Global Talent visa: success rates by endorsing body
Published 14 October 2026
Nick Nason, solicitor and principal of Edgewater Legal, frequently advises international tech talent in the Global Talent immigration route. Find out more about our services here.
If you advise on Global Talent visas, you will have heard plenty of anecdotes about which endorsing bodies are "easy" and which are "hard".
A Freedom of Information response from the Home Office (FOI2026/10735, dated 13 October 2026) now gives us hard numbers, covering every endorsement outcome from January 2023 to the end of July 2026, broken down by body and by fast-track status.
This post sets out what the data says about the five merits-based endorsing bodies: Tech Nation, the Arts Council, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society.
How I have calculated the rates
The Home Office reports each body's applications in three outcome categories: endorsed, not endorsed, and "other (withdrawn / re-routed)".
My headline measure is the decided-case success rate: endorsed ÷ (endorsed + not endorsed).
I have left out withdrawn and re-routed cases because they are not refusals, and the data does not show what happened to those applicants next. For completeness, the summary table also shows endorsed as a share of all applications.
The headline numbers
| Body | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (to July)* | All years | Endorsed ÷ all applications | Decided cases |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Society | 84.8% | 80.9% | 72.1% | 81.0% | 79.0% | 70.3% | 5,355 |
| British Academy | 86.3% | 77.0% | 75.0% | 70.5% | 76.5% | 70.2% | 4,587 |
| Royal Academy of Engineering | 76.0% | 78.6% | 71.0% | 77.0% | 75.0% | 64.9% | 4,344 |
| Arts Council | 69.1% | 52.2% | 48.0% | 57.5% | 54.8% | 49.8% | 9,092 |
| Tech Nation | 37.1% | 28.7% | 17.9% | 8.8% | 24.8% | 24.2% | 13,672 |
*The Home Office notes that not all 2026 decisions have been returned. See the caveats below.
There are three clear tiers. The academies endorse roughly three in four decided applications. The Arts Council sits at roughly one in two. Tech Nation endorses roughly one in four (over 3+ years, but one in 10 recently). I have written about this in a separate post.
Arts Council: down from 2023, then broadly flat
The Arts Council's decided-case success rate dropped from 69.1% in 2023 to 52.2% in 2024 and 48.0% in 2025. Over the same period its volume rose sharply, from 1,791 applications in 2023 to 3,461 in 2025.
The 2026 figure of 57.5% should be treated with particular caution. The Arts Council has 191 applications in 2026 with no recorded outcome, which is a large enough gap to move the rate noticeably once those decisions come in.
The academies: consistently higher grant-rate, but not uniform
The British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society all sit in a band of roughly 70–86% across the period.
- Royal Society: 84.8% in 2023, 72.1% in 2025, and 81.0% provisionally in 2026.
- British Academy: the clearest downward trend of the three, from 86.3% in 2023 to 70.5% in 2026 (provisional).
- Royal Academy of Engineering: the most stable, between 71% and 79% in every year.
Fast track: only available on the academic routes
Fast track is not available for Tech Nation or Arts Council applications, which is why the Home Office reports zero fast-track cases for both bodies in every year. It exists only on the academic routes: the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society.
Fast track is a gateway for applicants who already hold a recognised fellowship, award or post, or who will work on substantial grant-funded research at a listed organisation. The applicant's standing has in effect been vouched for by an external funder or institution, so the application is assessed against that existing evidence.
That helps explain the numbers. Fast-track applicants are endorsed at very high rates, and the headline academy figures are partly a product of how many fast-track cases each body handles.
| Body | Fast-track success rate (decided) | Fast-track decided cases | Standard success rate (decided) | Standard decided cases |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Society | 98.9% | 2,366 | 63.2% | 2,989 |
| Royal Academy of Engineering | 98.4% | 1,184 | 66.2% | 3,160 |
| British Academy | 96.7% | 2,175 | 58.2% | 2,412 |
All years, 2023 to July 2026.
Across the three academies, fast-track applicants were endorsed in roughly 94–100% of decided cases in every year. Standard-track applicants were endorsed in roughly 58–66% of decided cases overall.
A gap of that size is what you would expect when fast-track applicants have already met a demanding external test before they apply, though the data cannot tell us how much of the gap is down to that and how much to how the bodies assess the two routes.
For a client who cannot meet any of the GTE 8.2 (fast track) conditions, the standard-track (this is Route 4, where applicants are Peer Reviewed for endorsement) column is therefore a better guide than the headline rate. Standard-track success rates by year:
| Year | British Academy | Royal Academy of Engineering | Royal Society |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 65.7% | 66.9% | 69.1% |
| 2024 | 57.1% | 70.6% | 66.8% |
| 2025 | 61.3% | 63.9% | 58.3% |
| 2026 (to July)* | 51.0% | 64.0% | 63.2% |
The British Academy's standard-track rate in particular has slipped, from 65.7% in 2023 to 51.0% in the first seven months of 2026. The Royal Society's standard-track rate also fell between 2023 and 2025.
*Provisional, as not all 2026 decisions have been returned.
Caveats
- 2026 is incomplete. The Home Office says not all decisions have been returned. For 2023 to 2025 the outcome categories add up exactly to total applications. For 2026 they do not. The shortfall, which is applications without a recorded outcome, is 355 for the Royal Academy of Engineering, 191 for the Arts Council, 68 for the Royal Society, 10 for Tech Nation and 8 for the British Academy. Treat every 2026 rate as provisional.
- The data is unverified. The Home Office states that the figures are unverified, subject to change and may contain inaccuracies.
- Withdrawn and re-routed cases are excluded from the decided-case rate. If a body re-routes a large number of applications, its rate on decided cases may flatter it compared with a measure that counts all applications. The final column of the headline table gives the all-applications figure.
- These are aggregate figures. They say nothing about the strength of individual applications, and a body's overall success rate is not a prediction for any particular applicant.
What this means in practice
- Do not treat the bodies as interchangeable. The difference between roughly 25%, 55% and 75% decided-case success rates is large enough to matter when a client has a choice of route.
- Fast-track eligibility is a major advantage where it is available, at the three academies.
- Application quality matters most where the rates are lowest. At Tech Nation, with the highest volume and the lowest success rate, careful evidence and criteria mapping are likely to be decisive.
Nick Nason, solicitor and principal of Edgewater Legal, frequently advises international tech talent in the Global Talent immigration route. Find out more about our services here.
Source
Home Office, UK Visas and Immigration, Freedom of Information Request FOI2026/10735, response dated 13 October 2026, with Annex data covering calendar years 2023 to 2025 and 2026 to the end of July. You can see it here.