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 no residency-by-investment programme of any kind and has not 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
AUD 5m complying investment framework — closed 31 July 2024
closed 31 July 2024
The facts
- Minimum investment
- 5M AUD
- Total landed cost
- not applicable — closed
- Physical presence
- historic: 40 days per year averaged over the provisional period for the 188C stream
- Family
- not applicable — closed
- Permanent residency
- existing 188 holders retain the subclass 888 permanent pathway under the rules in force when their 188 was granted; new entry is impossible
- 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 does not have an investment threshold and cannot be bought.
- Agents in several markets continue to advertise the SIV. It does not exist.