Japan drafts tighter permanent-residency rules on income, pension, and marriage

Japan's Immigration Services Agency has drawn up a revised set of guidelines for permanent-residency approval that would raise the bar on several fronts at once: a continuous income requirement pegged to the national household average, a pension standard tied to 30 years of contributions, explicit checks on understanding of Japanese customs and systems, and longer waiting periods for foreign spouses of Japanese nationals. The draft was reported by Nikkei on July 25, 2026, and picked up the same week by Japan Times and Nikkei Asia. Nothing has been formally adopted yet, but the agency has set out a timeline: the guideline revision itself is planned for October 1, 2026, the new income standard would apply to applications filed from April 2026, and the rest of the new standards would apply to applications filed from April 2027, in principle. Anyone currently building toward permanent residency in Japan, especially foreign spouses and long-term workers whose income sits near the household-average line, has reason to watch this closely, even though it is still a proposal rather than settled law.

Background

Permanent residency in Japan has long been assessed against three broad pillars: a clean legal record, the ability to support oneself without relying on public assistance, and a judgment that granting status serves Japan's national interest. Reporting around the draft ties the push to cases in which people obtained permanent residency and later applied for welfare benefits, prompting the agency to spell out the self-sufficiency pillar in much more concrete terms than before. The backdrop is a foreign resident population that reached 4.12 million at the end of 2025, still rising, with roughly 947,000 people currently holding permanent-residency status. Separately, the government has also opened an expert panel to examine whether to cap the foreign-resident population outright, with a related basic policy due by March 2027 — a distinct, slower-moving track from the guideline revision covered here.

What exactly changed

The draft adds or sharpens four tests. First, income: rather than a general "sufficient for independent livelihood" standard, applicants would need to show annual income that continuously exceeds the average for Japanese households, not just a one-time snapshot. Second, pension: applicants would need projected pension benefits equivalent to what 30 years of enrollment in the employees' pension system would produce; anyone short of that could still qualify by holding savings or other assets to cover the gap. Third, integration: assessors would weigh, as a factor that can count against an applicant, whether they show an understanding of Japan's customs and systems, and whether any school-age children in the household are enrolled in compulsory education. Fourth, family ties: the path for spouses of Japanese nationals or permanent residents would require five years of marriage and three years of Japan residence, up from three years of marriage and one year of residence today.

Who it affects

Two groups are most exposed. A foreign national married to a Japanese citizen for, say, two years, who was on track to apply next year under the current three-years-married rule, would instead need three more years of marriage and two more years of qualifying residence under the draft. A long-term skilled worker, engineer, or other visa holder whose salary sits at or just below the national household-average income, who might already meet today's looser "independent livelihood" bar, could find that same income insufficient once the average-income standard applies. Families with school-age children who have not been enrolled in Japan's compulsory education system would also see that weighed against them for the first time as an explicit factor, rather than folded into a general character assessment.

What this means in practice

None of this is retroactive to people who already hold permanent residency, and none of it is final while the guideline remains a draft. For anyone planning an application, the practical read is to track the dates: the income standard is reported to bite for applications filed from April 2026, and applies before the October 2026 guideline revision itself takes effect because a typical application already takes around ten months to process — an April 2026 filing would still be pending, not yet decided, when the revised guideline arrives in October. The broader package (pension, integration, spousal duration) is reported to apply only to applications filed from April 2027. That gap matters for timing an application. Anyone weighing a move to Japan or a longer-term stay can get the wider entry and residency picture on GoMate's [Japan country guide](/country-guides/japan), and should keep pension and tax records current in the meantime, since both are already checked closely under the existing guidelines and would only matter more under the draft.