Victoria State Nomination for the 190 Visa: ROI Process, Salary Requirements, and 2026 Realities

Victoria offers the largest Subclass 190 allocation of any state — 2,700 places for the 2025–26 program year — and it fills them faster than almost anywhere else. The Victorian Government closed its 2025–26 skilled visa nomination program to new Registrations of Interest on 28 April 2026, months before the program year ended.

If you're targeting Victoria for your 190 visa, understanding exactly how the state selects candidates will save you from submitting an ROI that never gets assessed.

The ROI System: How Victoria Actually Selects Candidates

Victoria does not passively search SkillSelect like NSW does. It uses a mandatory, two-step process:

1. Lodge an EOI through SkillSelect — your federal Expression of Interest, with Victoria designated as the preferred state.
2. Submit an ROI through the Live in Melbourne portal — a separate, state-specific Registration of Interest that requires additional data Victoria uses to rank your application.

An ROI without a linked EOI is automatically discarded. The ROI portal requires your EOI ID to validate the link. If those identifiers don't match, your application doesn't enter the assessment queue at all — it's simply excluded with no notification.

The ROI requires information beyond what SkillSelect captures: your employer's physical location within Victoria, your annual earnings estimation (excluding superannuation and allowances), your occupation code, and your residency status.

The Hidden Ranking Factor: Salary, Not Points

Most applicants assume Victoria selects primarily based on the federal DHA point score. This is wrong.

For onshore candidates, annual earnings are the primary ranking metric Victoria uses to assess economic value. The state uses an earnings estimation formula that calculates your prospective annual income (excluding superannuation and allowances) as the core indicator of your contribution to the Victorian economy.

Crowdsourced data from successful 2025–26 Victorian nominations indicates that onshore applicants in competitive professional roles typically needed to demonstrate salaries between AUD $80,000 and $120,000 to receive serious consideration — unless they were employed in acute shortage roles such as nursing or specialized trades, where the earnings threshold for successful nomination was lower because the state is actively recruiting to address specific deficits.

Federal DHA points are considered, but they function more as a tiebreaker than a primary filter. Two candidates with the same point score in the same occupation will see the higher earner prioritized.

Offshore applicants are assessed differently. The earnings requirement is waived for candidates living outside Australia, but offshore applicants face intense scrutiny on aggregate points, partner skills, and English proficiency because the state cannot directly verify their economic contribution.

What Victoria Is Looking For

Victoria does not publish a restrictive, proprietary occupation list. Instead, it accepts all occupations on the federal DHA lists. However, in practice, the state actively prioritizes applications from:

• Health and social services (nursing, allied health, disability care)
• Education
• Construction and civil engineering
• New energy and sustainability
• Advanced manufacturing and digital industries

Applicants in these sectors are reviewed more favorably at a given salary level than applicants in general professional roles like marketing or basic IT administration.

Practical Implications for Applicants

The program closes fast. Victoria allocated 2,700 places in 2025–26 and closed to new ROIs by late April 2026. Applicants who tried to lodge ROIs after 28 April 2026 were locked out for the remainder of the program year. If you're targeting Victoria, submit your ROI as early as possible after the program opens — typically in late July or early August of each year.

If your ROI is declined, Victoria enforces a six-month moratorium before you can resubmit a new nomination application. A declined ROI is not the end of your application pathway, but it effectively removes Victoria as an option for the rest of that program year.

If your invitation expires, Victoria will not re-nominate you in the same program year if the 60-day federal invitation window lapses without a visa application being lodged. The state treats an expired invitation as a forfeiture of that year's nomination slot.

Victoria vs. Other States

For onshore applicants earning above $90,000 in health, construction, or technology roles, Victoria is often the highest-probability nomination target. The large allocation, combined with Victoria's willingness to accept most federal occupations (rather than restricting to a narrow skills list), gives it a broad appeal.

For applicants earning below $70,000 — even with strong DHA points — Victoria's salary-weighting model makes nomination difficult. These applicants often find better odds in South Australia (which has a more granular occupation list and a dedicated graduate stream), Queensland (which prioritizes demonstrated local work experience), or Tasmania (where the Gold priority tier is accessible to health and teaching professionals above a $57,000 salary threshold).

The Australia Skilled Nominated Visa (190) Guide maps Victoria's ROI requirements against all seven other state programs with occupation-level analysis, so you can assess realistically whether your specific salary, occupation, and residency situation gives you a genuine pathway through Victoria or whether your time is better invested in another state.