My Student Visa Is Expiring and I Can't Apply for Another One Onshore: What Are My Options?
Three Questions Decide Your Position.
- Which visa do you hold right now? If it is one of the seventeen listed below, you cannot lodge a student visa inside Australia at all.
- Do you hold a substantive visa? A bridging visa is not a substantive visa, and an applicant inside Australia must now hold one.
- Where will you be when the visa is granted? Not when you lodge it. When it is granted.
Most of what has been written about the 2 October changes is a summary of the reform. That is not what you need. You need to know which side of the line you are on, and the three questions above settle it. If you already know the answers, skip to the section that matches your situation. If you do not, work down the page in order, because the questions narrow in that sequence.
The Mistake That Costs the Most Money
The phrase being used everywhere is that you must apply from outside Australia. People read that as an instruction about the moment of lodgement. They plan to fly out for a week, lodge from Dubai or Delhi or Auckland, fly back, and wait in Australia on whatever visa they still hold.
That plan fails, and it usually fails after the money has been spent.
Where the New Rules Required You to Apply From Outside Australia, the Schedule 2 Criteria Require You to Be Outside Australia When the Visa Is Granted.
Not when it is decided in some abstract sense, and not only when it is lodged. If you are in Australia at the moment of grant, you do not meet the criterion. An offshore student visa application also does not come with a bridging visa, so nothing about lodging it gives you a right to stay while you wait.
The Seventeen Visas That Cannot Apply Onshore
The list is set out in a legislative instrument made on 1 October 2026. If you hold one of these, a student visa or student guardian application lodged inside Australia is not valid.
| Subclass | Visa | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 400 | Temporary Work (Short Stay Specialist) | All streams |
| 403 | Temporary Work (International Relations) | Domestic Worker (Diplomatic or Consular) stream only. Other 403 streams are not on the list |
| 407 | Training | All streams |
| 408 | Temporary Activity | All streams |
| 417 | Working Holiday | Added on 2 October 2026 |
| 457 | Temporary Work (Skilled) | All streams |
| 462 | Work and Holiday | Added on 2 October 2026 |
| 482 | Skills in Demand | Listed separately from the older 482 |
| 482 | Temporary Skill Shortage | The older 482 stream, listed in its own right |
| 485 | Temporary Graduate | Barred since 1 July 2024 |
| 600 | Visitor | Barred since 1 July 2024 |
| 601 | Electronic Travel Authority | All streams |
| 602 | Medical Treatment | All streams |
| 651 | eVisitor | All streams |
| 771 | Transit | All streams |
| 988 | Maritime Crew | Barred since 1 July 2024 |
| 995 | Diplomatic (Temporary) | Only where granted against the primary criteria in Division 995.2 |
Note that the 482 appears twice, because Skills in Demand and the older Temporary Skill Shortage are listed as separate items, and that the 403 is the only entry limited to a single stream.
If you are on a 482 and your visa is running out, the sponsorship questions and the student visa questions have now become one question. We cover that at applying for a student visa while on a 485 or similar visa.
Not Sure Which Side of the Line You Are On?
If you are not sure which of the seventeen visas you hold, or whether a course you are enrolled in counts as progression, send us the detail. We will tell you which side of the line you are on before you book a flight or pay a provider. If a different visa makes more sense than another student application, we will say so.
If You Hold a Bridging Visa, the Answer Is No
This is the change that catches people who are in the middle of something else entirely. Someone waiting on a partner visa decision, someone whose employer nomination is still being processed, someone who has appealed a refusal. They are all usually on a bridging visa, and a bridging visa is not a substantive visa.
The New Rule for Onshore Applicants
An applicant who is in Australia must now hold a substantive visa, and must not hold one of the seventeen. There is no longer a general route for a person without a substantive visa to lodge onshore.
One Narrow Exception Survives
There is a single remaining case where a person without a substantive visa can still apply inside Australia. It applies where the last substantive visa held was a student visa that was cancelled, the Administrative Review Tribunal has since set aside that cancellation or set aside a decision not to revoke it, and that Tribunal decision was made after the visa had already ceased.
The application has to be made within 28 days of being notified of the Tribunal decision, and the person must not previously have been granted a visa on an application made without a substantive visa. If that is not your history, this does not apply to you.
If you are on a bridging visa and were counting on a student visa as your fallback, that fallback is gone in its onshore form. Our guide to how bridging visas work covers what your current bridging visa does and does not let you do: bridging visas, how they work.
If You Still Hold a Student Visa: The Six Ways to Stay Onshore
Current student visa holders are treated separately. If you hold a student visa and want another one, you must be outside Australia to apply unless you fall into one of a small set of classes. Four come from an instrument made on 1 October 2026, and the rest sit in the regulations themselves.
| Exemption | What it requires |
|---|---|
| Completing your current course | You hold a student visa, you have started the principal course on it, you have not finished it, and you will finish within 12 months of the end date shown on the confirmation of enrolment for that course |
| Course progression | You have completed the principal course and are enrolled in no more than one further course at a higher AQF level. If the principal course was a higher education course, the further course must also be higher education delivered by a higher education provider |
| Doctoral degree | You are enrolled in a doctoral degree course at the time you apply |
| Provider default | You could not complete your course because the provider defaulted, you were enrolled on the provider default day, you apply within 12 months of that day, and you have not already applied on the basis of the same default |
| School study | Primary or secondary school students, as defined in the student visa criteria |
| Defence or Foreign Affairs students | Students sponsored by the Department of Defence or by Foreign Affairs |
A Further Course at a Higher AQF Level Qualifies. Sideways and Down Do Not.
