After you graduate
Rules read 19 Aug 2026
What Austria's own immigration authority currently publishes. Not a ranking, not a guarantee, and not the same as what any agent or forum will tell you. Whether someone actually obtains residence depends on occupation, points, funds and policy that can change between application and graduation.
Money you must prove before the visa
€703.58per month of stay, for a student under 24 — a student from age 24 must show 1.273,99 Euro a month instead, and either way at most 12 months' worth has to be shown in advance
Shown as a balance in a bank account. You keep control of it.
Figure published for: Stand 2025 — the authority labels these student figures as 2025 values, and had not replaced them when the page was read on 19 August 2026 (the page's own last-updated stamp is 22.01.2026). Treat this as the most recent student-specific figure Austria publishes, not as a confirmed 2026 rate: see conditions. This amount is revised regularly, so check it again before you transfer anything.
READ THE YEAR ON THIS ONE. Austria's student figures are published as 2025 values, while the general maintenance thresholds these derive from — the Ausgleichszulagenrichtsätze under the ASVG — have already been raised for 2026: oesterreich.gv.at states 1.308,39 Euro a month for a single person since 1 January 2026 (up from the level the 2025 student rates were set against), and puts the 2026 'Wert der freien Station' at 386,43 Euro. The student rates above are therefore very likely to have moved too, and anyone relying on them should re-check before depositing. Beyond the monthly figure: accommodation costs above 376,27 Euro a month (2025 value) and the cost of the required health insurance must be evidenced separately and on top. Proof can be a balance in a savings book or account at an Austrian bank, a Haftungserklärung (declaration of liability) or maintenance contract from someone living in Austria, a confirmation of future maintenance payments from the home country (which the authority notes is more onerous to evidence), traveller's cheques bought in a matching amount, or confirmation of a scholarship. The permit itself is the 'Aufenthaltsbewilligung – Studierende', normally applied for at an Austrian mission abroad before travelling; a stay of no more than six months needs only a visa and no residence title at all.
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Work during study
A third-country national holding an 'Aufenthaltsbewilligung – Student' residence permit is subject to the Aliens Employment Act (Ausländerbeschäftigungsgesetz) and needs a Beschäftigungsbewilligung (employment permit) for any job, including minor ones. As a student, this permit can be granted for work up to 20 hours a week without a labour-market test (Arbeitsmarktprüfung) — the normal check that a role can't be filled by a jobseeker already registered in Austria or an integrated foreign worker. The employer, not the student, applies for the permit, with the national employment service (Arbeitsmarktservice, AMS). The work must not interfere with the primary purpose of the residence permit, which is the course of study itself. A job over 20 hours a week is not ruled out, but can only be approved if the labour-market test is passed.
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Post-study work visa
Verlängerung der Aufenthaltsbewilligung 'Student' zur Arbeitsuche (one-time 12-month extension of the Student residence permit for job-seeking or business founding) . Up to 1 year
After successfully completing a degree in Austria, a graduate may extend their 'Student' residence permit exactly once, for 12 months, specifically to look for work or to found a business in Austria. Austria's own migration portal frames this as a bridge: after that year, the intended route onward is switching from the Student permit to a 'Rot-Weiß-Rot – Karte' (Red-White-Red Card), Austria's points-based immigration status for qualified workers, which the graduate would need to separately qualify for.
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Route to permanent residence
Austria's own citizen portal states the residence-length route relevant to a graduate directly: 10 years of lawful, uninterrupted residence in Austria, of which 5 years must have been 'niedergelassen' (settled) — meaning held under a genuine settlement-type residence title such as 'Daueraufenthalt – EU' (EU long-term residence) or the 'Rot-Weiß-Rot – Karte', explicitly not merely an 'Aufenthaltsbewilligung' (the category the Student permit itself belongs to, which does not count as 'settled' at all). 'Uninterrupted' allows absence from Austria for at most 20% of the required period. In practice this means a graduate's time on the Student residence permit does not itself advance this clock in the way holding a Rot-Weiß-Rot Karte or an equivalent settlement permit would — the realistic path is the same one described under postStudyWork: extend to look for work, obtain a Rot-Weiß-Rot Karte or comparable settlement-based residence title through qualifying employment, and accumulate the years described here from that point.
