Migration Tasmania published its 2026–27 opening on 5 August 2026. The dates were the easy part:

  • 17 August 2026. The program opened to new Registrations of Interest. The Application Gateway address has moved to apply.migration.tas.gov.au.
  • Thursday 20 August 2026. Weekly invitation rounds begin, running progressively through the year rather than in a front-loaded burst.
  • Thursday 13 August 2026, 11:00am AEST. Migration Tasmania’s webinar on the new settings.

The allocation is unchanged from the July announcement: 2,050 places, 1,250 for the subclass 190 and 800 for the subclass 491. We covered that split and the withdraw-or-wait problem in the allocation post.

Migration Tasmania has now published what the program actually opened with, and it is not what the allocation implies.

The program opened with more places than people in the queue

These are the figures published on the processing times and invitations page on 17 August 2026, the day the Gateway opened and three days before the first round.

For the subclass 190 that is roughly two and a half places for every ROI carried in. For the 491 it is about one and a half.

Three qualifications before anyone reads that as an open door.

The count is a snapshot of the carried-over queue only. Migration Tasmania is explicit that it counts ROIs submitted before the program year opened. The Gateway opened the same day the figure was published, so new registrations are already accumulating against a fixed allocation. The ratio will compress, and quickly.

Places available are already below the allocation. Tasmania received 1,250 and 800. It opened with 1,086 and 757. Around 207 places were committed before the program opened, to applications Tasmania continued assessing while it had no allocation to nominate against. That is consistent with what it said it would do during the closure, and it means the headline 2,050 was never the number available from a standing start.

There is almost nothing else in the system. Seven nomination applications were lodged and undecided across both subclasses, no invitations were outstanding, and the oldest application not yet allocated to a case officer was dated 17 August, which is to say the same day. Tasmania has entered the program year with a clean queue.

Why the opening ratio matters after the first round, not just during it

The rolling floor described in the next section is calculated from the lowest scores invited in rounds that have already run, so at opening it had no 2026-27 data behind it at all.

That matters because the floor and the opening ratio are connected. When places comfortably outnumber registrations, a round can reach further down the pool, and the lowest score invited in that round is correspondingly lower. As new ROIs accumulate through the year against a shrinking place count, rounds get shallower and the lowest scores invited rise. The trailing three-month average follows.

So the verification test applied to a file assessed early in the program year should be a more forgiving one than the same test applied to an identical file later. Three rounds in, that is not what the published figures show. The compression arrived faster than the mechanism alone predicts, and the gap between the invitation line and the floor has widened rather than narrowed. The figures are two sections down.

Weekly invitation rounds now carry a rolling three-month floor

Alongside each weekly round, Migration Tasmania will publish the number of ROIs invited, the lowest scores invited, places remaining and ROIs on hand. That much is routine transparency. The consequential sentence is what it does with the lowest scores:

It will also show the lowest ROI score you would need to get a nomination at time of processing. This number is based on the average of the lowest scores invited over the past three months. If, during assessment, any of the selected priority attributes are not met and the applicant’s score falls below this published three-month average, the nomination will not be approved.

Read that as an operating rule rather than a statistic. Under the old arrangement, a client who claimed an attribute they could not evidence lost those points and was assessed on what remained. Now, if a claimed attribute fails verification and the recalculated score falls under the rolling three-month average, the nomination is refused outright.

Two features of that make it harder to manage than a normal points threshold.

The threshold moves, and it moves after lodgement. The figure is a trailing three-month average of the lowest scores invited. It is set by the behaviour of other candidates in the rounds that follow the ROI. A client invited in September is assessed against a number partly determined by candidates invited in October and November. Nothing in the file changes; the bar it is measured against does.

It converts a scoring error into a refusal. The cost of an optimistic attribute claim used to be a lower rank and a longer wait. It is now the application. That is a different risk calculation, and it lands on exactly the attributes that are easiest to get wrong, which is the next problem.