A bachelor degree followed by a diploma or a Certificate III or IV does not, because that is a lower level. A master by research is not a doctoral degree for the doctoral exemption. If your plan was to finish a degree and move into a vocational course to buy time, that plan now has to be executed from outside Australia.
There Is Also a Trap for Families
If you hold your student visa as a dependant of someone else, in other words on the secondary criteria, you cannot apply onshore as the main student. The exemptions above are written for people who hold their student visa on the primary criteria. A partner who has been studying alongside the main applicant and now wants to become the main applicant has to leave to do it.
If Your Student Visa Has Already Ended
Until 1 October 2026, a person whose student visa had ended within the previous 28 days could apply onshore without holding a substantive visa. That provision was repealed.
What replaced it is the Tribunal set-aside case described above, and nothing else. If your student visa simply ran out, the 28 days are not there any more. If you are in Australia with no substantive visa and no Tribunal decision in your favour, you are not able to lodge a student visa here, and every day in that position is a day as an unlawful non-citizen with the consequences that carries.
What Happens If You Lodge Onshore Anyway
People do this. Sometimes an agent does it for them. It is worth being precise about what follows, because the usual assumption is wrong in both directions.
An application lodged in breach of these requirements is not a valid application. Under the Migration Act, an invalid application is not considered at all. It is not refused. It is simply not an application.
| What people assume | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| It will be refused and I can appeal | There is no decision to appeal. An invalid application produces nothing to review |
| I will get a bridging visa while it is processed | No. A bridging visa flows from a valid application. There is nothing here to generate one |
| I will get my money back | Treat the charge as gone and plan on that basis |
| I will have a refusal on my record | No, and this is the one piece of good news in the paragraph |
This Matters More Than It Sounds.
A visa refusal while you are in Australia can trigger a bar on further onshore applications and can sit on your history in later applications. An invalid application is not a refusal, so it does not create either of those problems.
The damage from lodging invalidly is the lost charge and, far more seriously, the time you spent believing you had an application on foot while your substantive visa expired underneath you. The damage is in the delay, not in a black mark.
What Is Actually Left, in the Order Worth Considering
Having cleared away what does not work, here is the honest shortlist. Which of these is realistic depends almost entirely on how much time is left on your current visa.
| Option | Who it suits | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Use an exemption and apply onshore | Current student visa holders finishing a course, progressing to a higher AQF level, in a doctoral course, at school, or affected by provider default | You must genuinely fit the class. Fitting it loosely is the same as not fitting it |
| Depart and apply from outside Australia | Almost everyone else | You must be outside Australia when it is granted, and you have no bridging visa while you wait. Processing time is the whole risk |
| A different onshore visa instead | People whose real goal is to stay and work, not to study | Depends entirely on your occupation, your qualifications and whether an employer is involved |
| A skilled or employer sponsored pathway | 485 and 482 holders who were only using study as a holding pattern | Slower to start, but it goes somewhere. The student visa was never going to |
| Do nothing and let the visa expire | Nobody | Unlawful status closes doors that are difficult and sometimes impossible to reopen |
For a number of readers the third and fourth rows are the real answer, and the student visa was a detour. If your underlying aim is permanent residence rather than a qualification, our guide on switching visas and student visa pathways sets out where this fits with the other routes.
Can Your Partner or Children Be Included
Separately from the location rules, most new student visa applications can no longer include family members. The onshore exceptions are narrow. They cover family of doctoral students, family of foreign government scholarship holders, and family of students affected by provider default or finishing a course, alongside the Defence and Foreign Affairs categories and certain Pacific regional and specified country passport holders.
Applications lodged before 2 October 2026 are assessed under the old rules. We cover this in full at the student and 485 dependant restrictions, including what is in force and what is still only announced.
Work Backwards From the Date, Not Forwards From Today
Build the timeline in reverse. Start with the day your current visa ends and work back.
- The day your current visa expires. This is fixed and nothing you do changes it.
- The day you must be outside Australia by. If you are required to apply offshore, this is before your visa expires, not after, because you want to leave while you still hold a valid visa rather than as an unlawful non-citizen.
- The day you need a confirmation of enrolment. You cannot lodge without one, and providers take time to issue them.
- The day you need to have chosen and paid a provider. Work back from the confirmation of enrolment.
- Today. Whatever gap is left between today and step four is your actual decision window.
If that exercise produces a negative number, you have your answer, and the useful conversation is about a different visa rather than about this one.
Where to Go From Here
This page is the overview. These go deeper on the situations it touches.
- On a bridging visa and wondering whether you can still apply: see our page on applying for a student visa while on a bridging visa.
- Planning to move from a bachelor degree to a diploma or Certificate IV: see our page on why that now has to be done offshore.
- On a working holiday visa: see our page on the working holiday to student visa route after 2 October 2026.
- Your visa is ready to grant but you are in Australia: see our page on what to do when Home Affairs asks you to depart.
- Applied offshore and wondering about coming back on a visitor visa while you wait: see our page on that question.
- Thinking about changing provider: see our page on the twelve month transfer rule.
Common Questions
The Useful Question Is Not Which Course to Enrol In. It Is When You Need to Leave Australia.
Send us the visa you currently hold, when it expires, and whether you have a confirmation of enrolment. We will tell you which side of the line you are on and whether another visa, rather than another student visa, is the real answer.
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.