Student visa ready to grant but I am in Australia - Home Affairs asked me to leave - what to do under the 2 October 2026 grant location rule

Student Visas2 October 2026 RulesAct Today

By Aussie Migration GuidePublished 4 November 202611 min read

My Student Visa Is Ready to Grant but I'm in Australia: Home Affairs Asked Me to Leave

Act Today

Before You Book a Flight, Confirm Which Version of the Rule Home Affairs Says Applies to You.

Almost everyone who receives this message assumes it is a universal rule. It is not. The grant location criterion for the student visa was replaced on 2 October 2026 and it has two subclauses that do different things.

If you believe you were eligible to apply in Australia and lodged from offshore because you were travelling, the departure requirement may not apply to you at all. Put your subclause position in writing to the Department before you spend money on flights.

This page is written for the person who has already lodged, has paid the charge, and is holding a message from the Department. You are not researching options any more, you are deciding whether to book a trip. The useful observation is that the rule you were quoted is one of two subclauses, and only one of them imposes a departure requirement.

First, Work Out Which Rule You Are Under

The replaced clause has two parts. One says you must be outside Australia at grant. The other says you must be outside Australia at grant only if you were in a particular situation when you lodged. Which one applies decides whether you need to leave at all.

If this is you	Where you must be at grant
The caught groupYou were required to apply from outside Australia, because you held one of the seventeen listed visas, or you did not meet the requirements to apply in Australia	Outside Australia. No exemption, no discretion
The free groupYou were eligible to apply in Australia and chose to lodge from offshore anyway	Inside or outside Australia, provided you are not in immigration clearance

The second row matters. Someone who held a student visa and fitted one of the onshore exemption classes, but lodged from overseas because they happened to be travelling, is not caught by the departure requirement at all. If you are in that group and you have been told to leave, something has gone wrong and it is worth putting in writing which subclause you say applies to you before you book anything.

The Group With No Exemption at All

Home Affairs guidance is blunt on two categories.

No Exemptions Published

Home Affairs States There Are No Exemptions for These Two Situations.

Affected Temporary Visa Holders

If you hold one of the affected temporary visas, there are no exemptions to the rule.

Dependant Applying as Primary

If you hold a student visa as a dependant and want to apply as the main applicant, the guidance states there are no exemptions to that rule either.

If you are in either of those categories, the message you received is correct and the only question left is timing.

Why Being Here Is a Problem Even Though You Lodged Correctly

This is the part people find hardest to accept, and it is worth stating plainly because the logic is not intuitive. You did the right thing. You left, you lodged from outside Australia, and then you came back on a visitor visa or another valid visa to wait, which felt reasonable and is permitted. The application is valid and nobody is saying otherwise.

Granted, Not Lodged

Lodging Offshore and Being Granted Offshore Are Two Separate Requirements.

Home Affairs own wording is that you must also be outside Australia when your student visa is granted, and that if you return to Australia on another valid visa during processing, you still need to be offshore at grant.

The word doing the work is granted. Not lodged, not decided in principle. On the day the grant is made, your movement records have to show you outside the country. Coming back to wait does not invalidate anything. It just means you are in the wrong place on the day that matters.

What Has Not Been Published, and What That Means

Two things are missing from the official guidance, and both of them change how you should behave.

The Two Gaps

-There is no published deadline by which you must depart. The pages setting out the new rules give no timeframe for leaving and point readers to the general processing times guide instead.

-There is no published requirement to notify the Department when you leave. The guidance does not say you must tell them.

Read in the optimistic direction, that means you are probably not racing an undisclosed clock this week. Read in the realistic direction, it also means you cannot rely on being given time, because no entitlement to time has been published. Nothing stops a decision being made at a moment that does not suit you.

In practice the sensible approach is to assume the Department can act whenever it likes, and to treat any request from them as something to answer promptly and in writing rather than something to negotiate.

Send Us the Wording and the Visa You Held When You Lodged.

If you have had this message and you are not sure which category you fall into, send us the wording and the visa you held when you lodged. Which subclause applies is usually clear from those two things, and it is worth knowing before you spend money on flights. We will tell you in writing which position to take and whether the departure is actually required for you.

Registered Migration ProfessionalsConfidential ReviewResponse Within 24 Hours

The Timing Problem Nobody Warns You About

Here is the trap. You decide to comply, you book a two week trip, you fly out, and you wait for the grant to arrive while you are away. If it does not arrive in those two weeks, you either extend an expensive trip or you come back and you are in exactly the same position you started in.

You do not control the grant date. That is the whole difficulty. A short trip booked around a guess is a gamble, and the people who end up spending the most money are the ones who have made that gamble twice.

