Adelaide City and Regional SA DAMAs Extended to 2027

South Australia's two Designated Area Migration Agreements (DAMAs) have been extended for a further four months, to 31 January 2027, while negotiations conclude on a new five-year statewide DAMA; the sources do not establish the date of this announcement. The sources do not establish when the DAMA terms and conditions were last varied; this would need to be checked directly with Skilled and Business Migration or the Department of Home Affairs. Nothing about eligibility, occupations, concessions or visa pathways has changed as a result of this extension — it keeps the existing arrangements running while the replacement agreement is negotiated.

The available sources do not establish the date of this announcement. The announcement is explicit on two points: the extension is time-limited, and the reason for it is that the replacement agreement is not yet ready.

This is a continuation of the existing arrangements, not a new agreement, a renegotiation, or a change to what employers and workers can currently rely on.

South Australia currently operates two separate DAMAs, each with a distinct geographic and industry scope:

• Adelaide City Technology and Innovation Advancement Agreement — designed to address skills shortages across the Adelaide metropolitan region, allowing local employers to sponsor overseas workers in the defence, space, and advanced manufacturing and technology industries.
• South Australian Regional Workforce Agreement — the retrieved sources name this agreement but do not describe its geographic or industry scope; the current South Australian DAMA occupation list is the document that would confirm this.

Both agreements sit under the same Designated Area Migration Agreement framework between the Commonwealth Government and the South Australian Government, and both were extended by the same announcement. Which one applies to a given employer depends on location and, for the Adelaide City agreement, industry — an employer outside the Adelaide metropolitan area, or outside its target industries, would look to the Regional Workforce Agreement instead.

The stated reason is straightforward: negotiations for the new five-year statewide DAMA had not concluded by the time the previous arrangement was due to lapse, so the two current agreements were extended for a further four months, until 31 January 2027, while those negotiations continue. Extending the existing two DAMAs avoids a gap in which employers with current DAMA labour agreements would have no agreement to operate under, and in which no new DAMA endorsements or labour agreement requests could be lodged. The announcement confirms this extension did not involve any change to the terms and conditions of either DAMA.

No. The announcement states directly that the current terms and conditions of both DAMAs remain unchanged. This covers the framework as a whole — occupation lists, concessions, and the structure of the agreements continue on the same basis they operated under before the extension.

What the announcement does not do is restate every individual figure from earlier settings — the specific salary thresholds, English concessions, work experience concessions or age concessions attached to particular occupations. Those figures sit on the current South Australian DAMA occupation list, which sets out, occupation by occupation, whether concessions such as reduced English, salary or experience requirements apply. An earlier round of the DAMA reportedly carried specific settings — including an age concession, a reduced income threshold and a shortened pathway to permanent residence — but the sources do not establish the date of that announcement or confirm those figures as current; they should be checked against the current occupation list before being relied on. Because the announcement confirms continuity from the previous settings rather than restating each figure, employers and workers should treat any concession figure as needing confirmation against the current occupation list before relying on it, rather than assuming a figure carried over unchanged from an earlier announcement.

Negotiations for a new five-year statewide DAMA are ongoing between the South Australian and Commonwealth Governments, and the extension to 31 January 2027 exists specifically to give those negotiations time to conclude. The South Australian Government first flagged its intention to negotiate a new five-year statewide DAMA with the Commonwealth in 2025–26; the extension announcement confirms those negotiations are still underway and have not concluded.

Beyond confirming that negotiations are underway and that the intended agreement is statewide and five years in term, no further detail about the new agreement's occupation list, concessions, visa subclasses or transition arrangements has been announced. The South Australian Government has said further announcements about the new DAMA and about transition arrangements between the current agreements and the new one will be made once negotiations have concluded. Until such an announcement is published, there is no basis for treating the statewide DAMA as operative, and employers and workers should not plan around specific terms for it.

For readers who need it, a DAMA is not itself a visa, and it does not sponsor anyone. It is the top layer of a chain of separate steps, each governed by its own instrument. Understanding where each step sits explains exactly what the extension keeps running, and what still depends on an employer and a worker doing further, separate things.

The extension operates at the first layer of this chain — it keeps the head agreements (and therefore everything that depends on them) in force to 31 January 2027, on unchanged terms. It does not itself create, alter or guarantee anything at the endorsement, Labour Agreement, nomination or visa stages; each of those still has to be completed in full, by the employer and worker concerned, under the existing settings.

