Home Office · Immigration system statistics: entry clearance visas summary tables
Work visas granted
234,841visas
Work visas granted were 234,841 visas in the year ending June 2026, down 17.8% (50,922) from 285,763 in the year ending June 2025.
▼ 17.8% · −50,922 against Year ending June 2025 (year on year)
- Home Office count
- Year ending June 2026
- published 27 August 2026
- Vis_01
- row “Work visas”
- column “Year ending June 2026”
- cell value 234841
The series is falling. Rule: down 9.8% from 2025 to Year ending June 2026.
2014 to Year ending June 2026
Longer history: 2005 to Year ending June 2026
Joins Work visas granted, 2005 to 2013 to the current series. The line is broken where the publisher changed method; the two sides are not directly comparable.
Breakdowns
What this measures
The number of entry clearance (out-of-country) visas granted on work routes in a 12-month period, counting main applicants and their dependants.
What this doesn’t measure
People who actually arrived in the UK, extensions of stay or switches into work routes granted to people already in the UK, or the number of people working in the UK.
Important caveat
Entry clearance visa grants count visas issued to people outside the UK, including dependants, not people who arrived or the number of migrants in the UK. Figures for 2026 Q1 onwards are provisional and will be revised in a future publication, so the latest year-ending figure can change. Route definitions have changed over time, for example the closure of EEA family permits and the opening of the Ukraine and BN(O) schemes, so long-run comparisons within a route are not always like for like.
When the way this was measured changed
A series can move because the thing being measured changed, or because the way of measuring it changed. Each change below is marked on the chart, and says what the figures meant on either side of it.
January 2014 · methodology change
- Before
- Visa grants from the vi_04 tables under the older route groupings.
- After
- Visa grants derived from the Vis_D02 outcomes dataset under the current route groupings.
The modern series (Vis_01, from 2014) is derived from the Vis_D02 outcomes dataset with the current route groupings; its 2014 work visa figure (167,146) differs from vi_04 (167,147) by one visa.
Revision history
No period of this series has been revised since it was first ingested here. Revisions are recorded automatically when a later release publishes a different figure for the same period.
Source
- Publisher
- Home Office
- Publication
- Immigration system statistics: entry clearance visas summary tables
- Release
- Year ending June 2026, published 27 August 2026
- Source file
- visas-summary-jun-2026-tables.ods
- File SHA-256
- b9be2771c963478500ab75104915d4495a63938a7baf5eddedb4644288c08a81
- Retrieved
- 4 September 2026
- Sheet
- Vis_01
- Table
- Vis_01
- Row
- Work visas
- Column
- Year ending June 2026
- Cell value
- 234841
- Geography
- United Kingdom
- Unit
- visas
- API
- /api/metrics/work_visas · /series · /vintages
Government periods
Change during each government, from the level inherited to the last complete period before it left office. Describes the period; does not attribute cause.
| Labour 2024– | 613,6272023 | 234,841Year ending June 2026 | ↓ 61.7% |
| Conservative 2019–2024 | 175,8122018 | 613,6272023 | ↑ 249.0% |
| Conservative 2017–2019 | 163,9222016 | 175,8122018 | ↑ 7.3% |
| Conservative 2015–2017 | 167,1462014 | 163,9222016 | ↓ 1.9% |
- Release
- Year ending June 2026 · publication page
- Last updated
- 27 August 2026
- Next scheduled release
- 26 November 2026 (official date)