Second Year Working Holiday Visa

If you have already spent a year in Australia on a Working Holiday visa, a second year lets you keep working and travelling for another 12 months.

There is one condition that decides it: three months of specified work in regional Australia, completed while you held your first visa.

Check your passport first

Before planning any regional work, check whether you need to do it at all.

Since 1 July 2024, UK passport holders are granted second and third Working Holiday visas without any specified work requirement. The Department's guidance confirms this applies even to people who first entered Australia on a different eligible passport, including an Irish one.

So a dual Irish-British citizen who arrived on their Irish passport can apply for the second visa with their UK passport and skip the 88 days completely.

This is more relevant to Irish travellers than it sounds. Anyone born in Northern Ireland, or with a parent born in Britain, may be entitled to a British passport. Three months of regional work is a substantial part of a year — worth an afternoon establishing your position before committing to it.

If you hold only an Irish passport, the exemption does not apply to you. Much of what circulates online about the 88 days being abolished refers to UK citizens.

The specified work requirement

You must complete at least three months — counted as 88 days — of specified work in an eligible industry and an eligible postcode, while holding your first Working Holiday visa.

The 88 days do not need to be continuous, with one employer, in one industry or in one state. Most people build them up across a few jobs and seasons. What matters is that every day you count was paid work, in an eligible industry, in an eligible location, during your first visa.

Both the industry and the location have to qualify:

• Plant and animal cultivation
• Fishing and pearling
• Tree farming and felling
• Mining
• Construction
• Tourism and hospitality, but only in northern Australia and remote and very remote areas
• Certain declared disaster recovery work

Eligible postcodes are set by legislative instrument and change over time. The Northern Territory, Tasmania and South Australia qualify entirely; the major cities and the ACT do not. Confirm the postcode of the actual workplace before accepting a job, because agricultural work happens in plenty of postcodes that do not count.

Our specified work guide covers the industries, postcodes and arrangements to avoid in more detail.

Evidence is where applications fail

This is the practical difficulty, and it is almost never that people did not do the work. It is that they cannot prove it.

Start collecting evidence on your first day rather than reconstructing it months later:

• Payslips for every period of specified work
• Bank statements showing the wages actually arriving
• Your employer's ABN and business details
• Written references confirming dates, location and duties

The Department can contact employers directly to verify what you have claimed. Cash-in-hand arrangements with no payslips are the single most common reason people discover they cannot evidence their 88 days.

Keep all of it in cloud storage rather than on one phone.

When to apply

Most people lodge while still in Australia on the first visa, before it expires. You can also apply after leaving.

Unlike the first Working Holiday visa, there is no requirement to be outside Australia when you apply or when the visa is granted.

Two dates matter:

• Your first visa's expiry. Letting it lapse without a decision or a bridging visa creates a status problem that is far harder to fix than to avoid.
• Your 36th birthday. You must be within the age limit when you apply. For Irish citizens that means applying up to and including age 35, the same extended age arrangement that applies to the first visa.

Going for a third year

A third Working Holiday year is available after completing a further six months of specified work during your second year — double the second-year requirement, and it must be done on the second visa rather than carried over from the first.

See our third year Working Holiday visa page for the full requirements. Three visas is the maximum.

If the regional work does not appeal

Not everyone wants to spend three months picking fruit, and there are other ways to stay in Australia longer:

• Employer sponsorship on a Skills in Demand visa, with no age limit and no regional work requirement
• Employer-sponsored permanent residency after two years with that employer
• A partner visa, if you are in a genuine relationship with an Australian citizen or permanent resident
• A student visa, if a qualification is the point

A year of Australian work history makes the sponsorship conversation considerably easier than it would have been from Ireland.

How we can help

We review your work history, confirm whether your specified work meets the requirement, and prepare the second-year application. We also check whether a second passport removes the requirement for you.

If we think your evidence falls short, we will tell you before you lodge rather than after a refusal.

You can apply directly yourself at any time through the Department of Home Affairs. Our service is for applicants who want their specified work evidence checked first. Get in touch if that is you.