Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) New Zealand: 2026 Requirements & Process

If you're being sponsored to work in New Zealand, the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) is almost certainly the visa you'll end up applying for. It replaced most of the older employer-sponsored work visa categories, and it works as a three-step chain — each step has to clear before the next one can start.

The three checks

1. Employer accreditation. Before an employer can hire a migrant worker on this visa, the business itself has to be accredited by Immigration New Zealand. This is a check on the employer, not on you — it confirms they're a genuine, compliant business capable of employing migrant staff.

2. Job check. Once accredited, the employer submits the specific role for a job check — proving the position pays at least market rate, meets any minimum pay thresholds, and genuinely can't easily be filled locally (unless the role sits on an exempt list, such as certain Green List occupations).

3. Worker visa application. Only after the job check is approved can you, the migrant worker, apply for the visa itself, showing you meet the health, character, and qualification/experience requirements for that specific role.

Why this matters for how long things take

Because the process is sequential, delays at any single step push the whole timeline back. The most common holdups aren't with the worker's own application — they're upstream: an employer whose accreditation lapsed, or a job check where the submitted duties don't cleanly match an occupation code. If your prospective employer hasn't gone through accreditation yet, that's the first thing to confirm before you invest time in anything else.

Does the AEWV lead to residence?

Not on its own — but it's very often the visa that sits underneath a residence pathway. If your occupation is on the [Green List](/blog/nz-green-list-2026-guide), your AEWV can be the qualifying visa for either a direct residence application (Tier 1) or a [Work to Residence](/blog/work-to-residence-visa-nz-explained-2026) pathway (Tier 2). If your occupation isn't on the list, the AEWV is still a legitimate route to work in New Zealand — it just doesn't come with a built-in residence route attached to the occupation itself.

Before you apply

Check your actual job duties against the closest matching occupation code in our [occupations catalog](/occupations) — a mismatch between your job title and the real duties is one of the most avoidable reasons a job check gets held up or challenged. Then confirm the specifics (current minimum pay thresholds, exact documents, and processing times) on the [AEWV visa page](/countries/nz/visas/accredited-employer-work-visa-aewv), since these details are the ones INZ updates most often.