Australia limits how many Work and Holiday (subclass 462) visas it grants from each country each program year. It counts visas granted, not applications received. Two of the four statuses catch people out. Paused usually means the Department is deliberately spacing applications out, not that places have run out, and Home Affairs says paused caps reopen the same program year. Closed means the year's places are full, and that resets in early July. The real trap: the official cap status page can be up to 48 hours out of date, so people refresh a stale page and miss a reopening.
Four statuses: OPEN (accepting applications now), PAUSED (usually the Department deliberately spacing applications out, not places gone; Home Affairs says paused caps reopen the same program year), CLOSED (the year's places are full, resets in early July, 2 July for 2026-27), BALLOT (you need a pre-application invitation first, for China, India and Vietnam).
The program year runs 1 July to 30 June. Closed caps reset at the start of the next one.
The official "status of country caps" page can lag reality by up to 48 hours. A cap can reopen while the page still shows it closed.
Tern checks the live government application system (ImmiAccount) every 2 hours, and even more often around the early-July reopening. So the status in the table below is real-time, not the lagging page.
The first 462 visa application charge is AUD $840, paid only when you submit. Watching the cap costs nothing.
If you hold a Spanish, Brazilian, Indonesian, or other capped-country passport and you have been refreshing the government's cap status page hoping the light turns green, you already know the feeling. You are waiting on a number you cannot see, on a page that never seems to change, with no idea whether you are early, late, or too late. That anxiety is real, and it is not your fault. The system is genuinely hard to read from the outside.
Here is the good news. The 462 cap system follows rules. Once you understand what the statuses mean, when caps reset, and why the official page lags, the waiting gets a lot less mysterious. This guide walks through all of it, and shows you the live status of every 462 country right now.
What is the Work and Holiday (462) country cap?
The 462 country cap is the maximum number of Work and Holiday visas Australia will grant from a single country in one program year. Note the word grant: the cap counts visas actually handed out, not applications received. Each participating country has its own annual limit. Applications can stop being accepted before a country reaches that limit, because Home Affairs also pauses some countries on purpose to spread applications out across the year (more on that just below).
This is where the 462 (Work and Holiday) visa differs from the 417 (Working Holiday) visa. The 417 countries, such as the UK, Germany and Japan, are generally uncapped. The 462 countries are capped. So if you are applying under 462, the cap is a real gate you have to get through, and timing matters.
Not every capped country fills its quota. Smaller programs often stay open the whole year. The countries people worry about are the high-demand ones, like Spain, Brazil and Portugal, where Home Affairs actively manages the flow of applications. For those, watching the cap is part of the job.
The limits are set country by country, and they can change from one year to the next. Uruguay's cap, for example, jumped from 200 to 1,500 for 2026-27. The program year always runs 1 July to 30 June. When a country genuinely fills its limit, it closes until the new program year begins in early July.
What do OPEN, PAUSED, CLOSED and BALLOT mean?
There are four cap statuses, and the difference between them decides what you can do today.
OPEN. The country is accepting applications right now. If you are eligible and ready, you can submit.
PAUSED. This usually does not mean the country has run out of places. Home Affairs gives two reasons for pausing a cap. Most often, it is deliberately spacing applications out so it can process them steadily through the year rather than in one rush. Less often, it is watching a country closely because it is getting near its annual grant cap. Either way, Home Affairs says it will reopen a paused cap later in the same program year to take new applications. In plain terms, a pause is temporary, and your shot at this year's cap is still alive.
CLOSED. The limit for the whole program year has been reached. A closed cap does not reopen until the start of the new program year in early July (2 July for 2026-27). If your country closes in, say, April, your next real chance is July.
BALLOT. For China, India and Vietnam, a first 462 visa is not first-come-first-served at all. You have to register for a pre-application ballot and be invited before you can apply. If your country is on ballot, watching the cap is not the path in. The ballot is. We cover exactly how that works in the 462 ballot guide.
The practical takeaway is simple. PAUSED means keep watching, because it can flip back to OPEN any day. CLOSED means the door is shut until the new program year. BALLOT means you are in a different process entirely.
Why is my country paused so early in the year?
Being paused right at the start of a program year almost never means you are too late. It usually means the opposite. When a country shows paused within a day or two of applications opening, most of that year's places are still unallocated. Home Affairs has simply chosen to release them in batches instead of all at once.
This is deliberate, and it happens to the high-demand countries every year. On 2 July 2025, one day into the 2025-26 program year, Spain, Brazil, Portugal, Switzerland and Mongolia already showed paused. The same thing happened the next year. Applications for 2026-27 opened on 2 July 2026, and by the 3 July update Spain, Brazil, Portugal, Switzerland and Malaysia were paused again. For that year Home Affairs also said plainly that Indonesia and Mongolia would open later.
Home Affairs is open about why. A note on its status page explains that because of high interest in some high-demand countries, such as Brazil and Spain, it has paused new applications so it can process them steadily throughout the year. Remember that the cap counts visas granted, not applications waiting in a queue. A pause slows the intake. It does not mean the year's places are gone. A country showing paused in early July almost certainly still has most of its cap available.
Do paused caps actually reopen? What our archive research found
They do. We wanted hard evidence rather than forum folklore, so we compared more than 30 archived snapshots of the official status page going back to January 2024, alongside the live page and our own ImmiAccount checks. The record is clear that paused caps reopen during the same year, without any announcement:
Brazil paused by early October 2024, reopened by the end of October, then closed by mid-December.
