The subclass 300 Prospective Marriage Visa is sometimes forgotten when it comes to the Australian Partner Visa subclasses, but it serves an important purpose. In this post, I’ll walk you through what it is, who can apply, and why you might apply for the Prospective Marriage Visa instead of the onshore subclass 820/801 or the offshore subclass 309/100 Partner Visas.
What is a subclass 300 Prospective Marriage Visa?
The Prospective Marriage Visa allows an applicant to come to Australia (after the visa is granted) to marry their prospective spouse. You must then apply for an onshore Partner Visa (subclass 820) once you are inside Australia. Your prospective spouse (the person who’s sponsoring you for this visa) must be an Australian citizen, Australian permanent resident or eligible New Zealand citizen.
You might have heard about a ‘fiance visa’ or ‘engagement visa’. Both of these terms refer to the Prospective Marriage Visa.
This visa is a three step process, whereas the subclass 820/801 and subclass 309/100 is usually a two step process. It’s also a little more costly in the long run than the 820/801 and 309/100, but it’s a really great option for some couples. I’ll explain why soon!
Eligibility for the Prospective Marriage Visa
- You must be 18 years of age or older;
- You must intend to marry your prospective spouse within the validity of your visa;
- Your sponsor must be 18 years of age or older;
- You must have met your prospective spouse in person after you each turned 18 years of age;
- You must intend to live together as spouses;
- You must be outside Australia at the time of application;
- You must meet health and character requirements
Who can sponsor a subclass 300 Prospective Marriage Visa?
Your prospective spouse is your sponsor, and they need to meet their own set of requirements, separate to yours.
Your sponsor must be:
- An Australian citizen, an Australian permanent resident, or an eligible New Zealand citizen;
- At least 18 years of age;
- Approved as a sponsor by the Department, which involves its own character checks, including a criminal history check.
There’s also a limit on how many times someone can sponsor a partner in their lifetime. A sponsor can’t be approved more than twice, and if they’ve sponsored before, there usually needs to be at least five years between the earlier application and this one. This limitation counts Prospective Marriage Visa sponsorships the same as 820/801 and 309/100 sponsorships, so if your partner has sponsored someone for a Partner Visa before, it’s worth checking with a migration expert where that puts them against the limit before you rely on them as your sponsor.
Health requirements associated with a Prospective Marriage Visa subclass 300
As with all the other Partner Visa streams, the applicant must meet certain health requirements. This includes undergoing a health examination.
You can only lodge a subclass 300 visa if you’re outside Australia which means finding a panel physician in your country and booking the appointment with them.
Character requirements associated with a subclass 300 visa
Both the applicant and sponsor must meet the Department’s character requirements. You are both required to provide police clearances for any country you have lived in for 12 months or more over the last 10 years.
Have a read of my blog about character requirements for more information around police checks and character requirements.
Who is a Prospective Marriage Visa for?
Here’s a pattern I see often, and this is a composite of situations I’ve helped with, not one specific couple. A couple meet while one of them is travelling, say in Bali or Thailand. They hit it off, keep talking every day once they’re back in their own countries, and visit each other two or three times over the following year. They get engaged on one of those visits. They’ve never lived together, they don’t have a joint bank account or a lease with both their names on it, and if you asked them to prove 12 months of a de facto relationship, they couldn’t.
That’s not a weak relationship. The subclass 309 is just the wrong visa in this case. I’ve seen couples in exactly this position push ahead with a 309 anyway, only to be hit with request after request for evidence they simply don’t have yet, like shared finances or a joint household, because that’s not where their relationship is at. A subclass 300 is built for precisely this stage: genuine, committed, and heading towards marriage, but without the shared life a 309 or 820 expects you to show.
How to demonstrate that you intend on marrying your prospective spouse
This is generally done through completing a Notice of Intention to Marry (or NOIM). Both you and your prospective spouse will complete this form with a marriage celebrant.
Once done, your marriage celebrant will provide a letter confirming your intended marriage date.
But in addition to the Notice of Intention to Marry, you must still demonstrate that your relationship is genuine and continuing. If only it was that easy to provide one piece of evidence for a visa.
What evidence is needed for a Prospective Marriage Visa?
The Notice of Intention to Marry (NOIM) and celebrant letter prove you’re planning a wedding. They don’t, on their own, prove you’re in a genuine relationship, and that’s really what the Department is assessing. Because you won’t have lived together yet, your evidence looks different to an 820 or 309 application, but it’s covering similar ground.