Three rounds in, inviting deeper has widened the trap, not closed it

Migration Tasmania has now run rounds on 20 August, 27 August and 3 September. It published figures for the first and the third; the middle round was folded into the commentary rather than reported on its own. The two published rounds are enough to see the mechanism working.

On 20 August the subclass 190 invited 20 people, the lowest of them at 544 points, against a published assessment floor of 562. On 3 September it invited 34, the lowest at 519, against a floor of 547.

Everything moved in the direction agents were asking for. More invitations, a lower entry score, a lower floor. The gap between the two got worse anyway.

That is the second-order consequence, and it is the opposite of the intuitive read. The floor is a trailing three-month average of the lowest scores invited, so it falls more slowly than the invitation line does. Every time Tasmania reaches further down the pool, it invites a cohort further below its own assessment threshold. The band of candidates who are already under the floor on the day the invitation arrives went from 18 points wide to 28 points wide in two published rounds.

For those files the floor is not a margin to defend, because there is no margin. One unverified attribute ends the application, and it makes no difference whether the attribute was worth 25 points or 5.

The 491 has the same shape at a different scale: the gap went from 3 points to 8.

So the practical rule for the rest of the program year runs against the mood of the announcements. A week with more invitations and a lower entry score is a week in which more of your invited clients need watertight attribute evidence, not fewer.

One caveat to state plainly, unchanged from last week. Tasmania describes the floor as a rolling three-month average of the lowest point score resulting in an invitation. Two published rounds invited at 544 and 519, which average 532, not 547. The published figure is drawing on data Tasmania has not shown, most plausibly prior-year rounds. Until it says what the input is, treat 547 as an operating threshold to advise against, not a figure you can reconstruct or forecast.

The queue doubled, then stopped

The whole of that rise happened in the first ten days. The 190 pool was 906 on 27 August and 908 on 3 September, so it absorbed a round of 34 invitations and came out level. Places available fell from 1,086 at opening to 1,036, and the opening ratio of roughly two and a half places per ROI is now about 1.14.

Tasmania says new ROI submissions “reduced this week to the long-term average of around 160”. Do not use that number to model the pool. Across both subclasses the ROIs on hand rose by 22 while 59 invitations were issued, which implies roughly 81 arrivals, not 160. Withdrawals, expiries and the timing of status changes could account for the difference, and Tasmania does not publish the reconciliation. The published on-hand counts are the ones to plan against.

The 491 rose 538 to 592, against 737 places. The pressure in this program is still on the 190.

The Gold queue is unwinding, slowly

Of the 34 invitations issued for the subclass 190, 21 went to Gold pass holders and 13 to Green. In the 20 August round it was 17 of 20. The Gold share of 190 invitations has fallen from 85 per cent to 62 per cent, and the number of non-Gold invitations went from three to 13. The 491 issued 25 again, three of them Gold.

Migration Tasmania describes it as expected:

Over the past three weeks, we have seen the number of Gold invitations decrease in subclass 190, as we expected. We were able to invite more subclass 190 ROIs this week and anticipate this to continue.

Two things follow for a caseload. A non-Gold 190 file now competes for 13 places a week rather than three, against a pool of 908, which is a real improvement on a still very long queue. And Tasmania’s hardest rule continues to sit on the group taking most of the invitations:

Any Gold pass holder that does not meet the Gold priority attribute will be declined, regardless of their total point score.

Regardless of total point score. A Gold holder at 700 points who fails the single-job 30-hour test is declined, not rescored down to their remaining points. The narrowed Gold test set out below, six months of Tasmanian work with one job at a minimum of 30 hours a week and no combining across jobs, is still the highest-consequence claim on the form, and 21 of this round’s 34 invitations rest on it.

The nomination pipeline is filling

Invitations issued but not yet lodged went from 36 to 45 on the 190 and 39 to 47 on the 491. Applications lodged and undecided went from 10 to 12 and 5 to 9. The oldest application not yet allocated to a case officer is dated 2 September, one day before the report, so Tasmania is still allocating essentially on arrival.

