The Approved Work Sponsor Register: What Was Promised and What Is Actually Live
If you have been waiting for Australia to publish a list of approved work sponsors, here is the position as at 10 October 2026. The law that allows it is in force. The register is not there.
The Register Is Not Live. The Deadline Passed on 8 October 2026 and Nothing Appeared.
Checked today on the Department of Home Affairs website: no approved work sponsor register located.
That is not a complaint, and it is not a prediction. It is just the status, and it is the one thing almost no page on this topic will give you, because almost every page about the sponsor register was written between April and July 2026 and says some version of "coming by September" or "live no later than October 2026". Those pages are still sitting at the top of the search results, still written in the future tense, and most of them carry no date at all.
This page does three things. It sets out what the law actually permits, which is narrower than the coverage suggests. It explains the specific reason the register has not appeared, which is not simply government slowness. And it tells you what you can use today instead, because there is already a free official list that does part of the job and hardly anyone mentions it.
Been Told to Wait for the Sponsor Register Before Lodging? A Confidential Review Can Tell You Whether Waiting Is Costing You Time You Do Not Have.
Whether a specific employer can sponsor you today, whether a labour agreement route already applies to your sector, and whether the register would have helped even if it were live, all turn on your specifics. A migration professional can confirm the position against the sources that already exist.
The Dates, in Order
The sequence matters, because the gap between the last date and today is the whole story.
| Date | What Happened |
|---|---|
| Late 2025 | The Migration Amendment (Combatting Migrant Exploitation) Bill 2025 was introduced in Parliament. |
| 8 April 2026 | Royal Assent. The Act becomes law as Act No. 39 of 2026. It inserts a new section 140GD into the Migration Act 1958. |
| May 2026 | Industry commentary begins. Several firms state that details are expected on the Department website by early September 2026. |
| 22 July 2026 | Legal commentary notes the regulations setting the scope of publication have not been finalised. |
| Early September 2026 | The widely reported expected launch. Nothing published. |
| 8 October 2026 | The outer commencement date. The Act commences on a day fixed by Proclamation, or six months after Royal Assent if no earlier day is proclaimed. Six months from 8 April is 8 October. |
| 10 October 2026 | Checked. No register located on the Department website. |
Why 8 October Is the Date That Matters
Commentary all pointed at early September, but that was an expectation, not a legal deadline. The only date written into the Act is the automatic commencement six months after Royal Assent. That date has now passed, which means the power to publish exists. Whether it is used is a separate question, and the answer so far is no.
What the Law Actually Allows, and the Words That Change Everything
Section 140GD does not create a register. It creates a power.
It allows the Secretary of the Department to publish prescribed information about approved work sponsors on the Department website. Two words in that sentence do a great deal of work.
Two Words Do All the Work: "May" and "Prescribed".
The provision is permissive, not mandatory. Nothing in the Act requires the Department to publish anything by any date. Commencement switches the power on. It does not oblige anyone to use it.
Prescribed means prescribed by regulations. Until regulations are made setting out exactly which information may be published, there is no prescribed information, so there is nothing the Secretary is authorised to publish. This is the actual bottleneck.
The enabling section has commenced. The instrument that gives it content has not been located. A power with nothing prescribed under it publishes nothing, lawfully and indefinitely.
As at 22 July 2026, legal commentary stated those regulations had not been finalised. We have not been able to locate a made regulation since. That is a negative finding rather than proof, and we say so, because absence of evidence in legislative searching is weaker than it looks.
What It Will Show When It Arrives
The field list is consistent across every commentary we read, and it is worth knowing in advance because it tells you how useful the register will be to you personally.
| Field | What It Tells You |
|---|---|
| Kind of approved work sponsor | Standard business sponsor, labour agreement sponsor, and so on. This matters more than it sounds, because the type determines which visa route is open to you. |
| Sponsor name | The legal entity, not the trading name. |
| ABN | Lets you match the entity to the business you are actually dealing with. |
| Postcode associated with the ABN | Rough location. Not a site list. |
| Number of nominations made | The most valuable field on the list, and the one nothing else gives you. |
| Kinds of occupations covered by those nominations | Whether they have ever nominated anyone doing your job. |
Commentary also notes that the regulations must not prescribe a personal identifier, so nothing in the register will identify individual visa holders.
Why Nomination Counts Matter More Than Everything Else
Every list that exists today tells you whether an employer holds an approval. None tells you whether they use it. An employer approved as a sponsor in 2019 that has nominated nobody since is a very different prospect from one that nominated forty people last year, and right now you cannot tell those two apart. Number of nominations, read alongside occupations, is the closest any public source will have come to answering the question people are actually asking.
What It Will Not Do, Even When It Is Live
Set your expectations now, because the coverage has oversold this.
- It will not show vacancies. It is not a job board and will never be one.
- It will not tell you whether a sponsor will nominate you. Approval is capacity, not intention.
- It will not show conduct. Breaches and sanctions live on a separate register, which already exists.
- It will not show whether a sponsorship is still active, unless the regulations happen to prescribe dates, which no commentary suggests.
- It will not improve your own eligibility by one point. Finding a sponsor is one of three problems, alongside occupation and the nomination itself.
