What Are Australia Visa Conditions 8573, 8575 and 8576? Stay Limits Explained (2026)
Conditions 8573, 8575 and 8576 are three different caps on how much time a visa holder may spend in Australia, and they are not three ways of saying the same thing: 8573 permits no more than 12 months in any 24-month period, 8575 no more than 7 months in any 12-month period, and 8576 no more than 10 months in any 12-month period. Those are the operative words of each condition in Schedule 8 to the Migration Regulations 1994, as published on the Federal Register of Legislation, current as at September 2026. Everything that follows comes from that text and its accompanying notes, which also point to the Migration Act 1958 for what happens when a condition is breached.
What does condition 8573 actually say?
The Schedule 8 entry reads, in full:
8573 The holder must not stay in Australia for more than 12 months in any period of 24 months.
Read carefully, three features carry the weight. The rule binds the holder, so it travels with the person and their visa, not with a single trip. It targets time stayed in Australia, which is why the count is cumulative across entries and exits rather than restarted each time you land. And the ceiling is expressed as a ratio — 12 out of any 24 — rather than as a fixed departure date.
Note the words "more than." On the wording alone, the condition is breached by exceeding the stated amount, not by reaching it exactly.
What do conditions 8575 and 8576 say?
The neighbouring conditions use the same structure with tighter arithmetic:
8575 The holder must not stay in Australia for more than 7 months in any period of 12 months.
8576 The holder must not stay in Australia for more than 10 months in any period of 12 months.
The practical difference is the proportion of time you are allowed to be onshore: 8576 leaves room for two months off the continent in every year, while 8575 requires roughly five.
How do the three stay limits compare?
| Condition | Maximum stay | Measured over | Share of time allowed in Australia |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8573 | 12 months | Any 24 months | Around half |
| 8575 | 7 months | Any 12 months | Just over half |
| 8576 | 10 months | Any 12 months | Around five-sixths |
The comparison is worth making because the numbers can mislead in isolation. Seven months out of twelve is actually a slightly larger allowance than twelve out of twenty-four once you annualise it — about seven months a year against six — even though "7" looks like less time than "12". The window length and the cap have to be read together.
How does "any period of 24 months" actually get counted?
This is the part that most people get wrong, and it is where the wording matters most: the window is not a calendar year, not a financial year, and not the validity period of your visa. "Any period" means the test can be run from any starting date, so every day you spend in Australia sits inside an unlimited number of overlapping 24-month (or 12-month) windows, and each one has to pass.
Assume a hypothetical holder whose visa carries condition 8575. They are in Australia from 1 February 2026 to 31 May 2026, depart, then return from 1 September 2026 to 31 December 2026. Neither visit is anywhere near seven months. But the 12-month window running from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026 contains eight months of presence — more than the seven the condition allows — so the condition is breached on that window even though no single stay was long.
The mirror image matters too. Leaving the country does not "reset" anything, because days outside Australia do not erase the days inside that remain within older windows for as long as those windows still reach back to them. What slowly improves your position is time passing, which pushes old presence out of the back of each window.
One gap is worth naming: the conditions are written in months, not days, and the wording does not say how a part-month is treated. Anyone whose total sits close to the line is therefore dealing with a margin the text itself leaves undefined, which is another reason not to plan tight itineraries against these limits.
Which one is attached to your visa, and how can you tell?
Each of the three conditions carries an identical note:
whether a visa of a particular class may be made subject to this condition depends on the relevant provision in Schedule 2 of the Migration Regulations 1994.
So there is no general rule that "8573 applies to X type of visa." Whether a particular visa class can carry a given condition — and therefore whether your grant does — is determined by the Schedule 2 provision for that class. In practice that means these conditions cannot be inferred from the visa name; only the conditions actually imposed on the individual grant govern.
The same note is also the reason holders should work from their own grant documentation rather than from a friend's experience or an online checklist. Two people on the same visa subclass can be subject to different conditions, and none of these three is mutually exclusive with the others in principle — the Schedule 2 provision decides.
What happens if you stay beyond the limit?
The note attached to all three conditions directs readers to the Migration Act 1958, sections 41 and 116 to 119, "as to cancellation for breaches of conditions." The consequence of exceeding a stay limit is therefore not a fine or a warning on the record alone: it is exposure to cancellation of the visa under the Act's condition-breach provisions, and conditions 8573, 8575 and 8576 sit in exactly that framework.
Everything in this article is general information about how the conditions are worded and how their windows work; it is not advice on any individual visa, and it cannot be, since whether a limit has been exceeded depends on a person's own travel history and their own grant. Where someone believes they are already at or past a limit, or has received correspondence about a possible breach, the questions raised there turn on the Act's cancellation process and need answers from the official text or from a qualified professional who can look at the specific record.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does condition 8573 mean 12 months per calendar year?
No. The cap is 12 months measured over any 24-month period, so the test can be applied from any start date, not from 1 January. A holder could be under the cap in every calendar year and still breach the condition inside a window that straddles two of them.
What is the difference between conditions 8575 and 8576?
Both are measured over a rolling 12-month period, but 8575 allows no more than 7 months of presence in that window while 8576 allows no more than 10. In other words, 8576 leaves about two months of mandatory absence per year; 8575 requires roughly five.
Can I reset the count by leaving and re-entering Australia?
Departure stops adding to the count but does not clear it. Overlapping windows still contain your earlier presence for as long as those windows reach back to it, so re-entering can push a window over the limit rather than give you a fresh allowance.
Reaching exactly 12 months in 24 — is that a breach?
The wording prohibits staying "more than" the stated amount, so on the text itself the limit is exceeded rather than merely reached. Because the conditions count in months without defining part-months, though, anyone sitting exactly on the line is relying on an interpretation the text does not settle.
Which condition applies to my visa?
The notes to conditions 8573, 8575 and 8576 all say this depends on the relevant Schedule 2 provision of the Migration Regulations 1994 for that visa class. That means it cannot be assumed from the visa name and must be read off the conditions imposed on the specific grant.
Are 8573, 8575 and 8576 interchangeable with each other?
No, they set different ceilings over different windows, and only one (or none) of them may be available for a given visa class. Treating the loosest of the three as the applicable rule is the most common way holders end up in breach.