That is worth watching rather than acting on. The queue Tasmania has to assess is now roughly 90 invitations deep and growing each week, and the assessment floor is the test applied at the end of it. The first refusals under the new rule will land in files invited in these opening rounds.

The scoring axis rotated toward months worked in Tasmania

Migration Tasmania rebuilt the priority attributes around length of Tasmanian employment and pulled points away from generic industry experience. Three confirmed before-and-after pairs show the direction.

The nine-to-twelve month band moving from 6 points to 25 is the largest single revaluation in the document. Migration Tasmania’s stated reasoning is that time employed in Tasmania predicts long-term settlement better than experience accumulated elsewhere.

The old twelve-to-eighteen month band has also been split in two: 15 to 18 months now scores 40 points, 12 to 15 months scores 30. Duration bands with a ten-point step between them are worth noticing, because Tasmania’s own guidance can move a client between bands without the client doing anything differently.

Any gap of three months or more between jobs resets the qualifying period. Breaks in casual employment longer than two weeks, and unpaid leave, are added to the qualifying period rather than counted as experience. A client who reads their own history as “eighteen months in the role” may have fifteen months on Tasmania’s method, or twelve. Under the old scoring that was a rank difference. With banded scoring and the three-month floor above it, it is now a plausible route to refusal.

The Gold pass in the Skilled Employment pathway has narrowed

The Tasmanian Skilled Employment Gold attribute now requires six months of Tasmanian work with at least one job providing a minimum of 30 hours per week. Not an average of 30. Not 30 hours assembled from two jobs. One role that consistently meets it.

Multiple jobs can still be combined to reach the general 20-hour minimum. They cannot be combined for Gold. Migration Tasmania has said plainly why: the old test rewarded short-term and insecure arrangements.

Migration Tasmania states it has raised other attributes so that candidates who would have received Gold under 2025–26 settings after nine months of employment above $71,549 per year retain appropriate priority. That is a stated intention, not a guarantee for a particular file. Where a client’s whole case rested on a combined-hours Gold claim, it needs rescoring rather than reassurance. There is no change to Gold eligibility in the Skilled Graduate pathways.

Two income rules that will silently disqualify existing files

These are guidance clarifications rather than headline changes, which is why they will be missed.

Salary must be calculated on a 38-hour week. If a client’s ordinary working week exceeds 38 hours, the hourly rate must be used instead of the annual figure. Migration Tasmania gives the worked example itself: an annualised 45-hour arrangement can produce an annual salary that appears to clear the priority income level while the base hourly rate sits below $28.85. Any client on an annualised contract needs the hourly rate checked, not the headline salary.

Hours combine across jobs; income does not. Where an attribute requires earnings at or above the priority income level, every job counted toward the minimum hours must individually meet that threshold. The client nominates the hourly rate from one job only, the highest paid. A lower-paid second job cannot be carried by a higher-paid first one. Casual workers must use the base hourly rate before casual loading, and annual leave cannot be added to the guaranteed income in the contract.

The priority income level itself is unchanged at $57,000 per year or $28.85 per hour, and is now the document’s formal name for that figure. The comparison levels moved: annual average earnings $106,600 per year or $53.95 per hour, TSMIT/CSIT $79,423 per year or $40.19 per hour, and 90 per cent of TSMIT/CSIT $71,480 per year or $36.17 per hour.

One thing to hold lightly: Tasmania prints the TSMIT/CSIT figure as $79,423, while Home Affairs publishes the Core Skills Income Threshold at $79,499 (indexed 1 July). The gap is $76. It will not matter for most files. For a client sitting inside it, use Tasmania’s published figure for Tasmanian attributes and confirm before lodging.

Migration Tasmania is telling ROI holders to start again

This reverses the holding position that made sense two weeks ago:

Candidates who have submitted an ROI in the last six months may wish to withdraw it and submit a new one, as the changes to priority attribute ranking criteria may significantly improve chances of selection for many people.

