Entry Requirements for Australia

Entry requirements at a glance

If you are not a British citizen, do not read the second column as your answer. Run the Visa Finder for your own passport, purpose and route. A New Zealand citizen, and a child travelling alone or with one parent, are different cases again, and Home Affairs publishes its own guidance for both. We are not going to infer an answer for a document we have not checked.

When the answer changes

A different passport, or a British passport that is not a citizen passport

Eligibility runs off the passport, not the country you live in. A British National (Overseas), British Overseas Territories or British subject passport is not a British citizen passport and does not automatically carry the same answer. Dual nationals should decide which passport they are travelling on before applying, because the authorisation attaches to that document and to no other.

The department's eligible-passport list sits behind a panel we could not read, so British citizen eligibility here rests on the eVisitor page's own terms together with the UK government's statement that British citizens can obtain one. For any other document, the Visa Finder is the answer.

Working, studying, or staying longer than three months

The eVisitor permits tourism and some business visitor activity. It does not permit work. Taking a job, even casually and even for board, is outside what you hold, and that line is not blurred by how long you are staying or how informal the arrangement feels.

If you intend to work, the Working Holiday visa (subclass 417) is the route to read, and it has its own age limits and conditions. Study beyond a short course, and any stay of six or twelve months in one go, belong to different permissions again — none of them a tourist question, and none to be inferred from this page.

A criminal conviction, a refusal, or a previous overstay

Two circumstances take you off the eVisitor route, and the instruction is the department's own, read on the eVisitor eligibility page on 20 September 2026: "If you have a criminal conviction in any country, apply for a Visitor visa (subclass 600)", and the same where an applicant has previously failed to meet the health requirement. Whether a conviction engages the character test, and at what threshold, is the department's judgement, not ours.

The character requirement obliges you to declare criminal conduct you have been charged with and await legal action on, or been convicted of, in any country, and to answer every question truthfully. The department may ask for a police certificate or a personal particulars form.

Declare it and let the department decide. Do not disclose any of it to us, and do not read anyone's online account of their own outcome as a prediction of yours.

Transit, and why it is its own question

A United Kingdom passport holder may transit Australia without any visa, but only on narrow terms: entirely airside in the transit lounge, a confirmed onward ticket to a third country by air within eight hours of arrival, and the documents for wherever you are going next. You must not clear immigration and you must not collect your baggage.

Almost anything that breaks that pattern breaks the concession. A terminal change, a separately ticketed bag you have to reclaim, an overnight stop, or any intention to leave the airport — each puts you into the Transit visa (subclass 771), which allows up to 72 hours. The conditions above are the department's, on its transit without a visa page, checked 20 September 2026. Check every country you touch, not only Australia.

What to do before you travel

In this order, and the first two steps are the ones people skip.

1. Fix the facts. Which passport you are travelling on, what it says your name is, why you are going, how long for, how you are arriving, and every airport you touch on the way.
2. Run the official checker with those exact facts. The Visa Finder is the department's own, and it is free. Anything you find through a sponsored search result is someone selling you an application you can make yourself.
3. Check the passport itself — in date, undamaged, and in the name you will book under. Australia publishes no six-month rule, but a passport that expires during your trip is a problem of its own.
4. Apply for the eVisitor through ImmiAccount, which is free. Do it when you book, not when you pack: the department publishes processing times only through its own processing-time tool, and every figure it gives is a guide to recent decisions rather than a promise about yours.
5. Confirm what you were granted — that it is attached to the passport number you are actually flying on, and what its validity dates and stay period are. Use VEVO, the department's own verification service.
6. Get the evidence together if your case invites a question — a return or onward ticket, where you are staying for the first few nights, and enough funds for the trip you have described.
7. There is nothing to file before you land, unless your airline invites you into the digital declaration pilot — the paper card is handed out on the aircraft. Recheck the rules shortly before you fly: what was true when you booked is not automatically true when you board.

If your passport is replaced after the authorisation is granted, do not assume it follows you. For an eVisitor, the department's route is to update the passport details through ImmiAccount, which it says takes three business days, or its new passport details form, which takes fourteen. For an ETA the department is explicit that it cannot be transferred and a new one must be applied for. Either way, travel on the passport your permission is attached to, and leave time.