Portugal was paused from the start of 2025-26, reopened by early October 2025, and stayed open for months.
Malaysia was open at the start of 2025-26, paused by mid-July 2025, reopened by mid-September, and was still open in late January 2026.
Ecuador followed Brazil's late-2024 pattern almost exactly. The reopenings are real, but they are ad hoc and never scheduled. Recent windows have ranged from a few weeks (Brazil in 2024) to several months (Malaysia and Portugal in 2025-26). Nobody posts a date in advance. That is exactly why watching the live system beats refreshing a page, and why a country being paused today tells you little about where it will be next month.
One honest caveat: reopening a paused cap is Home Affairs' stated approach and the usual pattern, not an ironclad promise. In 2024-25, Malaysia's pause turned into a closure without a reopening. So treat "paused caps reopen" as the current policy and the common outcome, not a guarantee.
Live 462 country cap status
Below is the current cap status for every 462 country. Tern checks the live government application system every 2 hours, so this reflects reality rather than the official page's delayed label.
Statuses change without notice, so a country that reads PAUSED this morning can be OPEN by the afternoon. Rather than refreshing this page, set up our free 462 country cap alerts: tell us your country and we will email you the moment its status in the table above changes.
That timing gap is exactly why the problem below matters so much.
Does the official cap status page update in real time?
No. The Department of Home Affairs runs an official status of country caps page, and it says plainly that the information can be up to 48 hours out of date. That single line is the reason so many people get caught out.
Think about what a 48-hour lag means in practice. Your country's cap can reopen on a Monday, but the official page can keep showing it closed until Wednesday. If you are only watching that page, you spend two days believing the door is shut while it is actually open. In a high-demand country where places refill fast, two days can be the difference between getting in and waiting for the next program year.
That is exactly the gap our free cap-alert tool closes. Instead of reading the delayed public page, it logs into the live government application system (ImmiAccount) every 2 hours and checks the real cap status directly at the source. Around the annual reopening in early July, it checks even more often, when timing matters most. It is automated monitoring, running around the clock, checking the same system the Department uses to accept applications. When a cap flips to OPEN, we know within a couple of hours, not up to 48 hours later.
Tern Tip
If your country is capped but not a ballot country (Brazil, Indonesia, and most other 462 countries), you do not have to sit and refresh anything. Tern can prepare your full 462 application now, while your cap is paused or closed, and hold it ready. The moment your country's cap reopens, we submit it automatically. Your application is reviewed before submission, and you are not racing a stale webpage or an alarm clock.
How do you know the moment your cap reopens?
The most reliable way is to be told, rather than to keep checking. Refreshing a page that can be two days behind is stressful and, worse, unreliable. A cap reopening happens in a single moment, and you want to be there for it.
Tern runs a free 462 cap-alert tool. Tell us your country, and we will email you the moment its cap opens. No charge, no application required. It is the least stressful way to stop watching the page and get on with your life until there is actually something to act on.
Set the alert up and then forget about it. You can find it at Tern's free 462 cap-alert tool. If you would rather have your whole application prepared and held ready to submit on reopening, that is the paid path above. Either way, the goal is the same: you stop staring at a page you cannot trust.
When do closed 462 caps reopen?
Closed 462 caps reopen at the start of the new program year in early July. The program year itself still runs 1 July to 30 June, but the reopening is not always the 1st. For 2026-27, Home Affairs opened applications on 2 July (Australian Eastern Standard Time) and set 1 July aside for departmental systems maintenance. Every country's annual limit resets, so a country that closed months earlier becomes available again. The exact date can move year to year, so plan around early July and check the current date rather than assuming it is always the 1st.
Two things do not follow that early-July pattern. Home Affairs has flagged that Indonesia and Mongolia open later in the year, with timing still to be confirmed. And the ballot countries (China, India and Vietnam) do not reopen through the cap page at all; a first visa there runs through the pre-application ballot instead.
A paused cap is different. It can reopen at any point during the same program year, whenever the Department releases the next batch of places. There is no fixed schedule for that, which is exactly why monitoring the live status matters more for paused caps than for closed ones. With a closed cap, you at least know early July is coming. With a paused cap, you do not know if it is tomorrow or next month.
If you are close to the age limit, this timing can cost you the visa. The 462 age cut-off is 30 inclusive, both when you first try and when you actually apply. So if a closed cap pushes you to early July, make sure you will still be within the age limit then. Meeting it on the day you first tried is not enough on its own. Our ultimate guide to the Working Holiday visa walks through the age rules that catch people out.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a paused and a closed 462 cap?
How do I know when my 462 country cap reopens?
Does the official cap status page update in real time?
When do closed 462 caps reopen?
How long does a reopen window last after a paused cap reopens?
Do refused or withdrawn applications free up cap places?
Which 462 countries need a ballot instead of watching the cap?
How much does the 462 visa cost, and does watching the cap cost anything?
Can I prepare my 462 application while my country’s cap is closed?
Where to go next
If your country is capped and not on ballot, you have two calm options instead of refreshing a page that can be two days behind. Set up a free alert so you are told the moment your cap opens, or have your application prepared and held so Tern submits it automatically on reopening.
Free 462 cap-alert tool: we email you when your country opens.
462 ballot guide: for China, India and Vietnam applicants.
Ultimate guide to the Working Holiday visa: eligibility, age rules, and the 417 vs 462 difference.
Primary source worth bookmarking:
Department of Home Affairs: status of country caps (remember: can be up to 48 hours behind).
