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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Queensland gained 14,718 people from the rest of Australia in the year to 31 March 2026, according to the national, state and territory population figures the Australian Bureau of Statistics released on Thursday 17 September. That is still the largest interstate gain of any state or territory. It is also the smallest of the past five quarterly readings, and 9,297 fewer than the 24,015 recorded for the year to March 2025.
For anyone buying a home in Queensland, the number matters because people who move from Sydney or Melbourne have been among the most active competitors for family houses in the south-east. The release shows that group is still arriving, at a rate of about 283 people a week after departures are taken off, and that the flow has been thinning for a year.
ABS, National, state and territory population, March 2026, released 17 September 2026; Queensland Government Statistician's Office population growth briefs.
What the ABS published
The release puts Queensland's population at 5,739,461 on 31 March 2026, which the Queensland Government Statistician's Office, in a brief issued the same morning, works out as 20.6 per cent of the national total. The state added 90,078 people over the twelve months, a growth rate of 1.6 per cent, against 1.4 per cent for Australia as a whole. In the March quarter alone the increase was 26,135.
Population change has three parts, and the release splits them. Natural increase, which is births less deaths, added 20,143 people. Net overseas migration added 55,217. Net interstate migration, which is the number of people arriving from other states and territories less the number leaving for them, added 14,718.
Related readBrisbane open homes draw 59 per cent fewer visitors than a year agoOverseas migration is therefore the largest source of new Queenslanders by a wide margin, at 61.3 per cent of the year's growth on the Statistician's Office's arithmetic. Interstate migration contributed 16.3 per cent and natural increase 22.4 per cent. A year earlier, in the twelve months to March 2025, interstate migration had supplied 24.3 per cent.
Only Western Australia grew faster than Queensland over the year, at 2.1 per cent. Victoria matched Queensland's 1.6 per cent. New South Wales grew by 1.1 per cent, South Australia by 1.0 per cent and Tasmania by 0.6 per cent.
A year of slowing arrivals
The interstate figure has fallen in each of the last four quarterly releases. The Statistician's Office briefs, which restate the ABS numbers for Queensland every three months, give the sequence.
Queensland Government Statistician's Office, Population growth, Queensland, briefs for the March 2025 to March 2026 quarters, from ABS data. Each point covers the twelve months to the end of that quarter.
From 24,015 to 14,718 is a fall of 38.7 per cent in twelve months. The decline has been steady, between roughly 1,800 and 2,600 people at each step, with no single quarter accounting for it.
The other two components barely moved. Net overseas migration was 54,535 in the year to March 2025 and 55,217 in the year to March 2026, a rise of 682. Natural increase went from 20,086 to 20,143. Queensland's total growth fell from 98,636 to 90,078, a drop of 8,558, and the interstate component explains all of it and a little more.
Where the movers come from
Interstate migration is a closed system: every person one state gains, another loses, and the eight figures add to zero. The March release shows how lopsided the exchange is.
Related readBuilding and pest inspections in Queensland: what they cover and miss| State or territory | Net gain or loss | Population growth |
|---|---|---|
| Queensland | +14,718 | 1.6% |
| Western Australia | +10,314 | 2.1% |
| Victoria | +82 | 1.6% |
| Tasmania | -98 | 0.6% |
| South Australia | -1,208 | 1.0% |
| Australian Capital Territory | -1,401 | 1.3% |
| Northern Territory | -1,589 | 1.5% |
| New South Wales | -20,818 | 1.1% |
ABS, National, state and territory population, March 2026, released 17 September 2026.
Two states gain in any meaningful number, and one state supplies nearly all of the loss. New South Wales gave up a net 20,818 residents to the rest of the country, while Queensland and Western Australia between them gained 25,032.
