Citizenship application fees to increase from 28 August 2026

27 August 2026

The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) will increase New Zealand citizenship application and product fees, from 12.01am on Friday 28 August 2026.

From this date, the fee for applying for New Zealand citizenship will increase by 14.4 per cent.

"Citizenship is an important milestone for many New Zealanders, and we are committed to continuing to deliver a high-quality service," says Adrian Jarvis, General Manager Services and Access at DIA.

"This fee adjustment reflects the actual cost of delivering citizenship services and helps ensure those costs are met by the people using the service, rather than by taxpayers."

The cost of delivering citizenship services has increased due to inflation, wage growth, rising operating costs, and investment in replacing an ageing core technology system. Current fees no longer fully recover the cost of providing citizenship services.

“We have worked to minimise the impact on customers by ensuring we carefully balance increases with finding efficiencies in our own system.”

The Department has undertaken extensive work to improve efficiency across service delivery, including enhancing operational processes and increasing staff productivity. These improvements, together with greater automation, have expanded processing capacity and enabled applications to be processed more efficiently using existing resources, reducing the extent of the fee increase required.

The Department remains committed to continuous improvement and will continue to seek opportunities to further improve efficiency and productivity, support cost reductions, and ensure the effective and efficient use of public resources.

Even after the increase, New Zealand's citizenship fees remain comparatively low when measured against several similar countries, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

A full schedule of citizenship fees will be available on the New Zealand Government website.

ENDS