If your case needs the Visitor visa (subclass 600) instead, it is charged per applicant, and Home Affairs publishes the amount only through its pricing estimator, updated 1 July 2026. We will not print a fee we cannot read from the department's own page.

On arrival

Your permission is electronic and attached to the passport you applied with, so there is nothing to show but the passport.

Most ePassport holders can use the arrival SmartGates: passport face down in a kiosk, answer the questions on screen, then look into the camera. The Border Force sets an age floor of seven and a height floor of 1.1 metres, excludes unaccompanied children under sixteen, and has been extending the gates towards all ePassports. If a gate will not take you, you are directed to an officer, which is the ordinary alternative rather than a problem.

The card, which is still paper and still compulsory

You will be given an Incoming Passenger Card on the aircraft. Australian law requires arriving passengers to identify themselves and provide the information it asks for, and a non-citizen who refuses may be refused immigration clearance. Fill it in on the plane, before the queue, and answer the officer's questions accurately when you reach the desk.

It asks, among other things, whether you are carrying food, meat, dairy, fruit, vegetables, seafood, grains, seeds, plants, traditional medicines, wooden articles, animal products, soil, or equipment and footwear used in freshwater or outdoors; whether you have more than AUD10,000 in any currency; whether you exceed the duty-free limits; and whether you have been on a farm or in wilderness areas in the last thirty days.

Biosecurity, which is where visitors actually come unstuck

Australia is an island with an agricultural economy to protect. The department's rule is plain: by law you must declare any risk goods — food, plant material and animal products — and its advice to the unsure is not to bring them at all.

Declaring something is not an offence and costs you nothing but a conversation. Failing to declare it is.

The honest advice is the boring one: if it is in your bag when the card comes round, tick yes. The apple, the packet of seeds someone gave you, the boots you wore in a field in June. Declaring costs you a conversation and, at worst, the item.

Customs, money and medicines

For a traveller aged eighteen or over the concessions are AUD900 of general goods, 2.25 litres of alcohol and 25 cigarettes or 25 grams of tobacco. Exceed a limit and duty and tax apply to all the goods of that type, not merely the excess.

You must declare cash if you are carrying AUD10,000 or more, or the equivalent in any currency combined, and the requirement applies both entering and leaving. There is no limit on how much you may carry; the requirement is to report it.

For prescription medicines, the Therapeutic Goods Administration allows up to three months' supply for personal use, in its original labelled packaging, with the prescription carried. Prohibited substances are outside that exemption, and medicines are declarable on the card.

Check what you were actually granted. The permission, its expiry and the period of stay recorded against it are visible through VEVO. Look once after you land, and keep the record.

If something goes wrong

No decision before you fly. Use the department's own status and contact routes. Do not submit a second application in the hope of jumping a queue unless the department tells you to, and do not expect an airline to wave the requirement through — it cannot.

Refused, or you entered something wrongly. Follow the department's correction or fresh-application route. Do not change an answer to make an application succeed — a false answer is a worse problem than the thing it was meant to hide.

Your passport is lost, damaged, renewed or replaced. Establish before you travel whether the permission moves with you. For an ETA it does not — a new one is required. For other permissions, update the passport details through ImmiAccount and allow the department's stated days rather than assuming it is instant.

Your route changes. A new transit point is a new country's rules — recheck every airport you will now touch, and whether you stay airside, before accepting the change.

The airline says your documents are not enough. Ask which operational rule it is applying, then compare it with the department's position. The airline decides whether it boards you; it does not decide Australian immigration law.

Something at the border goes wrong. Ask the Border Force officer in front of you first. Beyond that, Home Affairs runs a formal complaints route, and it publishes what can be reviewed and by whom. Which of those applies to a particular decision is a question for them, not for us.

Your permission may run out before you leave. Three months per entry is three months, and the date recorded against your passport is the one that counts — check it on VEVO rather than counting from memory. If you cannot leave in time, contact the department before it expires. Do not overstay, and do not fly out and back to reset the clock.

Where the official sources do not answer your case, and on this page there are a few — the fee amounts, the processing times, the eligible-passport list — the answer is the department, not a forum, not a visa agent, and not us. We would rather tell you where the published answer stops than invent the rest of it.