A Berlin-based technical co-founder — third startup, exited the last one to a US strategic in 2023 — signs a $4.2 million SAFE with an Australian VC on the strength of a Sydney customer pipeline and a plan to relocate. Her Australian lawyer sends the shareholders’ agreement, the ESS plan and a subscription agreement; the term sheet has a covenant that both founders be Australian-resident within six months of the first tranche. She opens a browser tab, types “Australia founder visa,” and reads six pages telling her that the Business Innovation and Investment Program subclass 188 is the pathway — apply as an Entrepreneur (188E), meet the $200,000 funding threshold, transition to a 888 permanent visa after four years. All of it is wrong. The BIIP closed to new applicants on 31 July 2024. The 188E stream took its last application the same day. What she actually needs is either an invitation to lodge a National Innovation Visa (subclass 858) under the regime that commenced 7 December 2024, or an approved sponsor and a Skills in Demand (subclass 482) nomination under the regime that commenced late 2024 — and the six-month covenant her VC insisted on is barely achievable on either path without preparation that starts before the term sheet is signed.
That gap between what founders think the “founder visa” is and what the Migration Regulations 1994 (Cth) actually offer in 2026 is now the single biggest source of failed relocations we see. The pathway names, the thresholds, the delegated decision-makers and the invitation mechanics all changed inside an eighteen-month window. Here is how the current regime actually works.
The BIIP Is Closed — What Happens to Existing Holders
The Business Innovation and Investment Program — the subclass 188 provisional visa and the subclass 132 Business Talent (Permanent) visa — closed to new applications on 31 July 2024, following the government’s Migration Strategy released in December 2023. The closure covers every 188 stream: Business Innovation (188A), Investor (188B), Significant Investor (188C), Premium Investor (188D) and Entrepreneur (188E). The subclass 132 was closed at the same time. Neither program is accepting new EOIs, state or territory nominations, or lodgments.
Existing 188 visa holders retain a defined transition pathway. Holders in the Business Innovation and Significant Investor streams can still apply for an extension to their provisional visa to preserve the runway to a subclass 888 Business Innovation and Investment (Permanent) visa, and the 888 pathway itself remains open on unchanged criteria for that cohort. Withdrawing applicants who never received a decision have been eligible for a refund of the visa application charge since September 2024. For founders considering relocating to Australia in 2026, none of that matters: the BIIP is not a live pathway, and no amount of structuring — an “innovative business” wrapper, a $1.5 million Significant Investor portfolio, a state nomination — creates one.
The National Innovation Visa — Permanent, Invitation-Only, Sector-Prioritised
The National Innovation Visa (subclass 858) commenced on 7 December 2024, replacing the Global Talent program that previously ran under the same subclass number. The regulatory instrument is the Migration (LIN 24/067: Class BR (Permanent) — Skilled — National Innovation) Instrument 2024, and the pathway operates under Part 858 of Schedule 2 to the Migration Regulations 1994.
Three features drive how the visa is actually granted:
- Invitation-only. No applicant lodges a subclass 858 unilaterally. The applicant submits an Expression of Interest to the Department of Home Affairs, the Department triages EOIs against sectoral priorities, and only invited applicants may lodge. The EOI carries no formal fee; the visa application charge on lodgment is AUD $4,640 for the primary applicant in the 2026 fee schedule, with reduced charges for secondary applicants.
- Tiered sector prioritisation. The Department publishes an internal tiering of ten priority sectors — critical technologies, health industries, renewables and low-emission technologies, agri-food and agtech, resources and energy, defence/advanced manufacturing and space, digitech, financial services and fintech, education, and infrastructure and tourism. Public reporting through December 2025 confirmed Tier One sectors — critical technologies, health, and renewables and low-emission tech — received the overwhelming majority of the first invitations issued. A generalist consumer marketplace founder is not in the same queue as an AI safety researcher.
- Exceptional-and-outstanding-achievement bar. The threshold criterion is an internationally recognised record of exceptional and outstanding achievement in an eligible field. In practice, the evidence bundle for a startup founder looks like priority-country patents in the founder’s name, sustained press coverage in tier-one industry publications, prior-company acquisition or IPO documentation, keynote invitations at named industry conferences, and endorsement letters from Australian institutions inside the target sector. A founder without a distinctive achievement narrative is unlikely to receive an invitation regardless of the strength of the current startup.
An income covenant runs alongside the achievement test: applicants must generally demonstrate current or prospective earnings at or above the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) high income threshold ($175,000 for financial year 2026), waivable for recent PhD holders and early-career researchers in tier-one sectors on evidence of trajectory. Nominations can come from an Australian citizen, permanent resident, eligible New Zealand citizen, or an Australian organisation with a national reputation in the applicant’s field — the Department has read this last category broadly to include founder-focused organisations such as tier-one accelerators, state innovation agencies and CSIRO’s Main Sequence Ventures.
Volume matters when advising founders about likelihood. As at December 2025, the Department had received 2,368 EOIs and issued 226 invitations — a raw invitation rate near 10%, with the distribution heavily skewed toward Tier One sectors. Timelines to grant, once invited, run at six to twelve months on straightforward applications.