For an employer that already holds a DAMA Labour Agreement, or is endorsed and part-way through one, the extension means continuity: the agreement is valid, on the same terms, until 31 January 2027, rather than lapsing at the earlier deadline. Nominations can continue to be lodged against an existing Labour Agreement on that basis, using the current occupation list and concessions.

For an employer considering DAR endorsement for the first time, three things follow directly from the current framework. First, you need evidence that you cannot find a suitable Australian worker for the role — labour market testing is required both at the endorsement stage and again at nomination for each worker. Second, the occupation you want to sponsor must appear on the current South Australian DAMA occupation list for the relevant agreement (Adelaide City or Regional Workforce), and the list also shows which concessions — reduced English, salary or experience requirements — apply to that occupation. Third, a DAMA will not be endorsed where the occupation is instead covered by an applicable Industry Labour Agreement — aged care is a documented example, where providers use the Aged Care Industry Labour Agreement or PALM scheme instead of the DAMA. None of these three requirements has been altered by the extension.

What the extension does not tell an employer is what will be available under the future statewide DAMA — its occupation list, concessions and ceilings have not been announced. Workforce planning that assumes particular settings under that future agreement is planning against an agreement that does not yet exist in published form.

For a skilled or semi-skilled worker considering an employer-sponsored pathway through a South Australian DAMA, the extension changes nothing about how access works: individuals cannot apply for a visa under the labour agreement streams independently — they must be nominated by an eligible business that holds, or successfully obtains, a DAMA Labour Agreement. There is no direct application route for a worker into either the Adelaide City agreement or the Regional Workforce Agreement. A prospective worker's practical next step is to identify a South Australian employer in an occupation listed on the current DAMA occupation list, since that employer — not the worker — is the party who engages with the DAR and the Department of Home Affairs.

A nominee can be sponsored under the 482 (Skills in Demand) or 494 (SESR) labour agreement streams and may later be nominated for the permanent 186 subclass, or transition to the 191 subclass, depending on the settings that apply to the employer's Labour Agreement and the worker's occupation. This pathway exists under the current DAMA settings — it is not something the 21 September 2026 extension created or altered, and progression from one stage to the next is not automatic: each nomination and visa application is assessed on its own terms. Whether a specific occupation, salary level, English concession, work experience concession or age concession applies to a given worker depends on the current DAMA occupation list and the terms of the specific employer's Labour Agreement, not on the extension itself.

Confirmed now: the two current SA DAMAs — Adelaide City Technology and Innovation Advancement Agreement and South Australian Regional Workforce Agreement — are extended for four months, to 31 January 2027, while negotiations on a new five-year statewide DAMA conclude, and their terms and conditions remain unchanged.

Still being negotiated: the content of the new five-year statewide DAMA itself, including which occupations it will cover, what concessions it will carry, and how it will relate to the two agreements it is intended to replace.

Not yet announced: any transition arrangement between the current DAMAs and the new statewide agreement, and any specific date on which the new agreement will take effect. The South Australian Government has said further announcements on both the new DAMA and transition arrangements will follow once negotiations have concluded — until then, there is no published occupation list, concession schedule or timing to check the new agreement against.

• Myth: The extension secures a visa or permanent residency outcome for a worker. Fact: sponsorship under a DAMA Labour Agreement can lead to a 482 or 494 visa and, in some cases, later nomination for the 186 subclass or transition to the 191 subclass — but each stage is assessed on its own merits, and no particular result follows automatically from the extension or from the DAMA framework itself.

Employers with an existing DAMA Labour Agreement, or considering DAR endorsement, and workers weighing an employer-sponsored pathway through either South Australian DAMA, can get an assessment of how the current settings apply to their specific occupation and circumstances from Global Migrations — the registered agent's name and MARN are not established in the sources available for this article and should be confirmed on the Global Migrations website. This article does not constitute personal migration advice: before proceeding, pull the current South Australian DAMA occupation list for the relevant agreement and check the specific occupation against it for its listed salary, English, work experience and age settings — if the occupation instead appears under an Industry Labour Agreement such as the Aged Care Industry Labour Agreement, pursue that pathway (or the PALM scheme) rather than the DAMA, since these settings determine whether a given nomination or visa application can proceed at all.