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UK Resettlement Scheme reopening and new refugee sponsorship routes

Reopening of UK Resettlement Scheme

On 28 September 2026, the Home Office announced that the UK Resettlement Scheme (UKRS) had reopened to new referrals.

Eligibility for the UKRS isn’t restricted to specific nationalities but around a quarter of new referrals will be for Palestinian refugees and women and girls from Afghanistan. 

The government hasn’t publicly confirmed the scheme’s referral quota for 2026/27 but has said that the scheme will function at a small scale (see section 3 below).  

What is the UK Resettlement Scheme?

The UKRS is one of the ‘safe and legal’ humanitarian routes to the UK.

It was created to provide an immigration route for vulnerable refugees in need of resettlement in the UK. ‘Resettlement’ is the voluntary transfer of people who have already been recognised as refugees from the country where they were granted asylum to another country that agrees to give them permanent residence.

Home Office policy guidance (last updated in 2021) provides an overview of the end-to-end UKRS process, including arrangements for sourcing accommodation in the UK and local authorities’ involvement.

How are refugees identified for resettlement?

Refugees (or their friends or family members) can’t directly apply for a place under the UKRS.

As explained below, the Home Office uses partner agencies overseas to identify refugees who may be suitable for resettlement. The agencies refer cases that meet the UKRS eligibility criteria to the Home Office to carry out security and other suitability checks. The Home Office makes the final decision about whether to allow the refugee to come to the UK.

Eligibility criteria

The eligibility criteria for the UKRS reflect the seven resettlement submission categories used by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

“Restoring family unity” is one of the UNHCR resettlement submission criteria, but having relatives in the UK is unlikely to be enough on its own for a person to be considered for resettlement.

UNHCR advises refugees in the UK that “the overall likelihood of your family members being prioritised for resettlement by UNHCR is unfortunately very low and depends on their individual circumstances. Resettlement decisions are based primarily on protection needs and are not linked to your presence in the UK.”

Referral process for Palestinian refugees

The UKRS is now available to a small number of Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon who are in urgent need of resettlement.   

It is intended to provide for “extremely vulnerable refugees whose lives have become unsustainable in Jordan or Lebanon and for whom resettlement has become the only option while return remains out of reach.” 

Humanitarian organisations in Jordan and Lebanon will identify and refer potential cases to the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP, a non-governmental organisation). IRAP will consider the refugee’s eligibility against the UKRS criteria. If IRAP decides the person is eligible, it will refer their case to the Home Office for a final decision.

Referrals of Afghan women and girls, and other nationalities

UNHCR staff overseas identify refugees in their registered caseload to consider for resettlement, based on individuals’ needs and vulnerabilities.

At the time of writing, UNHCR hadn’t published detailed guidance about the referral process for Afghan women and girls. It is likely that suitable cases will be identified from refugee populations in countries close to Afghanistan, as happened for previous Afghan resettlement schemes.

Further information

• UNHCR in the UK, Resettlement (undated; accessed 9 October 2026)
• International Refugee Assistance Project, ‘What is the Palestinian resettlement program to the UK?’, 30 September 2026

Launch of new sponsored routes for refugees

Separately to the above, the Home Office will launch three new sponsorship-based safe and legal routes for refugees over the next year. They are:

• A named community sponsorship route, which will enable refugee households to move to the UK and receive integration support from a local community group.
• A refugee study route, which will enable refugees to study at UK universities.
• A refugee work route, which will enable skilled refugees to come to work in the UK.

Applications to become a sponsor under the named community sponsorship route or the refugee study route are opening in October 2026. The first groups of refugees are expected to begin arriving through these routes in autumn 2027.

Applications for sponsors for the work sponsorship route will open in spring 2027 and the first refugees are expected to arrive later that year.

What other details are available?

The Home Office hasn’t publicly confirmed many of the details about the sponsorship routes yet, including what their eligibility criteria will be and whether they will prioritise refugees in particular countries or with specific nationalities.

The named community sponsorship route is likely to be a modified version of the Community Sponsorship resettlement scheme which has operated at a small scale for the past ten years. The new route is expected to allow sponsor groups to choose who they wish to sponsor but there isn’t official guidance yet about how this will work in practice, including whether community groups will be able to sponsor friends or relatives of people in the sponsor group.

The work and study routes will likely involve approved universities and employers taking on some sponsorship responsibilities towards refugees who wish to work or study in the UK.

Some organisations will be designated as ‘lead sponsors’ for the sponsorship routes. Their responsibilities will include working with community sponsor groups and referring potentially eligible cases to the Home Office.

UNHCR will be involved in determining sponsored refugees’ eligibility for refugee status. The Home Office will retain control over who can act as sponsors and which refugees are given permission to come to the UK.

Further information

Organisations which have a background of involvement with community sponsorship schemes and are monitoring UK policy developments include Citizens UK, International Rescue Committee, and Reset Communities for Refugees.

Arrangements common to both schemes

What type of UK immigration permission will refugees get?

The Home Office says that future arrivals through the UKRS or the new sponsorship routes will initially be given permission to stay in the UK for five years, with the possibility of getting permanent permission to stay after that.

Further details are likely to become available later this year when the government confirms its broader plans for changes to migrants’ eligibility for permanent settlement.

In the past, people admitted through the UKRS were given refugee status with permanent permission to stay (‘indefinite leave’) as soon as they arrived.

How many refugees are expected to be admitted and when will they begin to arrive?

As outlined above, the first new UKRS arrivals are expected before the end of 2026. The first sponsored refugees are expected to arrive in autumn 2027. 

The government intends to set an annual limit on the number of people who can be admitted to the UK through these schemes but hasn’t done so yet.

It has said it expects the total number of people arriving through the UKRS and the three sponsorship routes to initially be “in the hundreds”, and that there is the potential for numbers to increase “into the low thousands” if levels of unauthorised migration reduce.