The 2026 Census release timeline

First release: June 2027 (exact date not yet confirmed)

This is the main release, covering around 75% of Census topics for all geographic levels. Some ABS data products will be available directly on the ABS website, and this is when Informed Decisions can start bringing datasets into our online toolkit and consultancy work. It includes data for both 'place of usual residence' (where people usually live) and 'place of enumeration' (where they were counted on Census night). Note that place of usual residence still excludes anyone who was overseas on Census night, as they are out of scope for the Census.

First release includes topics such as:

• Age structure
• Household type and size
• School education
• Birthplace, language, religion and proficiency in English
• Dwelling topics: structure, number of bedrooms and number of vehicles
• Housing tenure and costs
• Need for assistance and long-term health conditions
• Volunteering and unpaid work
• Other topics

We expect the new topics on gender and sexual orientation to be included in first release, provided the ABS considers the data quality high enough to release. The full list of first and second release variables is in the ABS Census Data Release plans.

This release is particularly useful for anyone working on planning that relies on dwelling information (for example, the number and type of new dwellings) or household information (for example, household size and formation).

Second release: October 2027 (exact date not yet confirmed)

This release includes more complex topics, mainly related to employment and education (the main datasets behind the Census component of our economic profile). These topics take longer to process because there is a human element involved: first release topics are mainly 'mark-a-box' responses, while second release topics require interpretation.

For example, occupation is coded against a classification of more than 1,100 categories, but the Census question simply asks: 'For the main job held last week, what are the tasks that the person usually performs in that occupation?' Responses like this need checking and interpretation, likely with some use of AI this time, but always with a human check to ensure consistency.

Second release includes topics such as:

• Qualification: level and field
• Employment status and labour force status
• Industry and occupation of employment
• Hours worked
• Method of travel to work, including the 'worked at home' category, which is likely to have changed since COVID-19

Second release also includes all datasets based on place of work, covering the usual geographic areas down to SA2 level, as well as a smaller geography called Work Destination Zones, the smallest unit that a workplace address is coded to, and the basis for the employment counts in the Economic Profile.

Cross-tabulations of place of work and place of usual residence are an important part of the economic story, including commuting data, where people work compared to where they live. These cross-tabulations become possible from second release.

Third release: from early 2028

This includes another component of travel to work, 'distance to work', used to calculate commute times, though it is not currently part of the Informed Decisions toolkit. It requires further calculation once second release data is available.

The other small but important parts of third release are:

• Homelessness: counts across all homelessness categories, not just people sleeping rough, which makes this an important part of the Housing Monitor tool. Homelessness data needs extra processing, as homeless populations otherwise sit within general enumeration counts and have to be extracted using a range of methods. There is no single Census question that asks 'Are you homeless?'
• SEIFA indexes: rankings of areas by socio-economic characteristics, combining multiple Census variables into an overall view of socio-economic status. These are useful for allocating resources based on need and for supporting grant funding applications for your area.

It is worth remembering that everything released from the Census is aggregate statistical data. The ABS applies strict confidentiality protections, including small random adjustments to low counts, so that no individual or household can be identified.

Informed Decisions will work with the ABS and our clients to get these datasets into our sites and out to our data users as soon as possible. We do not get early access to ABS datasets, we receive them at the same time as the general public, so there will be some processing time on our end as well. We will cover this in more detail in another article closer to release. Watch this space!

If you have any questions about the Census timeline or what it means for the Informed Decisions tools and our consultancy work, please get in touch with your Informed Decisions account manager.

Tell us what you want to know about the 2026 Census

We are shaping this Census coverage around the questions that matter most to you. If there is something you want to understand, how a topic is changing, when a dataset will land, or what it means for your community, we want to hear it. Visit our 2026 Census hub to submit your question, and our experts will work through them across the campaign.