Skilled Worker visa

The Skilled Worker visa is the UK’s main route for people with a job offer from a UK employer. It replaced the old Tier 2 (General) visa in December 2020, and it has been tightened substantially since 2024: salaries, skill levels and English requirements have all gone up.

How sponsorship works

You cannot apply on your own. A UK employer holding a sponsor licence must assign you a Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) for a specific job. The job must be in an eligible occupation code, and your pay must meet both of two tests:

• the general salary threshold — £41,700 a year for most new applications, and
• the going rate for your occupation code — the median pay for that job in the UK.

You must be paid whichever of the two is higher. In practice, for well-paid occupations such as software development or finance, the going rate is above £41,700 and becomes the real minimum. Discounted thresholds exist for new entrants (recent graduates, under-26s) and some PhD-holders, starting at £33,400, but conditions are strict.

The CoS fee and the Immigration Skills Charge are the sponsor’s costs by law. An employer cannot pass them on to you.

The degree-level rule and medium-skilled exceptions

Since 22 July 2025, sponsored jobs must normally be at RQF level 6 — graduate level. Some RQF 3–5 occupations remain eligible where the job is on the Immigration Salary List or the Temporary Shortage List. These are interim arrangements, with occupations on both lists currently subject to removal by 31 December 2026.

New applicants sponsored in medium-skilled occupations generally cannot bring dependants. Transitional protections apply to some Skilled Workers who were already in eligible medium-skilled roles before 22 July 2025.

Overseas recruitment of care workers and senior care workers closed on 22 July 2025.

English language

New applications made on or after 8 January 2026 require English at B2 (upper-intermediate). If you were already on the Skilled Worker route before that date, extensions can still rely on B1 under transitional arrangements.

Costs

The application fee from 8 April 2026 is £819 for a visa of up to three years applied for from outside the UK (£1,618 for longer). On top of that, the Immigration Health Surcharge is £1,035 for each year of the visa — usually the largest single cost. See the fees page for the full table.

What changes at settlement

Settlement has its own requirements. When you apply for ILR you must still meet the Skilled Worker salary threshold in force at that time, not the one that applied when you arrived, and you cannot have spent more than 180 days outside the UK in any rolling 12-month period along the way. Changing employer does not restart the five years, as long as each job was itself sponsored. The residence rules are set out in the settlement guide.