Here’s what I generally ask couples to pull together:
- How the relationship developed. When and how you met, and the story of how things progressed from there. Message history and call logs help show this, but on their own they’re not enough.
- Evidence you’ve met in person, after you both turned 18. Flight itineraries, boarding passes, passport stamps, accommodation bookings, and photos from your visits together. This one matters more than people expect, because it’s a strict legal requirement, not just good evidence to have.
- Evidence of ongoing contact across the distance. Regular messages and calls over a meaningful period, not just a flurry of activity in the weeks before you lodge.
- Evidence of your wedding planning. The NOIM and celebrant letter, plus anything else that shows this is a real, developing plan: venue enquiries or bookings, a guest list, invitations, even conversations with family about the date.
- Evidence of your plans together after the wedding. Where you intend to live, what you’ve started organising, and whether you’ve told family and friends what’s coming.
- Statements from people who know you as a couple. Family and friends who can speak to the relationship and the wedding plans carry real weight here, particularly because you won’t have the household and financial evidence a 309 application would usually include.
It’s completely normal for a subclass 300 application to be lighter on financial and household evidence than a Partner Visa, because you haven’t built that shared life yet. Don’t try to manufacture it. Focus on proving what’s actually true: that the relationship is genuine, and that you’re both serious about marrying and building a life together once the visa is granted.
What’s the benefit of lodging a Prospective Marriage Visa?
I love this question because there are some real benefits, in my opinion, even if some experts in the field may not agree.
The evidentiary threshold for a subclass 300 Prospective Marriage Visa is lower than that of a 820/801 or 309/100. What I mean by this is that there’s no requirement to demonstrate you have been in a de facto relationship for 12 months before it’s lodged or that you’re married.
In my experience, this visa is a great option for those couples who may have only met each other in person a couple of times, haven’t been able to establish a household or merge finances, but still want to spend their lives together. For them, I normally always recommend the Prospective Marriage Visa.
I’ve seen cases before (surprisingly a lot) where couples had lodged a subclass 309/100 Partner Visa and had only met once or twice, spent very little time together, couldn’t establish a household and were issued RFI after RFI. If only they had lodged a subclass 300 visa instead!
Can I include children or dependents on my Prospective Marriage Visa?
Yes. If you have dependent children, you can include them in your subclass 300 application as dependent applicants, whether they’re your biological children or stepchildren, provided they meet the usual dependency rules.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Each dependent child needs to meet their own health and character requirements, separate to yours.
- There’s a separate visa application charge for each child included, and it’s lower for a child under 18 than for one 18 or over.
- If granted, your children hold the subclass 300 on the same basis you do, with the same validity period. They don’t get an independent pathway. If you don’t go on to marry and lodge the subclass 820, their stay in Australia ends when yours does.
If you’re thinking about this, it’s worth raising it with a Registered Migration Agent early, because adding dependants changes the shape of the application and the evidence you need to provide for each of them.
Cost of applying for the Prospective Marriage Visa subclass 300
The visa application charge for a subclass 300 visa is $11,710 as of 1 July 2026.
Don’t forget though, that once the visa is granted and you come to Australia, you then lodge a subclass 820/801 visa. The fee at this stage (for Prospective Marriage Visa holders only) is $1,955.
Other costs associated with a Prospective Marriage Visa subclass 300
In addition to paying the visa application charge, you may also incur other charges for lodging a Prospective Marriage Visa. You should be prepared for the following costs:
- Police clearance;
- Health examination;
- Translating documents which are not in English
If you want to have a chat with me, reach out to us.
Processing times for the Prospective Marriage Visa
As you’ve probably heard me say before, processing times vary greatly and are dependent on a number of factors. Published processing times for a Prospective Marriage Visa subclass 300 are 14 months for 50% of applicants and 26 months for 90% of applicants as of October 2026.
There are a number of factors which help speed up the processing of your application such as:
- Ensuring all relevant documents are provided at time of lodgement;
- Ensuring all forms are completed in full;
- Responding to any requests from Immigration as soon as possible
In practice, I’m seeing well put together subclass 300 visa applications within a 9-18 month period.
What happens after the Prospective Marriage Visa subclass 300 is granted?
