July student visa applications are down 11 per cent on last year
Mack Marshall is Editorial Coordinator at Wonkhe and Policy Officer at The Post-18 Project
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These statistics are provisional and will be confirmed in the quarterly Home Office immigration system statistics – which arrive in a few weeks.
Study visas tend to follow a seasonal pattern – peaking in August ahead of the new academic year – so July is a key data point for any institution trying to read the recruitment tea leaves. You can also tend to see a second smaller peak in December.
Sponsored study visa main applications for the year ending July 2026 (381,500) are down 11 per cent on last year. For comparison, in July 2025, the number of sponsored study visa applicants was 428,900 – three per cent lower than July 2024. This represents another real decline but is very much the continuation of a trend, rather than a shock.
In the year ending July 2026, there were 19,200 applications from dependants of students, six per cent lower than last year. Since the rule change in January 2024 which prevented most students from bringing dependants, applications have been pretty low. For example, applications are now 87 per cent lower compared to the end of December 2023 which was right before the new rule came into effect.
And the emergency visa brake – announced in March 2026 restricting clearance for student visas from nationals of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar or Sudan – is now showing up in the data. The Home Office states “nationalities subject to the visa brake represent a small proportion of sponsored study visa applications.”
The brake is intended to be reviewed after 18 months and could be “extended or released.” When the brake was first announced, the Home Office estimated the restrictions could lead to the non-issuance of 4,300 study visas over an 18 month period and a tuition fee loss of somewhere between £60m and £107m.
It’s worth noting we don’t know how the visa application stats vary across institution types, course level, or by nationality – this is confirmed later on in the year. Nor do we know how many of these applications will convert to student numbers. August is the real test that will show whether this decline continues into peak season or moderates itself.