Moving to Paraguay from Australia

Step 1

The documents an Australian assembles

Paraguay's Dirección Nacional de Migraciones (DNM) expects a specific, modest set of documents. As an Australian you gather these at home, before you fly:

• An Australian passport valid well beyond your planned travel — check the expiry date now, not at the airport.
• Your Australian birth certificate — a certified copy from the Births, Deaths and Marriages registry of the state or territory where you were born.
• An AFP National Police Check — the nationally coordinated criminal history check issued by the Australian Federal Police. This is the police record Paraguay expects from Australians; request it directly from the AFP.
• Your marriage certificate, if you are married and applying as a couple — the official certificate from the state or territory registry, not the decorative ceremonial certificate.
• Every one of these documents must then be apostilled — see Step 2 — and later translated into Spanish by a sworn translator in Paraguay.

Step 2

Apostilles — a single DFAT process

Australia belongs to the Hague Apostille Convention, so Paraguay accepts an Australian apostille and you skip consular legalization entirely. Australia keeps this simple: one authority handles every document.

• All Australian public documents — your AFP National Police Check, birth certificate and marriage certificate — are apostilled by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).
• DFAT issues apostilles through the Australian Passport Offices in the capital cities; you can lodge in person or by post. An original AFP National Police Check or a state registry certificate can be apostilled directly, without a notary step.
• If you use a digital AFP check, DFAT has specific verification requirements — for example a digital certificate must be recent and the original AFP source email may be required — so confirm the current rules before lodging.
• Sworn translation into Spanish happens after apostille, by a traductor público matriculado registered with Paraguay's courts. It is done in Paraguay, and getting it right the first time matters.

Be honest with yourself

Leaving Australia is a tax event — plan the exit

This is the section most relocation marketing quietly skips. The good news for Australians: unlike the United States, Australia taxes on residence, not citizenship — so once you genuinely cease to be an Australian tax resident, your liability to Australian tax on worldwide income ends. The catch is that ceasing residency is decided by the ATO's residency tests, not by you simply leaving, and the moment you cease residency triggers a tax event. When you stop being an Australian tax resident, CGT event I1 applies: you are treated as having disposed of your assets that are not 'taxable Australian property' — for example foreign shares and other overseas investments — at their market value on the day you cease residency, so unrealized gains can become taxable. You can instead elect to disregard CGT event I1 and defer it, but then those assets stay within the Australian CGT net until you actually sell them or become a resident again, and the choice must cover all such assets. The honest summary: Paraguay can genuinely lower your cost of living and give you a stable second residency, and a clean break from Australian tax residency is achievable — but the residency tests and the CGT-on-departure rules are real and need planning. Speak to an Australian cross-border accountant before you make any tax-driven decision or sell any asset.

Getting there

Flights, timeline, and your first weeks

A realistic picture of the move itself:

• There are no direct flights from Australia to Asunción. The usual route is Sydney to Santiago (operated nonstop by Qantas and LATAM) and then a connecting flight to Asunción; connections via Buenos Aires or São Paulo also work — budget a long travel day, or more, each way.
• Document preparation — ordering certificates, the DFAT apostille, courier time — typically runs a few weeks to a couple of months from Australia, paced by AFP and DFAT processing times. Confirm current turnaround before you commit to dates.
• You do not currently need a visa to enter Paraguay as an Australian tourist — Australia is covered by a visa waiver for tourism and business. Note this waiver is a renewable arrangement rather than permanent (most recently extended to 2027), so check it is still in force close to travel. You begin the residency process in person, after you arrive, at the DNM.
• The visa waiver does not permit work, and it is not residency — it is simply how you enter to start the process.

FAQ

Moving to Paraguay from Australia — FAQ