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Route to citizenship
Austrian citizenship by grant (Verleihung) is administered by the citizenship department (Staatsbürgerschaftsabteilung) of each state government (Amt der Landesregierung), and requires meeting the 'general naturalisation conditions' (allgemeine Einbürgerungsvoraussetzungen) on top of the residence-length route described under residencyRoute (commonly 10 years, 5 of them settled). oesterreich.gv.at's own list of those general conditions includes: good conduct (no criminal convictions, no pending criminal proceedings at home or abroad, no frequent or serious administrative offences); a sufficiently secure livelihood, evidenced by fixed, regular income over an average of 36 months within the 6 years before applying, with the most recent 6 months immediately before the application; German-language proficiency and basic knowledge of Austria's democratic order and the history of Austria and the applicant's own state (usually shown through the citizenship test, with limited exceptions e.g. German as a mother tongue); no current residence ban or return/removal decision, no expulsion within the last 18 months, and no proximity to an extremist or terrorist group; and — the point most likely to matter to this dataset's readers — that granting citizenship must not significantly harm Austria's international relations or interests. On dual nationality, the list states the default plainly: 'grundsätzlich Ausscheiden aus der bisherigen Staatsangehörigkeit' (in principle, exit from the previous nationality) is itself one of the general naturalisation conditions — Austria's default rule requires giving up the applicant's original nationality to naturalise, not a right to keep it.
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New entry added 19 August 2026. Two Austrian government domains added to IMMIGRATION_DOMAINS in scripts/verify.mjs: migration.gv.at (the Austrian Federal Government's own migration platform, run jointly by the relevant ministries, covering entry, residence and work) and oesterreich.gv.at (the federal citizen-service portal, oesterreich.gv.at, which publishes the citizenship-naturalisation rules on behalf of the state-government authorities that actually administer them). inDemandOccupations is left null: Austria's Rot-Weiß-Rot Karte is a points-based system scoring qualification, work experience, language and age rather than a named shortage-occupation list of the kind Canada, Australia, the UK or Germany publish, and this dataset did not research its specific point thresholds in enough depth this pass to state them honestly. naturalisationStatus set to 'published-route': oesterreich.gv.at publishes real, itemised general conditions and a specific residence-length route — per the doc comment on ResidencyPathway.naturalisationStatus this field records only whether criteria are published, not how demanding Austria's particular 10-year/5-years-settled structure or its default renunciation requirement are in practice. A narrower, faster route (naturalisation after 6 years for proven exceptional integration, e.g. very strong German or documented voluntary work) and a discretionary route for 'especially considerable achievements' in Austria's interest also exist under the Staatsbürgerschaftsgesetz but were not separately researched this pass — a future collector could add these as additional detail. citizenshipTerms cites the oesterreich.gv.at page already archived for residencyRoute (snapshot 082ec33a9cea26df), which states the ten-year period; the general-conditions page cited by citizenshipRoute states the renunciation rule instead. Of those 10 years, 5 must have been spent settled (niedergelassen). dualCitizenshipAllowed is false: giving up the previous nationality is itself listed among Austria’s general naturalisation conditions. studentVisaFunds added 19 August 2026, with a deliberate caveat. Austria's student-specific amounts are the only ones it publishes for this purpose, and the page prints them marked '(Stand 2025)'. The same site's general conditions page (snapshot 95503c21147f263a, last updated 10.08.2026) already carries 2026 Ausgleichszulagenrichtsätze — 1.308,39 Euro for a single person since 1 January 2026 — so the student page is internally out of step with the rest of oesterreich.gv.at. The figure was recorded rather than dropped because it is quoted, dated in the authority's own words, and is genuinely the latest student figure published; it was NOT silently presented as current, and the year label plus an explicit warning is carried in effectiveFrom and conditions. A future collector should re-read this page and replace the figure as soon as Austria posts 2026 student values. The under-24 rate is stored as the amount and the from-24 rate is in period and conditions, matching how the United Kingdom's two-rate structure is handled in this dataset. The Aufenthaltsbewilligung-Studierende application page on the same site (16f64eb9cf2b1830) was checked too and states no amount at all, only the 218 Euro application fee.
Open the immigration authority's own page ↗