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Post Study Work Visa in UK: 2 Years or 18 Months, and What Decides It
- Last Updated on: August 8, 2026 by
- Shiva Sai Bejawada
The post study work visa in UK is the Graduate route, and its length turns on one date. You get 2 years if you apply on or before 31 December 2026, and 18 months if you apply on or after 1 January 2027 (Graduate visa, GOV.UK, August 2026). If you’re planning a 2027 finish, that six-month gap is the figure your family will argue over, and your filing date decides it, not your graduation date. Two decisions run through everything below: when you file, and whether the route can convert into a Skilled Worker visa. The Home Office’s own earnings survey settles the second one, and it is blunter than most shortlists admit. The duration bands come first.
Written by
Senior Counsellor (British Council Certified) -UK & Ireland
Shiva Sai Bejawada is a British Council Certified overseas-education counsellor at AOEC India who guides Indian students through UK and Ireland university selection, admissions, and student visa documentation.
6 Years, 96% visa approval rate 
Reviewed by
Managing Director
Mr. Kongara Sridhar, Director of AOEC India, has over 12 years of experience in overseas education consulting, admissions, and student visa guidance.
Over 12 years Experience Key Takeaways
- Apply on or before 31 December 2026 for a 2-year Graduate visa; from 1 January 2027 it is 18 months. Doctorates keep 3 years.
- GBP 937 (about INR 1,19,846) application fee, plus GBP 2,070 (about INR 2,64,762) health surcharge on a 2-year grant.
- No job offer, no sponsor, no salary floor, no English test: course completion is the whole test.
- You must be in the UK on a valid Student visa the day you file.
- 67% of working Graduate route users earned under GBP 30,000 (about INR 38,37,135) a year.
- Graduate time counts for nothing on the 5-year work route to settlement, but does count towards the 10-year Long Residence route.
Table of Contents
How long the post study work visa in UK lasts, and why 31 December 2026 decides it
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Who qualifies for a UK Graduate visa
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Graduate visa fees, processing time and what gets an application refused
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What you can do on the Graduate Route, and what graduates actually earn
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Switching to a Skilled Worker visa before the Graduate Route ends
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Your next step
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Frequently Asked Questions
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How long the post study work visa in UK lasts, and why 31 December 2026 decides it
Three years is the Graduate route's longest grant, and it goes only to doctoral graduates. A PhD or other doctoral qualification carries 3 years, unchanged on either side of the January 2027 cut, on GOV.UK's Graduate visa guidance in August 2026. Bachelor's and master's graduates hold the two shorter bands.
The three duration bands
| When the application is made | Qualification | Length of the Graduate visa |
|---|---|---|
| On or before 31 December 2026 | Bachelor’s or master’s | 2 years |
| On or after 1 January 2027 | Bachelor’s or master’s | 18 months |
| Either side of that date | PhD or other doctorate | 3 years |
In the UK briefings we run in Hyderabad, the December-versus-January question now lands before anyone asks about fees. The answer doesn’t change: filing in the last week of December rather than the first week of January buys six extra months of work rights for exactly the same fee. Treat late December as a deadline, not a preference. Everything upstream of it sits in our guide to study in UK.
Your application date sets your length, not your graduation date
The cut is already law, not a proposal. The 18-month duration sits at GR 8.1 of Immigration Rules Appendix Graduate, the part of the Rules governing this route, last updated on 3 August 2026. It bites where the application is made on or after 1 January 2027. “GR” is simply how those paragraphs are numbered.
That wording keys the length to the date the Home Office receives your application. Your ceremony date changes nothing. Your certificate date changes nothing. Plan around the day your university reports completion, because that’s the earliest you can file.
Where the 18-month cut bites: January 2027 and later starters
A January 2027 start makes the 18-month band close to certain. A 12-month master’s beginning that month finishes in early 2028, and you can’t file for a course that hasn’t ended. The start month doesn’t cause the shorter grant; it removes every route to the longer one. If you’re weighing a September 2026 start against a winter one, our guide to the January intake in UK sets out which universities open that window.
Under a third of Graduate visa holders were working in occupations that could confidently be assessed as graduate level, the May 2025 white paper Restoring control over the immigration system found. That finding, not any drop in student demand, is why the route was shortened.
Who qualifies for a UK Graduate visa
The route asks for one thing: a completed eligible UK degree that your university has reported to the Home Office.
The whole eligibility test is a single 70-point award for successful course completion, set out at GR 3.1 of Immigration Rules Appendix Graduate. Nowhere in that appendix is there an English language requirement, a maintenance requirement or a job offer requirement. The IELTS score and the funds file that dominated your Student visa play no part here, and that is the single biggest difference between this application and the one you have already survived.