You’ll need to read your visa grant letter really carefully here to see how long Immigration has allowed you to stay in Australia on the subclass 300 visa. Usually it’s a period of between 9-15 months.
Let’s say it’s been granted for 9 months, you will need to enter Australia on the subclass 300 to activate it, marry, and lodge a subclass 820/801 visa before your subclass 300 visa expiry date.
What rights do you have on a Prospective Marriage Visa?
Once you’ve entered Australia on your subclass 300, here’s what you can and can’t do while you wait to marry and lodge your 820:
- Work. You have full working rights. There’s no restriction on the type of work or the number of hours, and no need for a separate work visa or permission.
- Study. You can study in Australia, but you won’t be treated as a domestic student. Expect international student fees and no access to Commonwealth-supported places until your status changes later in the process.
- Travel. You can travel in and out of the country on your subclass 300 visa.
What happens if you marry your prospective spouse before the subclass 300 visa is finalised?
Let’s be real, sometimes love can’t wait. So if you’ve lodged a Prospective Marriage Visa and decided you want to marry your partner before it’s finalised, the good news is that you can.
You’re going to have to convert your application to a subclass 309 Partner Visa instead and if doing this, I would recommend you get some independent advice as you’re now going to be considered against the legal criteria for the 309 visa, not the subclass 300 visa.
Do I have to marry in Australia once my Prospective Marriage Visa subclass 300 is granted?
There’s a big misconception that you need to also marry inside Australia on the subclass 300 visa, but this isn’t true.
You need to make an entry into Australia on the Prospective Marriage Visa subclass 300, but then you can travel to Bali for example, get married there, and then come back to lodge the 820 visa. But it all must be done during the validity period of your visa.
What if you don’t get married in time?
This is different to marrying early. This is about running out of time.
There’s no built-in extension just because the wedding isn’t ready yet. Your subclass 300 has a fixed validity period, and if you haven’t married and lodged your subclass 820 before it ends, you lose your lawful basis to stay, unless you leave Australia before the visa ceases or you happen to be eligible for a different substantive visa.
If you haven’t married within the validity period of your Prospective Marriage Visa, you should seek advice from a Registered Migration Agent now.
What if the relationship ends?
This is the harder question, and the answer depends on where you are in the process when it happens.
If it happens while your subclass 300 application is still being assessed. The visa only exists because you intend to marry a specific person. If that’s no longer true, you need to tell the Department. In practice this usually means withdrawing the application rather than waiting for a refusal, since the basis for the visa no longer exists.
If it happens after your subclass 300 is granted, but before you’ve married and lodged the 820. You’re still required to tell the Department. Because the visa was granted on the basis of your intention to marry a particular person, a relationship breakdown at this stage can put your visa at risk of cancellation, not just affect a future application.
If your relationship has broken down before the grant of a subclass 300 or even after applying for a subclass 820, get advice as soon as possible.
Most common reasons for a Prospective Marriage Visa refusal
Most subclass 300 refusals I see aren’t about a relationship being found to be fake. They’re about the evidence not doing enough to show what’s actually true. The common patterns are:
- Not meeting, or not being able to prove, that you met in person after you both turned 18. This is a strict legal requirement, not just a box to tick, and it trips up more applications than people expect.
- Treating the NOIM as the whole case. The Notice of Intention to Marry and celebrant letter prove you’re planning a wedding. They don’t prove you’re in a genuine relationship, and relying on them too heavily leaves a gap.
- Over-relying on message and call logs. They help show ongoing contact, but they can’t replace evidence of real visits and time spent together.
- Inconsistencies between the applicant and sponsor, particularly if either of you is interviewed. Mismatched details about the relationship or the wedding plans raise doubt even when the relationship is genuine.
- Unresolved health or character issues, for the applicant or any dependants included in the application.
- Thin or disorganised evidence generally. This is the most common thread. The relationship is often genuine, but the application doesn’t present it clearly enough for a case officer to be satisfied.
The lower evidentiary threshold on the 12-month cohabitation requirement doesn’t mean a lighter application overall. Treat your subclass 300 evidence with the same care you would a Partner Visa, just adapted to the stage your relationship is actually at.
IMPORTANT: Please note, this does not constitute Immigration advice. Always seek advice from a Registered Migration Agent before applying for an Australian Visa. Migration Law is constantly changing. This information is accurate only at the time of publication.