The six-month hold in the Application Gateway is still there, so those ROIs carry into the new program. They carry attribute selections made under 2025–26 wording, against a ranking system that has since been rebuilt. Given that nine-to-twelve month employment quadrupled in value while two-year industry experience halved, a held ROI is not a neutral default. It is a stale claim set.

Migration Tasmania has published the 2025–26 attributes and scores so old and new can be compared directly. For any client with a live ROI, that comparison is a rescoring job, not a decision to make on instinct. Rounds are now running weekly, so a held ROI can be reached before anyone has looked at it.

The 444 and 538 figures above are those held ROIs. They are the pool the opening rounds drew from, and on Migration Tasmania’s own advice a meaningful share of them are carrying stale claim sets.

Four other changes worth recording against your files

The 491 Overseas Skilled Occupation Profiles pathway is closed for 2026–27. No invitations are planned. This was the invitation-only route for offshore candidates without a Tasmanian job offer, and Migration Tasmania attributes the closure to the federal priority on onshore processing, which we covered in the onshore processing priority post. Overseas health and teaching professionals who secure work with a Tasmanian health provider or school remain eligible for 190 nomination under the Health or Education Sector Job Offer Pathway.

The nomination service fee is now $387, or $425.70 including GST. Submitting an ROI remains free.

Superannuation evidence has tightened. An ATO superannuation payment statement is required. Superannuation fund transaction statements will not be accepted. Clients claiming casual work across more than one job must supply a summary of casual hours on Migration Tasmania’s template, supported by payslips. Where payslips or contracts do not name the award or enterprise agreement and classification level, a written employer statement confirming award, level and that the pay meets the rate is now required.

Two occupations get setting-specific caveats from 1 December 2026. Massage therapy will only be recognised as matching a Massage Therapist skills assessment where the work is in a health, allied health, or aged and disability care setting. Motor mechanic work will only be recognised where the employer’s main business is repairing vehicles, with a narrow carve-out for authorised manufacturer dealerships. In both cases, earlier experience outside those settings can still be acknowledged if the client is working in a recognised setting at the time the ROI is submitted. That makes the ROI date the thing to plan around for these clients, not the December start.

What to do this week

  1. Rescore every live ROI against the new attributes using Migration Tasmania’s published 2025–26 comparison, then decide withdraw-and-resubmit case by case. Rounds run every Thursday, so a held ROI can be invited on stale claims before it has been reviewed.
  2. Recheck hourly rates on annualised and multi-job files. The 38-hour rule and the individual-job income test will move some clients below the priority income level without their circumstances changing.
  3. Rebuild employment timelines with the gap rules applied before claiming a duration band. Three-month gaps reset; casual breaks over two weeks and unpaid leave extend the qualifying period.
  4. Flag every combined-hours Gold claim in the Skilled Employment pathway for the single-job 30-hour test.
  5. Watch the 13 August webinar recording before advising on withdrawals.
  6. Check every invited 190 file against 547 before lodging the nomination. Strip out each claimed priority attribute in turn and see what the score becomes. If removing any single one drops the file below the published assessment threshold, the evidence for that attribute has to be watertight before the application goes in, not after.
  7. Reread the weekly figures each Thursday. The assessment threshold moves with the rounds, and it moves after lodgement. Treat a round that invites deeper as a reason to tighten evidence, not to relax: the further down the pool Tasmania reaches, the more invited files sit below the floor.

The common thread is that most of this work is a filter, not an analysis. Which clients have a live Tasmanian ROI, what date did it go in, what is the hourly rate, and is there a gap in the employment history. When occupation, state, ROI date, pay rate and employment history sit on one client record, that is a morning. When they are spread across an inbox, a spreadsheet and a shared drive, three days is not much. Keeping the caseload in one workspace is the difference between the two.

This is general information, not migration or legal advice. Details and dates were accurate at publication and can change — always confirm against the primary source before relying on them. Questions about a specific ROI or nomination application go to Migration Tasmania at skilled@migration.tas.gov.au.

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