- Department of Home Affairs, Genuine Student requirement: (accessed 2 October 2026).
- Department of Home Affairs, Genuine access to funds: (accessed 2 October 2026).
- Minister for Home Affairs, Speech to the National Press Club, 17 September 2026: (accessed 2 October 2026).
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- Study Australia, Student Visa Application Charge increase (3 July 2026): (accessed 2 October 2026).
- Study Australia, Student visa (subclass 500) guide: (accessed 2 October 2026).
- ICEF Monitor, Has Australia’s genuine student test gone too far? (1 October 2026): (accessed 2 October 2026).
- Times Higher Education, Student visa success rates rebound in Australia (30 May 2026): (accessed 2 October 2026).
- The PIE News, Australia to restrict student dependants amid warnings of talent loss: (accessed 2 October 2026).
- SBS News, New student visa rules in force (2 October 2026): (accessed 2 October 2026).
- Gulf News, Australia flags India, three other countries as high-risk for student visas (11 January 2026): (accessed 2 October 2026).
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- IRCC, Help your spouse or common-law partner work in Canada: (accessed 2 October 2026).
- Agape Henry Crux, Public Interest Criterion 4020: ; Parish Patience, PIC 4020: https://www.parishpatience.com.au/public-interest-criterion-pic-4020/ (accessed 2 October 2026).
- Go Ahead Lawyers, Student visa financial capacity requirement 2026: ; First Migration Service, AUD 29,710 guide: https://firstmigrationservice.com/en/news/student-visa-financial-capacity-29710-guide/ (accessed 2 October 2026).
- XE mid-market rate, AUD to INR, 13:35 UTC 2 October 2026: (accessed 2 October 2026).