Where Can Australian Citizens Live? The Full Country-by-Country Answer

42 of 46: the headline number

Of the 46 other countries in GeoRank's dataset, 42 offer an Australian passport holder a route to stay a year or longer, and every one of the 46 allows at least six months by some combination of entry rules. None of them require an advance tourist visa just to visit — an Australian passport walks into all 46 on arrival, visa-on-arrival, or e-visa terms. The 42 count only excludes selective, points-tested, or invitation-only programs, which aren't something an ordinary applicant can simply apply for, and it deliberately leaves out working-holiday schemes that are temporary or age-gated rather than general long-stay routes.

The four countries that fall short of a year-plus stay split into two very different stories. Japan and Namibia both cap their digital-nomad routes at six months (183 days) rather than a full year, so they clear the "at least six months" bar but not the headline 42. The United States and Canada are the more surprising pair — covered in full below — where the ceiling isn't a nomad-visa time limit but the complete absence of any general long-stay program at all.

For the full, sortable list — filterable by route type and minimum stay — run an Australian passport through the checker rather than relying on a single headline figure.

New Zealand: the one unlimited route

New Zealand is the only fomUnlimited destination in the Australian dataset. Under the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement, Australian citizens can enter, live, and work in New Zealand indefinitely — no visa application, no income threshold, no expiry date. It's the direct antipodean parallel to the UK–Ireland Common Travel Area, and it's the single biggest advantage an Australian passport carries over almost every other passport in the dataset.

That doesn't mean New Zealand is visa-free for everyone else, or that Australians get anything beyond the Trans-Tasman arrangement itself — there's no separate Kiwi digital-nomad or retirement visa; New Zealand runs a visitor-visa remote-work allowance (9 months) and an Active Investor Plus route (NZD 5,000,000+) for other nationalities, but Australians simply don't need either. For the reverse direction — what a New Zealand passport unlocks elsewhere — see the Trans-Tasman route, reversed.

Comparison table: where Australian citizens can go, and what it costs

Beyond New Zealand, the accessible long-stay routes cluster into two groups: EU income-based visas (nationality-agnostic, same requirements as most other Anglosphere passports) and the two Anglosphere holdouts that offer nothing beyond tourist entry. All figures are as published by the issuing government — not converted to AUD.

Portugal's D7 remains the lowest income bar of any route on this table at €920/mo — read Portugal's D7 in full for the application steps, fees, and tax implications. Ireland's Stamp 0 (€4,167/mo) and Cyprus's Category F (€797/mo) follow the same income-based pattern for Australian applicants but sit outside the ten-row table above.

The Anglosphere doesn't help: Canada and the US, tourist-only

Shared history doesn't buy an Australian passport holder a long-stay route in either of the two largest Anglosphere economies. Both the United States and Canada cap Australian citizens at 180-day tourist entry — no digital-nomad visa, no retirement route, no general long-stay program of any kind, despite Australia's own working-holiday and skilled-migration ties to both countries running in the opposite direction. Both do offer narrower, employer-sponsored or points-tested paths (US E-3 and H-1B routes, Canada's Express Entry), but those are selective by design and excluded from this page's headline count for the same reason Japan's points-based programs are — an ordinary applicant can't simply decide to use them. It's the same surprise that shows up for Americans looking at the map from the other side and for Canada's own tourist-only surprise when the passport is reversed.

A note on UK Youth Mobility

The UK's Youth Mobility Scheme is a reciprocal working-holiday visa open to Australian citizens aged 18–35, capped at 2–3 years. It's excluded from the 42-of-46 headline and from GeoRank's visa-data.json checker because it's temporary and age-gated rather than a general long-stay or permanent-residency route — worth knowing about if you qualify, but not counted alongside the routes above.

How to find your route

Frequently asked questions

Related passport views

The same 46-country dataset looks different depending on which passport runs through it. New Zealand's passport mirrors the Trans-Tasman advantage in reverse; the US and Canadian passports hit their own version of the Anglosphere gap described above, just against different neighbors.