Expect Paid Copies, Outdated Mirrors and "Verified Sponsor Lists" Within Weeks.
A public list of sponsors with nomination counts is exactly the raw material scam operators have been fabricating for years. If anyone asks you to pay for access to the approved work sponsor register, you are being charged for something the Department publishes for nothing.
What You Can Use Today Instead
This is the part the pre-dated articles leave out. The absence of the new register does not mean there is nothing to check. There are three live sources, all free, and one of them is genuinely good.
The List of Current Labour Agreements
The Department of Home Affairs already publishes a list of every employer in Australia holding a labour agreement, showing the entity name, the agreement type, the start date and the end date. It is updated at the end of each month and it sits on the immigration website. It is the single most underused public resource in Australian sponsorship.
It does not cover standard business sponsors, which is the gap the new register would fill. But if you work in a sector where sponsorship runs through a labour agreement, such as aged care, meat processing, fishing, dairy or on hire, this list already answers the question for you. We go through it in detail, including the five things being on it does not prove, in our guide at the aged care sponsor list and what you can check.
The Register of Sanctioned Sponsors
The Australian Border Force publishes a register of sponsors that have breached their sponsorship obligations, covering breaches since 18 March 2015. It is a negative check rather than a positive one. A name on it is a serious finding. A name absent from it proves very little, and the page itself notes that sponsors subject to sanctions may not appear until updates are applied.
Freedom of Information Releases, With a Large Caveat
The Department has released sponsor data under Freedom of Information in the past. One release lists accredited sponsors holding a standard business sponsorship in effect as at 11 January 2024, running to roughly a thousand organisations.
Read that date again. A snapshot from January 2024 tells you who was accredited almost three years ago. Businesses close, approvals lapse, and accreditation status changes. Several commercial directories are built on exactly this kind of release and presented as current. Use an FOI snapshot to generate a shortlist to investigate, never as confirmation of anything.
How to Tell a Current Page on This Topic From an Old One
This matters beyond this one register, because the pattern repeats across Australian migration content and it has already caught a lot of people out.
Four separate times in the past year we have found widely circulated migration pages stating a rule that had been superseded, or a date that was never announced, presented as current fact. The sponsor register is a textbook case: a real law, a real power, a widely quoted expected date, and a launch that did not happen, with dozens of pages still describing the expectation as though it were the outcome.
Three checks, and they take about a minute:
- Look for a date. Not a vague "updated recently" badge, an actual date on the page. If there is none, assume it is older than it looks.
- Check the tense. A page saying the register "will be available" was written before the launch window and has not been revisited. A current page tells you what is true today, including when the answer is nothing.
- Check whether it names the mechanism. A page that says "the register launches in September" and nothing else is repeating a press summary. A page that mentions section 140GD, the commencement rule or the regulations has gone to the source.
If an agent is quoting the register to you as something they can check on your behalf, that is worth testing before you pay for anything. Our guide on how to check a migration agent covers what the agent register actually tells you, including the common case where the person advising you is not the person registered.
If You Are Waiting on This Because of Your Own Situation
Most people reading about the sponsor register are not researching policy. They are trying to work out whether a specific employer can sponsor them, usually with a visa running down.
If that is you, the register would not have solved it even if it had launched on time. It would have told you whether the employer holds an approval and roughly how often they use it. It would not have told you whether they will nominate you, whether your occupation fits, or whether the timing works against your current visa.
Those are the questions worth spending your remaining time on. If you are dealing with an employer who says sponsorship is coming, our page on what to ask and what the answers mean covers it. If the sponsorship route runs through a labour agreement, the sequence and the realistic timeline are in our ACILA explainer.
And if anyone has asked you for money in connection with a nomination or a job offer, stop there. Asking for or receiving a benefit in return for sponsorship is prohibited under the Migration Act, and the prohibition binds the person asking, not you. What that means for your own visa if you have already paid is set out in our guide on what to do when an employer wants you to pay sponsorship costs. If the situation involves an employer using your visa status against you, our page on reporting employer exploitation without risking your visa covers the protections that already apply, which are the part of this reform package that is actually in force.
Change Log for This Page
We check this page in the first week of each month and record what changed, so you can see how current it is without taking our word for it.
| Date Checked | Finding |
|---|---|
| 10 October 2026 | Outer commencement date of 8 October 2026 has passed. No register located on the Department website. No made regulations located. Page published. |
| Next check | To complete in the first week of November 2026. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Waiting on the Sponsor Register Before Acting on Your Own Situation Is Probably Costing You Time.
The register would not have told you whether a sponsor will nominate you, whether your occupation fits, or whether the timing works against your current visa. Those are the questions worth answering, and the public sources that already exist cover more than most people realise.
Written by
Founder and Editor, Aussie Migration Guide
Karan Rawat is the Founder and Editor of Aussie Migration Guide. With nearly 4 years of experience in SEO and digital content, including work with Australian migration law clients, he specialises in turning complex Australian visa rules, fees and eligibility criteria into clear, practical guides. Every article is checked against current official sources such as the Department of Home Affairs before it goes live. Karan is not a registered migration agent, and the content on this site is general information, not migration advice.