The release does not publish the state-to-state flows in its headline tables, but earlier analysis shows the direction. Mortgage Professional Australia reported in July, citing the Real Estate Institute of Queensland, that New South Wales accounted for about 13,000 of Queensland's net interstate gain in 2024-25, or 60.3 per cent. The institute's chief executive, Antonia Mercorella, linked the movement at the time to the price gap between the two capitals, which Cotality's June quarter figures put at $1,118,306 for the median Brisbane dwelling against $1,265,608 in Sydney.
Victoria sits almost exactly in balance, with a net gain of 82 people. The contest for people who change state is, on these figures, largely a movement out of New South Wales and into Queensland and the west.
What the net figure hides
A net figure is a difference between two much larger numbers. The ABS counts 98,121 people who moved to Queensland from elsewhere in Australia in the year to March 2026 and 83,403 who left Queensland for another state or territory.
So the 14,718 is not the number of interstate households looking for somewhere to live. Close to 100,000 people arrived, about 1,887 a week, and each of them needed a home to buy or rent. Over the same period more than 83,000 left, most of them freeing a dwelling as they went.
Related readBuying a house and land package in Queensland: two contracts, one homeThat turnover matters to buyers in two ways. Arrivals do not spread evenly: they concentrate in the south-east corner and a handful of coastal and regional cities. The Regional Australia Institute's index, reported by InDaily Queensland in July, found the Sunshine Coast alone attracted 8.8 per cent of the country's net internal migration in the year to March 2026, and the Fraser Coast 3.9 per cent. Departures are drawn from across the state. A suburb can feel the full weight of the inflow and little of the outflow.
The second point is that movers from dearer cities often arrive with the proceeds of a sale. A household that has sold in Sydney is buying in Brisbane with equity built in a more expensive market, which is why interstate buyers are usually discussed in connection with houses, not rentals.
What it means for buyers this spring
The release lands in a market that has already turned. Cotality's August index, published at the start of September, showed Brisbane home values down 2.7 per cent over three months, after a long run of increases.
A slower interstate inflow belongs beside that figure, though it cannot be read as its cause. The ABS data ends in March, before most of this year's price weakness appeared, and the decline in net arrivals began in the middle of 2025, when Brisbane prices were still climbing. What can be said is that one source of demand that helped push prices up in 2024 and early 2025 was already easing well before values turned.
For a buyer, that removes some pressure without removing the competition. Queensland is still the country's first choice for people changing state. The net gain of 14,718 is larger than Western Australia's 10,314, and every other state and territory except Victoria lost people. A well-located family home in a suburb favoured by southern arrivals will still be inspected by buyers who compare its price with Sydney's, not with last year's Brisbane.
Related readBuying a Queensland home from interstate or overseas: what differsOverseas migration is a different matter. At 55,217 it is nearly four times the interstate figure, but people arriving from overseas are more likely to begin as renters. Their effect on the owner-occupier market is slower and less direct, arriving through rents, investor demand and, eventually, first purchases.
How much weight the number can bear
Three cautions apply before the figure is used to judge a market.
It is dated. The reference date is 31 March, and the release came out five and a half months later. Anything that changed household plans over the winter, including the rate decisions and the tax changes for investors, is not in it.
It is a state figure. It does not say how many of the 98,121 arrivals settled in Brisbane, Cairns or Toowoomba, and it says nothing about what they bought or whether they bought at all. Estimates for cities and regions are published separately.
And it is an estimate. Nobody is required to register a move between states, so the interstate figures are estimates and are open to revision in later releases. The direction over four consecutive quarters is a sturdier guide than any one reading.
The next release
The ABS has scheduled the June quarter figures for 17 December 2026. That release will complete the 2025-26 financial year and allow a like-for-like comparison with the 21,595 net interstate gain recorded for 2024-25.
It will also be the first to cover months in which Brisbane values were falling while Sydney's and Melbourne's had been falling for longer. If the price gap between the capitals is one of the things that draws people north, as the Real Estate Institute of Queensland argued in July, then how that gap moves is one of the things that will shape the next few readings. The December figures will show whether the slide in net arrivals continued through the autumn or began to level out.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
