Working Holiday visas to Brits nearly quadruple as Australia absorbs young UK exodus
Key Points
- Australian Working Holiday Maker visas granted to British nationals rose from around 20,000 to more than 79,000 in the year to June 2025
- The population of UK-born residents in Australia aged 20 to 29 grew 40% between 2021 and 2025, the fastest of any age group
- Net British outflow from the UK widened to 136,000 in 2025, with around 75,000 more 16 to 34 year olds leaving than returning
- ONS pushed back on claims that British emigration is rising, attributing higher figures to a November 2025 methodology overhaul
- British arrivals in Spain fell 41% between 2021 and 2024, while Polish records show a sharp rise in British-born residents
The number of British nationals granted Australian Working Holiday visas nearly quadrupled in the year to June 2025, rising from around 20,000 to more than 79,000.
The surge accompanied a widening net outflow of young Britons from the UK that has now stretched to a fourth consecutive year.
Australian Department of Home Affairs figures cited by the Office for National Statistics on Thursday (21 May) show British-born arrivals in Australia now exceed pre-pandemic levels, with the population of UK-born residents aged 20 to 29 growing by 40% between June 2021 and June 2025.
That was the fastest increase of any age group within Australia’s British-born population. A further 20,000 British workers were granted temporary or permanent skilled visas across the same 12-month period, according to the same data.
Net British outflow from the UK widened to 136,000 in the year to December 2025, up from 117,000 the previous year, according to the ONS long-term international migration bulletin published on Thursday.
While 246,000 British nationals left the UK across the period, slightly down from 257,000 the year before, British arrivals back into the country fell more sharply, from 140,000 to 110,000.
The net gap is concentrated in younger working-age adults, with around 75,000 more 16 to 34 year olds leaving than returning in 2025, a margin that has grown every year since 2022.
The ONS pushed back on suggestions that British emigration is rising in absolute terms, publishing a companion article on Thursday clarifying that the headline figures look larger only because a methodology overhaul in November 2025 revised historical estimates upwards by around 180,000 a year.
“It is not correct to say that our migration statistics show a recent rise in emigration of British nationals,” the ONS said in the article.
The new method uses Department for Work and Pensions tax, benefits and education records rather than the previously relied-on International Passenger Survey, which evidence from the Census suggested had been undercounting British emigration for years.
The Working Holiday Maker route allows applicants aged 35 or under to live in Australia for up to 12 months, with options to extend to two or three-year stays.
People moving for less than 12 months are not counted as long-term migrants by either Australia or the UK, meaning the actual scale of young British movement to Australia may be larger than long-term migration estimates suggest.
The ONS noted that the widening gap in the 16 to 34 cohort may suggest young Brits moving abroad for work are staying for longer periods, or that students who study overseas are subsequently staying for work.
By comparison, Spanish national statistics body Instituto Nacional de Estadística recorded a 41% fall in British-born arrivals to Spain between 2021 and 2024, from around 34,000 to 20,000.
The country’s British-born population has declined gradually from a post-EU referendum peak of 298,000 in January 2022 to around 282,000 in January 2025, with roughly 40% of that population now aged 65 or over.
Poland has also emerged as an increasingly common location for British-born people, with the United Nations migrant database recording the British-born population there growing from 42,000 in 2015 to 185,000 in 2024.
The increase is largely accounted for by Polish nationals returning home and bringing British-born children with them, according to a 2020 report from Statistics Poland.
The ONS confirmed that it does not produce its own estimates of where British nationals are living abroad or in what numbers, citing the difficulty of carrying out surveys overseas or accessing foreign governments’ administrative data.
The most comprehensive global picture comes from the UN migrant stock database, which estimated at least 4.8 million people born in Britain were living overseas in 2024. That figure excludes more than 70 countries where data was not available, including Germany, Pakistan and Singapore.
