Visas NZ
Non-NZ migrant arrivals included 2,650 on work visas, 1,377 on resident visas, 5,380 on student visas, 2,391 on visitor visas (Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa, Jul 2026).
Updated
Estimated long-term migrant arrivals each month, split into New Zealand citizens and non-NZ citizens, with non-NZ arrivals broken down by the visa they arrived on (work, resident, student, visitor, Australian citizens and other). Visa detail is available from 2003.
Visa is the visa held when arriving, not later changes (many people move from student or work visas to residence). Visa type is not a measure of skill. Skilled Migrant Category and work-visa detail come from MBIE immigration data (manual download, to be added).
Net migration subtracts departures from arrivals. A positive net figure can sit alongside a large number leaving, because the arrivals are larger. The citizenship and visa breakdowns answer different questions about those movements.
Read the period beside each number before comparing it with another figure. A monthly observation, a quarterly result and a financial year cover different spans of time. The latest release can also revise earlier observations. The chart and downloads keep the published periods so you can check which figures are being compared. A change in visas describes what happened during that period; it does not by itself explain why it happened or identify the effect of a government policy. Definitions and coverage matter as much as the size of a change.
Sources: Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa. Last retrieved 10 October 2026.