Update (August 4, 2026): The Immigration Services Agency has now published the draft guideline discussed below. We break down what it actually says — including the income, pension and language standards — in our follow-up: Breaking: Japan Publishes the Draft of Its Stricter Permanent Residency Rules.

Please read this first: nothing described below is official yet.

Over the weekend of July 24–25, 2026, Asahi Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun, Kyodo News and Nikkei each reported that the Immigration Services Agency has drafted a revision to the Permanent Residency Guidelines. All of these reports are based on unnamed government sources.

The Immigration Services Agency has not published a draft, a press release, or an amended guideline. Until it does, the details can still change — and some of them probably will.

We are writing this now because our clients are already asking about it, and because if you are planning a permanent residency application in the next year or two, the reported timeline matters to you. Please treat this as an early heads-up, not as the new rules.

What the reports agree on

Four points appear in essentially every article, which is why we think they are worth paying attention to:

• An income floor tied to Japanese household averages. Applicants would need an annual income above the average for a Japanese household. Right now, income is assessed as part of a broader “stable livelihood” judgment, with no published number.
• A pension benefit standard. Applicants would need projected pension benefits equivalent to 30 years of enrollment in the Employees’ Pension Insurance (厚生年金) system at that income level.
• Savings can cover a pension shortfall. If your projected pension falls below the standard, the reports say you would be allowed to make up the difference with savings and other assets. This is an important detail, and it softens the pension rule considerably.
• Japanese language and knowledge of Japanese rules would be considered. These would feed into the “national interest” requirement — the third of the three legal requirements for permanent residency.

On timing, the reports are consistent. The guideline would be revised on October 1, 2026, and the new requirements would apply, in principle, to applications submitted from April 2027.

Some reports also suggest the shortened residence routes, including the spouse route, are being reviewed. The specifics have not been reported consistently, so we are not going to speculate on numbers here.

For context, Kyodo and Yomiuri both noted that roughly 947,000 people held permanent resident status in Japan as of the end of 2025.

The point that worries us most — and is the least clear

Asahi Shimbun added one sentence that the other outlets did not carry. After stating that the revised guideline would apply from April 2027 applications, Asahi wrote that the income standard would also be applied to applications submitted from April of this year (2026).

Read literally, that would mean applications filed since April 2026 — most of which will still be under review on October 1 — could be assessed against an income standard that did not exist on the day they were filed.

We want to be careful here. This is one sentence, in one newspaper, sourced to a draft nobody outside the agency has seen. Kyodo, Yomiuri and Nikkei all reported the April 2027 start without mentioning it.

It is entirely possible that the intended meaning is narrower — for example, looking at income from FY2026 onward when assessing a future application, rather than reopening pending cases. We do not know, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

So: there is such a report, and it is not clear yet. If you have an application pending that was filed in or after April 2026, this is worth being aware of, but there is nothing to act on until the agency publishes the actual guideline. Please do not withdraw a pending application over it.

Where the current requirements stand

It helps to know what you are actually being judged against today. The Permanent Residency Guidelines were last revised on February 24, 2026, and the current version requires:

Requirement	What it means now
Good conduct	A law-abiding daily life, with nothing in your conduct that would draw criticism as a resident
Independent livelihood	Sufficient assets or skills that a stable future is foreseeable. No published income figure
National interest — length of stay	10 years in Japan, including 5 years on a work or residence status
National interest — criminal record	No criminal fine (罰金) or custodial sentence
National interest — public duties	Taxes, pension and health insurance paid on time, plus proper immigration notifications
National interest — period of stay	You must hold the longest period of stay available for your status (usually 5 years)
National interest — other	Compliance with landing permission criteria; no public health concerns

A note on traffic tickets, because clients ask us about this constantly. Most minor traffic violations in Japan — going a little over the speed limit, a parking ticket — are dealt with under the traffic penalty notice system, and what you pay is a hansokukin (反則金). That is an administrative charge for a traffic offense, not a criminal fine, so it does not leave you with a criminal record and it is not what the guideline means by 罰金.

That said, a long list of traffic violations can still weigh against you when your overall conduct is assessed, so it is not something to be casual about. And serious offenses — drunk driving, driving without a license, a hit-and-run — are handled as criminal matters and are a completely different situation. If any of those apply to you, please raise it before you apply rather than after.

Two other things about the current guideline already catch people out.

1. Paying late still counts against you. The public duties requirement looks at whether you paid on time, not just whether you have paid. A pension premium settled two years late is still assessed negatively.

2. The “longest period of stay” rule has a deadline. A transitional measure treats a 3-year period of stay as acceptable until March 31, 2027. After that, most applicants will need a 5-year period of stay, and this applies to spouse and Long-Term Resident holders too.

If you are on a 3-year card and have been thinking about applying “sometime,” that window is the more urgent deadline. It is already in force, unlike anything in the July reports.

Spouses and children of Japanese nationals, permanent residents and special permanent residents remain exempt from the good conduct and independent livelihood requirements, and can apply after 3 years of genuine married life plus 1 year of residence.

What is worth doing now, under the current rules

We are not going to tell you to rush an application you are not ready for, and we are certainly not going to tell you to act on a newspaper report. A rejected application is worse than a well-timed one. But the following are worth doing regardless of what the agency announces in October.

Check your pension and tax record. Request your record and look for late payments or gaps. If there is a gap, the sooner you address it and start building a clean run of on-time payments, the better. This matters under the rules as they stand today.

Check your period of stay. If you hold 3 years, the transitional measure ends on March 31, 2027, so getting to 5 years is worth a real conversation with your employer about your contract and your company’s category. This is settled, published policy — not a report.

Do not restructure your life around a newspaper report. No income figure has been published. The reports do not even specify which statistic would be used for the “average Japanese household.” Quitting a job or moving money based on a number nobody has announced is not a plan.

Our honest read

The direction of travel here is not new. The Business Manager criteria were tightened in October 2025, the permanent residency guideline was revised in February 2026, and processing times at the Tokyo Bureau keep stretching. This looks like a continuation rather than a surprise.

What we do not yet know is the part that decides individual cases: the actual thresholds, how household income will be counted for couples, what “understanding of Japanese rules” means in practice at the counter, and whether applications already pending are really affected. Those details will come from the Immigration Services Agency, and we will write again once they do.

Whether any of this affects you depends on your own record, your status and your timing, which a general article cannot settle. If you would like to talk it through, we take consultations and would be glad to hear from you.

Last updated: July 26, 2026. Based on reporting by Asahi Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun, Kyodo News and Nikkei (July 24–25, 2026), and on the Permanent Residency Guidelines as revised February 24, 2026.

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Breaking: Japan Publishes the Draft of Its Stricter Permanent Residency Rules (August 4, 2026)