Immigration New Zealand changed a set of Skilled Migrant Category rules with effect from 24 August 2026. The Skilled Migrant Category is New Zealand's main points-based route to residence for skilled workers, and our post on how it works covers the structure. This post is about what moved, and why several of these changes are better news than they look.

English tests: five years for registered professionals

An English test result used to be accepted for two years. It is now accepted for five years if you hold a recognised New Zealand occupational registration, which means a formal licence or registration to practise your profession in New Zealand, such as the registration a nurse, engineer or lawyer needs.

Everyone else is still on the two-year window. If you sat a test three years ago and you are registered, you no longer need to sit it again. If you are not registered, you do.

Skilled work experience: three tiers, inside a window

The points tiers for skilled work experience have been rewritten. There are now three tiers, at 2 years, 1.5 years and 1 year of experience, and the old table's 3-year tier is gone.

The important part is that each tier comes with a window. Your experience has to fall inside a trailing period of twice the length you are claiming, counted back from now:

• Claim 2 years, and the experience must sit within the last 4 years.
• Claim 1.5 years, and the window is the last 3 years.
• Claim 1 year, and the window is the last 2 years.

So experience that is real but old may not count, and the further back it sits, the less of it you can claim. If you are working out which of your jobs count as skilled in the first place, our post on New Zealand's occupation classification is the place to start.

Wages, qualifications and registrations

Four smaller changes landed alongside those.

A wage threshold you can keep. New Zealand ties several requirements to a wage level, and that level rises over time. Under the new rules a worker keeps the threshold that applied when they began their skilled work experience, instead of having to meet a higher one that came in later. There is also a five-month grace period after a visa is granted when thresholds go up. This removes a genuinely unfair trap, where someone qualified on the day they started a job and stopped qualifying while doing nothing wrong.

Simpler median wage settings. The way the New Zealand median wage is applied across the Skilled Migrant pathways has been simplified, so there are fewer separate settings to keep track of.

Clearer qualification rules. New Zealand grades qualifications on a numbered framework, where a level 8 is a postgraduate certificate, diploma or honours degree and a level 9 is a master's. It is now clear that a level 8 or 9 qualification requires a bachelor's degree behind it, so a postgraduate qualification obtained without an underlying degree does not stand on its own.

CPA Australia counts. Membership of CPA Australia has been added as a recognised occupational registration for accountants, which matters because occupational registration is one of the categories that earns points.

The Trades and Technician pathway, along with the red and amber occupation lists that go with it, was confirmed rather than changed. New Zealand leans on occupation lists in several places, and the one most people meet first is the Green List.

An English-speaking background instead of a test

Worth knowing whether or not you were affected by the August changes: not everyone has to sit an English test at all. New Zealand accepts an English-speaking background instead, if you are a citizen of Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom or the United States and you have spent at least five years working or studying in one of those countries, Australia or New Zealand.

Our reports now credit that route, so if it applies to you, you will not be told to go and book a test you do not need.

What this means for your report

HowToMoveTo's reports apply the rules as they stand from 24 August 2026: the five-year test validity for registered professionals, the new experience tiers and their windows, the clarified qualification rules, CPA Australia as a registration, and the English-speaking background route.

To see how your own profile scores under them, start a free assessment, or try the SMC calculator for a quick read on the points side. For the authoritative rules, Immigration New Zealand's Skilled Migrant Category pages are the source to check before you act.