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Fourteen citizenships reopened in four working days, one batch per day and none with prior notice. Nine remain paused, four of them in the region: Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador.
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At 11:02 on the morning of Thursday 1 October, Eastern Australia time, the Home Affairs quota table changed again: Greece, Luxembourg and Slovenia went from “paused” to “open”. With them, the citizenships with an open quota reach sixteen. On Monday it was nine.
It is the fourth working day in a row with a batch of reopenings, and there was no statement on any of the four. The only thing that changes is one cell in a table.
Monday 28: Czechia, Israel and Poland. Tuesday 29: Austria, Slovakia, Spain and Uruguay. Wednesday 30: Chile, Portugal, Hungary and Switzerland. Thursday 1 October: Greece, Luxembourg and Slovenia.
That is fourteen citizenships in four working days, all published during Australian office hours. They don't follow alphabetical order or quota size, so you can't predict whose turn it is.
The times aren't fixed either: Monday's was published at 15:47 and today's at 11:02. The only constant so far is that there is one per day.
Greece has an annual quota of 500 places, Slovenia 200 and Luxembourg 100.
That number is the cap on visas Australia grants to that citizenship over the whole programme year, not the places left free today. Home Affairs doesn't publish how many are left anywhere.
Argentina, with 3,400 places, Peru with 1,500, Brazil with 500 and Ecuador with 100. Also Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Mongolia and Papua New Guinea.
While a citizenship appears as “paused”, the application can't even be started: trying to do so brings up an error message. But paused is not closed: Australia says a pause can reopen “later in the same program year”, and that to know when, you have to keep watching its website.
It is exactly the situation Chile and Spain were in a week ago.
Home Affairs explains what it uses the pause for: “to limit the number of applications received at a given time to spread out lodgements”. It kicks in when many applications arrive at once, so the later you find out, the more people have applied before you.
And a reopening can be short: Thailand reopened on 2 September and by the 7th it was paused again. Five days.
If your citizenship is still paused, what helps is arriving with your ImmiAccount already created, your passport and insurance scanned, your funds demonstrable and, if an English test applies to you, one that is less than 12 months old. When Chile reopened, those who already had everything ready applied the same day.
Verified on 1 October 2026. If any of this changes, we will update the article and let you know by email.
The news closest in time, each with its official source.
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