Two post-study routes change on 16 November 2026: a new six-month Short-Term Graduate Work Visa, and a Post Study Work Visa that opens to some Level 7 graduate diploma holders. Which one applies depends on your qualification, your study weeks and your visa dates. Eight questions will tell you which to read.
Eight questions. We will tell you which of the two routes changing on 16 November 2026 your answers point at — and what is still to check.
Two separate changes land on the same date, and they are often reported as one. They are not: the conditions differ, the durations differ, and what each one lets you do for your family differs.
Short-Term Graduate Work Visa
Post Study Work Visa, extended to graduate diplomas
Before you plan around either
If you are married, or travelling with children, the two routes are not interchangeable and the gap between them is wide.
A Short-Term Graduate Work Visa holder cannot support a partner for a work visa, or children for a Dependent Child Student Visa. Immigration New Zealand does set out what remains possible: a visitor visa may be available for them instead, dependent children can apply for student visas as international students, and a partner can apply for a work visa on their own merit.
A Post Study Work Visa holder can support partners and dependent children for visitor, work or dependent child student visas, where the requirements are met.
Same date, same announcement, two very different answers to the same question. If a graduate diploma plus a bachelor's degree puts the longer route within reach, that is worth confirming before you settle for the shorter one.
A separate set of student visa changes took effect on 27 October 2026, and not all of them loosen things. Reporting that frames 2026 as a year of New Zealand opening up is only reading half the page.
The two-month extension matters more than it looks on the six-month route. Applications must be made within three months of your student visa expiring — so a visa that now runs two months past your course end, rather than one, moves that whole window later.
Applications open on 16 November 2026, through Enhanced Immigration Online. The timing condition that catches people is the other one: an application has to be made within three months of your New Zealand student visa expiring. Immigration New Zealand gives the worked example itself — a student visa that expired before 16 August 2026 leaves its holder unable to apply when applications open.
Six months of open work rights. It cannot be extended, and only one is ever granted. You can apply for a further student visa afterwards, but only where the new programme is a bachelor's degree or sits at a higher NZQCF level than the qualification your short-term visa was based on, and only where that qualification makes you eligible for a Post Study Work Visa.
From 16 November 2026, yes, for some graduates. The conditions are a Level 7 graduate diploma, full-time study in New Zealand for the full duration of the qualification, enrolment for that full duration with no cross-crediting or recognition of prior learning, and a bachelor's degree held from New Zealand or overseas. The visa runs for the time spent studying the graduate diploma in New Zealand, up to a maximum of one year.
This is the case most coverage skips, and there are two answers. If your graduate diploma is listed in Appendix 13 of the Immigration Operational Manual you may still be granted a Post Study Work Visa, though you would be required to work in the occupation specified there for the visa's duration. If it is not listed, you are not eligible for a Post Study Work Visa without a bachelor's degree, and Immigration New Zealand points you at the six-month Short-Term Graduate Work Visa instead.
No. Immigration New Zealand states that an International Qualification Assessment is not required for an overseas bachelor's degree on this route, though it can check a qualification's authenticity for immigration purposes. You will need a copy of the degree certificate showing the qualification type and awarding institution, plus an official academic transcript. There is also no time limit on when the degree was awarded.
No, and nothing on this page should be read that way. Both are permissions to look for work, not offers of it, and Immigration New Zealand decides every application on its own facts. Choose a course for what it teaches, what it costs and whether it suits you — not on the assumption that a particular visa will follow it. These rules changed three times in 2026.
No. It is screening information built from eight answers, and it says which official rule to read and which conditions are still outstanding. It never returns a score, a percentage or a verdict, because none of those would be honest from eight questions. Immigration New Zealand decides who qualifies.
No. We charge students nothing — not for the planner, not for counselling, not for applications.
Every rule on this page and inside the planner was read off Immigration New Zealand's own announcements on 3 November 2026. Immigration rules change — these ones changed twice in 2026 — so read the official page before you act on anything here. It is the authority; this is a summary of it.
The planner tells you which rule to read. What it cannot tell you is whether the course in front of you actually meets it — and that is where this goes wrong in practice. A brochure saying "Level 7" is not the provider confirming the NZQCF level in writing. A graduate diploma shortened by credit transfer looks identical on a website to one studied for its full duration, and only one of them qualifies.
We get those confirmations from the institution before you apply, check the provider is one whose students are not caught by a processing suspension, and put the full cost in front of you — tuition, living costs and the funds you will need to evidence — rather than the tuition line alone. We charge students nothing for it.
We also send you to Immigration New Zealand rather than to our version of it. These rules moved in May, in September and again in October.