The five conditions the Home Office checks
- As at August 2026, you must be in the UK when you apply, and you must apply before your Student visa expires.
- Your education provider must have told the Home Office you have successfully completed your course; you do not have to wait until you have graduated.
- You must have studied in the UK for at least 12 months if the course is longer than 12 months, or the full length of the course if it is shorter.
- Your education provider must be a licensed sponsor with a track record of compliance, which is a Home Office compliance rating, not simply a licence.
- Eligible qualifications are a UK bachelor degree, a UK master degree or a UK PhD, plus named law conversion, Legal Practice, Bar, PGCE and PGDE courses, listed on Graduate visa: The course you studied.
Rank the first two above the rest. The other three are settled by your university’s records long before you file; being in the UK on filing day and beating your Student visa expiry are the only two you can still get wrong. A UK master’s is the most common qualification behind these applications, and our guide to the top universities in UK for masters covers which programmes Indian applicants shortlist.
Three bars that catch Indian applicants
You can’t be granted the Graduate route twice, a bar written into the Rules at GR 1.4. A previous grant under the Doctorate Extension Scheme, the pre-2021 scheme that let doctoral graduates stay on, closes the same door. Per Graduate visa: Your partner and children, only dependants who already have permission as a dependant of the Student can stay; other types of dependants are not permitted on this route. And where a government or international scholarship agency paid both your fees and living costs in the last 12 months, GR 1.5 requires their written consent. That puts Chevening and Commonwealth scholars on a longer lead time than everyone else.
Graduate visa fees, processing time and what gets an application refused
GBP 937 (about INR 1,19,846) is the Graduate visa application fee, and every applicant pays the same flat figure whatever the length of the grant (Graduate visa: How much it costs, 2026). On top sits the Immigration Health Surcharge, the upfront NHS charge, billed against the length of permission granted rather than the length of your course.
| Length of grant | Application fee | Immigration Health Surcharge |
|---|---|---|
| 18 months | GBP 937 (about INR 1,19,846) | GBP 1,152.50 (about INR 1,47,410) |
| 2 years | GBP 937 (about INR 1,19,846) | GBP 2,070 (about INR 2,64,762) |
| 3 years (doctoral) | GBP 937 (about INR 1,19,846) | GBP 3,105 (about INR 3,97,143) |
Parents, this is the number for the family budget. Add the two published figures and a 2-year post study work visa in UK costs GBP 3,007 up front, payable in one go while your child is still job-hunting.
Two cost traps sit around that figure. Search summaries currently quote the application fee as a range starting near GBP 880; there’s no lower band. And don’t compute the 18-month surcharge yourself: it isn’t the yearly rate multiplied by one and a half. GOV.UK publishes the 2026 totals directly, at GBP 1,152.50 for 18 months, GBP 2,070 for 2 years and GBP 3,105 for 3 years. The GBP 1,035 a year behind those totals is the adult rate, so the cheaper student rate you paid last time doesn’t carry over.
How long the decision takes, and what you file
Expect a decision within 8 weeks of applying online, proving your identity and sending your documents, on the timings GOV.UK gives at Graduate visa: Apply in August 2026. The paperwork is short: Graduate visa: Documents you’ll need to apply asks for your passport and your CAS (Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies) reference number from your Student visa application. If you no longer have it, our guide to the CAS full form in UK explains where the number lives.
Filing before your university has reported completion is the panic most graduates have. UKCISA’s Graduate route visa advice notes that Student permission includes a wrap-up period after the course end date on your CAS. Applying before your sponsor has notified the Home Office should not by itself cause a refusal. UKCISA still advises waiting, and so do we: an early file only buys a caseworker query.
What gets an application refused or withdrawn
One rule costs people more money than any other on this route. You must not travel outside the UK, Ireland, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man until you get a decision, or your application will be withdrawn. You can stay in the UK while you wait for a decision, which is the trade-off: legal, but grounded. Book the flight home after the decision email lands, not before it, because eight weeks of waiting plus a booked trip to Hyderabad is how a paid application becomes a withdrawn one.
A successful application gets an eVisa, a digital record of your immigration status, so there is no card in the post. Under the Immigration Rules, if your application is refused you can apply for an Administrative Review (a paperwork re-check of the caseworker’s decision, not a fresh application) under GR 7.2.
What you can do on the Graduate Route, and what graduates actually earn
The common picture of the Graduate route is a straight line from a UK master’s into a sponsored graduate job. The Home Office’s own survey of people on the route does not show that, and the gap matters more than any other number here.