Planning the departure timing when your student visa is pending offshore but you are in Australia on a visitor visa - work out the question to answer before each decision rather than guessing the grant date — You do not control the grant date. Every timing decision is better reframed as a question to answer before making it, rather than a guess you make around a date no one has given you.

If the Visa You Are Currently On Is About to Expire

This is the version of the situation that needs advice rather than a web page, and quickly.

Order Matters

An Offshore Student Visa Application Does Not Come With a Bridging Visa.

If the visitor visa or other visa you returned on is running out, nothing about the pending student visa gives you a right to remain. The pending application is not holding your place.

If you are within weeks of that expiry, the departure is not a planning question any more, it is the thing that has to happen first, and the order matters. Leaving while you still hold a valid visa is a completely different situation from leaving after it has expired. Get advice before the expiry, not after.

The Decisions, Reframed as Questions

You cannot answer the timing question with a date because no one has given you one. You can answer each decision with the question that matters.

Decision	The question to answer before you make it
How long to be away	Not how long you want to be away, but how long you can afford to be away if the grant is slower than you hope
Where to go	Somewhere you can lawfully stay for longer than planned, and somewhere you can work or study remotely if your situation allows
Whether to come back if it is not granted	What visa you would return on, and whether returning resets you to square one
What happens to your Australian visa while you are away	Whether the visa you are currently on permits re-entry, and when it expires
Whether to tell the Department you have departed	Nothing published requires it. Many agents advise doing it anyway, in writing, so the file shows you are compliant

What to Do, in Order

Read the message you received and identify which grant location rule it says applies to you. If it does not say, ask.
Check which visa you held when you lodged. If it was one of the seventeen affected visas, or you were a dependant student visa holder applying as a primary applicant, accept that there is no exemption and move to the timing question.
If you believe you were eligible to apply in Australia and chose to lodge offshore, say so in writing and ask which subclause the Department considers applicable. Do not book a flight first.
Find the expiry date of the visa you are currently in Australia on. That date, not the grant date, is what constrains your options.
Plan a departure you can sustain for longer than you expect, not a trip you can just afford.
Consider notifying the Department in writing once you have departed. Nothing published requires it and it costs you nothing.

Three adjacent situations have their own pages or are coming shortly:

If you are weighing whether to come back on a visitor visa while your application is processed, read that page before you lodge the visitor application, not after. It is the decision this reader made badly, and the next reader has not made yet.

If you have not lodged yet and are trying to work out whether you can apply in Australia at all, start with our main page on the 2 October changes.

If you hold a bridging visa rather than a substantive visa, your position is different again and has its own page coming in this cluster.

Common Questions

Can I ask Home Affairs to grant it while I am here? v

If you were required to apply from outside Australia, the grant location requirement is a criterion rather than a discretion, so there is nothing to ask for. If you were eligible to apply in Australia and lodged offshore by choice, the criterion is different and you may not need to leave, which is a point to raise rather than a favour to request.

Do I have to tell them when I leave? v

The published guidance does not say you must. Many agents advise doing it in writing anyway, so the file shows the date you departed. There is no cost to doing it.

How long do I have to leave? v

No deadline has been published. That is not permission to take your time, because nothing stops a decision being made while you are still here. Treat the absence of a deadline as a reason to plan without one, not a reason to wait.

What happens if the visa is granted while I am in Australia by mistake? v

This is a question for a registered agent or lawyer, not for a web page, and it is worth asking before it happens rather than after. Do not assume a grant made while you are here resolves the problem.

Will my application be refused if I stay? v

If the criterion applies to you and you are in Australia, you do not satisfy it. What follows from that is a matter for the Department and for advice on your specific file. We are not going to guess at an outcome that depends on your particular facts.

I lodged before 2 October 2026. Does this apply to me? v

Applications lodged before that date are assessed under the rules in place when they were lodged. If you received this message on an application from before then, question it in writing and ask for the basis of the request.

Current as at 4 November 2026. This article describes the Australian student visa grant location rule that commenced on 2 October 2026. It is general information, not legal or migration advice. Which subclause of the replaced grant location criterion applies to a particular applicant depends on the specific visa held at lodgement and on the exemption class relied on. Confirm your position with a registered migration agent or lawyer before you book a flight or make a written submission to the Department. Aussie Migration Guide is an independent information platform and is not a registered migration agent. We refer enquiries to registered agents and lawyers.

Send Us the Message and the Visa You Held at Lodgement.

Two pieces of information, and we will tell you whether the departure is actually required for you, how to put your position in writing, and how to plan a departure you can sustain. Before you book a flight you may not need to take.

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