Vanessa Ganguin’s briefing for BritishAmerican Business on the expansion of the High Potential Individual visa

12 November 2025

Managing Partner Vanessa Ganguin has written this briefing on the expansion of the High Potential Individual (HPI) visa and why it’s good news for UK and US businesses as well as recent US graduates.

You can find full details on the changes to this work visa for people graduating from a ‘Global Universities List’ of highly-ranked international universities here.

Every November UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) publishes a list of around 40 top non-UK global universities which would qualify graduates for one of the UK’s most light-touch work visas. Those who were awarded their degree in the past five years from a university that was on the list for that year may apply for the two-year HPI visa, along with family dependants. If you have a PhD or other doctoral qualification, the visa will last for three years.

This November the list has been expanded to 80 universities. What’s more, the doubling of qualifying universities has been retrospective, applying to previous years’ lists too. You can find all the lists here. It may be worth checking the list again if you have graduated from a top international university in the past five years as previous lists have all been expanded with double the amount of qualifying universities.

Why the High Potential Individual visa is useful for US employers.

The HPI visa is an unsponsored work visa. This means those on this route are not restricted to taking up employment with a business operating in the UK that holds a sponsor licence and any employment they undertake will not be subject to belonging to a standard occupation classification (SOC) code or minimum salary restrictions.

The two-year visa (three for postgrads) allows those on it to bring family dependants to the UK to look for work, work for an employer, work for themselves or set up a business.

As there are over 30 universities across the US whose recent graduates can use this route, it is a quick and easy way for US companies to send those eligible to the UK to work, service British clients and market a business without the major restrictions on permissible activities of travelling to the UK as a visitor.

For those that qualify it is a cheaper alternative to using an Expansion Worker or Skilled Worker sponsor licence with their bureaucratic requirements and strict salary and skills level thresholds.

For some companies facing currently tightening US immigration restrictions it may be easier to send migrant workers who graduated at qualifying universities to the UK on a HPI visa for two or three years before bringing them to the US on an intracompany transfer with a L1 visa once they have developed expertise in the company’s products, services or technology.

An HPI visa does not lead to settlement in the UK, though it does allow switching to another immigration route that may count towards settlement. At any point before the HPI visa expires, people may switch into other permitted work visas leading to settlement, such as Skilled Worker, Scale up or Global Talent visas.