The Skills in Demand Visa — The Working Temporary Pathway
Founders who cannot yet clear the NIV bar — the common case for a first-time founder without prior exits or Nature-level publications — increasingly relocate on a Skills in Demand (SID) visa (subclass 482), the successor to the Temporary Skill Shortage visa. The SID regime commenced 7 December 2024 under the Migration Amendment (Skills in Demand) Regulations 2024, and it operates on three streams:
- Core Skills stream — occupations on the Core Skills Occupation List (CSOL). Minimum salary of $76,515 to 30 June 2026, rising to $79,499 from 1 July 2026 under the annual Core Skills Income Threshold indexation. Maximum stay of four years, with a defined pathway to permanence via the subclass 186 Employer Nomination Scheme after two years.
- Specialist Skills stream — high-income roles across most industries other than trades, machinery operation and labouring. Minimum salary of $141,210 to 30 June 2026, rising to $146,717 from 1 July 2026. This is the stream most Australian tech founders sit in when self-sponsoring or when a startup approves a first offshore hire.
- Labour Agreement stream — bespoke industry or company agreements with tailored thresholds. The Department signs company-specific labour agreements with named tech businesses; the founder value here is limited unless the sponsoring startup already has one.
The mechanic that founders most often miss is that SID is employer-sponsored, and the “employer” for regulatory purposes can be an Australian proprietary limited company that the founder controls. This “self-sponsorship” pathway — pay the Nomination Training Contribution Charge (formerly the SAF levy), maintain a genuine position, and satisfy the Standard Business Sponsor obligations under regulation 2.87 of the Migration Regulations 1994 — is the route by which most solo founders arrive on a 482 in advance of clearing the NIV bar. The three preconditions are that the sponsoring entity is a genuine and lawfully operating business, that the position is genuine and appropriately remunerated, and that the founder has the qualifications and experience that match the CSOL or Specialist Skills nomination. A newly-incorporated Pty Ltd with no revenue, no employees and no board minutes will not satisfy the genuine position test.
The Other Doors — 491, 494, 189 and the Global Talent Legacy
Three ancillary pathways round out the founder landscape and are worth understanding even where the NIV or SID is the primary target:
- Subclass 189 Skilled Independent visa — points-tested, occupation-list-gated permanent pathway. Solo technical founders with in-demand occupations, competent English and enough points sometimes arrive on a 189 before starting the company. No sponsor and no state nomination required.
- Subclass 491 Skilled Work Regional (Provisional) visa — points-tested, five-year provisional visa requiring state nomination and residence in a designated regional area. Provincial state startup ecosystems — Newcastle, Adelaide, Hobart — use the 491 as their operational founder-attraction lever.
- Subclass 494 Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional (Provisional) visa — the employer-sponsored regional cousin of the 494, with a permanent pathway via the subclass 191.
Founders who received a Global Talent (subclass 858) visa before 7 December 2024 continue on their existing grant. New applicants cannot apply under the pre-NIV Global Talent criteria; the Direction No. 106 invitation prioritisation that governed Global Talent has been superseded by the NIV framework.
What Founders Should Do Now
The compliance discipline for a founder targeting an Australian relocation is discrete. First, map the pathway before the term sheet: an EOI-to-invitation cycle on the NIV runs three to nine months even for strong candidates, and no VC-imposed residency covenant can be met on a pathway that starts after signing. Second, build the NIV evidence bundle in parallel with the raise: priority-country patents, publications, prior-company diligence packs and endorsement letters take months to assemble and cannot be back-filled. Third, use the SID as the bridging move where NIV is uncertain: incorporate the Australian Pty Ltd early, register for PAYG withholding, generate genuine trading activity, and structure a self-sponsored Specialist Skills nomination as the temporary vehicle while the NIV EOI matures. Fourth, do not rely on stale content: any adviser quoting the 188E $200,000 threshold, the Significant Investor Visa $1.5 million portfolio requirement, or the pre-2024 Global Talent criteria is working from a regime that no longer exists. Fifth, align the shareholders’ agreement: covenants requiring founder residency, board attendance in person, or key-employee status should be drafted with visa-timing tolerances that reflect actual grant timelines, not the assumption that a founder visa is a same-quarter deliverable.
The Bottom Line
The founder visa landscape reset in 2024 and consolidated in 2025. The BIIP is closed, its Entrepreneur stream is closed, and no amount of restructuring resurrects it. The National Innovation Visa is the permanent pathway for founders with an exceptional and outstanding record in a priority sector — invitation-only, sector-tiered, and running at roughly a 10% invitation rate on current volumes. The Skills in Demand visa is the working temporary pathway, most often lodged as a self-sponsored Specialist Skills nomination through the founder’s own Australian Pty Ltd. Founders who plan the visa pathway alongside the raise land the relocation on time; founders who Google “founder visa Australia” three weeks before the closing date discover the regime they were relying on was retired eighteen months ago.
Viridian Lawyers advises Australian and overseas founders on visa strategy for startup relocations, National Innovation Visa Expression of Interest packages, self-sponsored Skills in Demand nominations and the interaction between visa timing and investor term-sheet covenants. If your startup is raising a round with founder-residency covenants, planning an overseas-founder relocation, or triaging a pathway after the BIIP closure, get in touch.