What the Graduate Route lets you do
You can work in most jobs, look for work, be self-employed, travel abroad and return, and do voluntary work, on the Graduate visa conditions as they stand in August 2026. The Rules permit work, self-employment and voluntary work alike at GR 8.2, barring only work as a professional sportsperson. Self-employment is the quiet win here, because the Student route bans it outright, so freelance and contract income becomes legal for the first time. What you can’t do is claim most benefits (public funds) or the State Pension.
What Graduate route holders actually earn
In the Home Office Graduate route evaluation, 67% of working Graduate route users earned under GBP 30,000 a year, 20% earned GBP 30,000 to GBP 40,000 and 11% earned over GBP 40,000.
| Annual pay while on the Graduate route | Share of working users | Roughly, in INR |
|---|---|---|
| Under GBP 30,000 | 67% | Under INR 38,37,135 |
| GBP 30,000 to GBP 40,000 | 20% | INR 38,37,135 to 51,16,180 |
| Over GBP 40,000 | 11% | Over INR 51,16,180 |
Idleness isn’t the problem, and the payroll data proves it. The May 2025 white paper Restoring control over the immigration system carried Home Office and HMRC payroll figures. They showed 62% of Graduate visa holders earning in the first month of their visa, and 90% within six months. People on this route find work fast. They find it cheap.
Two thirds are earning under GBP 30,000, and the salary floor for a recent graduate switching to a Skilled Worker visa is GBP 33,400. That’s the honest downside, and no amount of planning removes it: for most holders, the work they find inside 18 months doesn’t pay enough to convert. Plenty of it is hourly, and the statutory floor it must clear is the UK minimum wage for international students.
Nor is the search comfortable. Three quarters of Graduate route users found applying for jobs difficult, and Indian users reported it at 80%, the highest of any group in the evaluation. Budget for a longer search than your UK classmates need, and start it before you graduate rather than after the visa lands.
Level of study moves the odds
- 68% of undergraduate degree holders were in work
- 77% of master’s graduates were in work
- 84% of doctorate holders were in work
Level of study moves the odds more than most course-choice arguments do. Choosing between a UK bachelor’s and a master’s mainly for the work window? Take the master’s on this evidence alone. Which roles pay at the top of the distribution is a separate question, answered by the highest paying jobs in the UK for Indians.
None of this is a marginal cohort for Indian families. In the year ending March 2026, Immigration system statistics: Why do people come to the UK? Study records 70,371 Graduate route extensions granted to Indian nationals, the highest of any nationality. In the Home Office Graduate route evaluation, Indian users most commonly studied Business and Management (40%), then Engineering and Technology (15%) and Computing (13%). If you sit in that first group, an MBA in UK is where those programmes compare on entry bars and cost.
Switching to a Skilled Worker visa before the Graduate Route ends
Picture a Hyderabad graduate who finishes a Manchester MSc in September 2027 and files her Graduate application that month. Her permission runs out in early 2029. A Skilled Worker application has to be approved before that date, not merely started on it, and that single word turns an 18-month post study work visa in UK into a roughly 12-month job search.
You can’t extend a Graduate visa. You can switch out of it, and for most people that means a Skilled Worker visa. It’s a different kind of application. The Skilled Worker visa rules want a confirmed job offer from a Home Office approved employer, a certificate of sponsorship (the reference number your employer issues), an eligible occupation and proof of English. Every one of those is someone else’s decision, which is exactly what the Graduate route spared you.
The salary bar, and the new-entrant discount that lowers it
The families we sit with in Tirupati arrive quoting GBP 41,700, because that’s the number every recruiter site prints. The Skilled Worker visa: Your job rules do set a general threshold of GBP 41,700 a year, or the going rate for the job, whichever is higher, as they stand in August 2026. A recent graduate is not held to it. Switching from a Graduate visa, you can be paid 70% to 90% of your occupation’s going rate. Your salary must also be at least GBP 33,400 a year (Skilled Worker visa: When you can be paid less).
Read those as two floors, not one, and not a sum. Your offer has to clear both GBP 33,400 and 70% of the going rate, so whichever of the two is higher for your occupation is the number that decides your case. A recruiter quoting you GBP 41,700 is quoting the wrong rule.
The discount carries a price, and the price is retrospective. Use the new-entrant discount and your total stay in the UK can’t be more than 4 years, counting the time you already spent on a Graduate visa. Read that as a decision rule: take the full 2-year Graduate visa and you’ve got 2 years of discounted Skilled Worker time left, not 4. Take 18 months and you keep two and a half.
Now put that beside the settlement rule below, because nobody joins them up for you. Indefinite leave to remain through work needs 5 years of Skilled Worker permission, and the new-entrant discount caps your total stay at 4. Ride the discount all the way to the end and the 5-year route becomes arithmetically impossible. If settlement is the goal, you have to move onto a full-rate salary before those 4 years run out. Have that conversation with your employer at the offer stage, not in year three.
Working backwards from your expiry date
Work backwards from the expiry date on your eVisa:
- Twelve months out, filter your applications to employers who already hold a sponsor licence, because a first-time licence application adds months.
- Six months out, hold an offer and written confirmation that the employer will issue a certificate of sponsorship.
- Three months out, file from inside the UK, and count on holding the decision rather than the receipt by your expiry date.
Settlement runs on two clocks, not one
“The Graduate route does not lead to settlement” is where almost every page on this topic stops, and it’s half the rule. Graduate route time doesn’t lead to settlement by itself, but it can count towards the 10-year Long Residence route, according to UKCISA’s Graduate route visa advice in August 2026.
Both halves are real, and they run on separate clocks. The Rules do say the Graduate route is not a route to settlement, so your Graduate months buy you nothing on the 5-year work route to indefinite leave to remain (the UK’s permanent residence status). But the 10-year Long Residence qualifying period counts time spent with permission on most routes. It excludes only permission under the Ukraine Scheme and permission as a Visitor, Short-term Student (English language) or Seasonal Worker, at LR 11.1 of Immigration Rules Appendix Long Residence. Graduate permission isn’t among them.
Your student years and your Graduate years are dead time on the fast route and live time on the slow one. If you switch to Skilled Worker quickly, ignore Long Residence and count five years from that switch. If your path breaks up into study, job changes and gaps, the 10-year clock is the one that’s been running since you landed. Keep every date and every visa letter from the day you arrived.
Your next step
Every figure here is 2026 entry, and the duration bands run to the 1 January 2027 change written into Appendix Graduate.
Ardent Overseas has counselled Indian students on UK admissions and visas from its Hyderabad and Tirupati offices, and Student route and Graduate route files are a core part of that work. Bring your intake decision to a session before you commit. The filing date sets the length of your post study work visa in UK, and there is no route back to the longer band once the year turns.
Get in Touch
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I apply for the post study work visa in UK without a job offer?
Yes. Under the Immigration Rules, the Graduate route is an unsponsored route, so no employer has to back the application and no salary threshold applies. You apply on the strength of your completed UK degree alone, then look for work once the visa is granted.
What happens if I apply for the Graduate visa after 1 January 2027?
Your grant is 18 months instead of 2 years, and nothing else on the route changes. In the year ending March 2026, Graduate route extension grants fell 36% to 167,214. That drop came mainly from a 75% fall in grants to dependants, not a narrowing door for graduates.
Can my spouse and children stay with me on the Graduate Route?
Only if they already hold permission as your Student visa dependants. Those who switch with you get a visa ending on the same date as yours, and each family member pays the visa fee separately. New dependants may be able to join you from outside the UK if you switch to a different visa.
Does time on the Graduate visa count towards UK settlement?
Not on the work route. Indefinite leave to remain through work usually needs 5 years living and working in the UK. Those years run from your Skilled Worker permission, not from your arrival. The separate 10-year Long Residence route is where Graduate months do count.
Can I extend the Graduate visa or apply for it twice?
No to both. UKCISA’s August 2026 advice is that you can switch back into the Student route for further study, but completing that course won’t make you eligible for the Graduate route a second time. You can study on a Graduate visa itself only if the course is not one that would require a Student visa.
Sources
Official UK government sources first, then UKCISA.
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Graduate visa: Overview, retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Graduate visa: The course you studied, retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Graduate visa: How much it costs, retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Graduate visa: Apply, retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Graduate visa: Documents you will need to apply, retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Graduate visa: Your partner and children, retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Immigration Rules Appendix Graduate (Aug 2026), retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Immigration Rules Appendix Long Residence (Aug 2026), retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Skilled Worker visa: Overview, retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Skilled Worker visa: Your job, retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Skilled Worker visa: When you can be paid less, retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Check if you can get indefinite leave to remain, retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Immigration system statistics, year ending March 2026: Why do people come to the UK? Study (Jul 2026), retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (UK Home Office), Graduate route evaluation (May 2025), retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- GOV.UK (Home Office white paper), Restoring control over the immigration system (May 2025), retrieved 7 Aug 2026, gov.uk
- UKCISA, Graduate route visa (Aug 2026), retrieved 7 Aug 2026, ukcisa.org.uk
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