Direct answer: if you are an unregistered provider already delivering Supported Independent Living, you must have submitted a registration application to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission by 1 October 2026. You do not have to be fully registered by then, and no date has been published by which registration must be completed. The other date circulating, 1 July 2026, is when the new rules commenced and when registration group 0138 replaced claim code 0115. It was not an application deadline. Both dates are real; they do different jobs.
Published 31 July 2026. Sources checked the same day. If anything below is out of date or wrong, tell us at hello@silready.com and we will correct it and say we did.
| Date | What actually happens | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1 July 2026 (passed) |
Mandatory registration for SIL commences. Registration group 0138 – Assistance with Supported Independent Living takes effect. Claim code 0115 applies only to supports delivered before this date. The new SIL practice standards begin applying to providers already registered under group 115. | NDIA, DSC |
| 1 July – 1 Oct 2026 (now) |
Transition window. An unregistered provider that was delivering SIL before 1 July 2026 may keep delivering it, and may keep being paid, while it prepares and lodges its application. | NDIA |
| 1 October 2026 (the deadline) |
Last day to submit a registration application. "Unregistered SIL providers will have until 1 October 2026 to submit their registration application to the Commission." A provider that has not applied must cease providing SIL supports. | DSC, NDIA |
| After 1 Oct 2026 | No published date by which registration must be completed. Applications are assessed and audited on their own timetable. The obligation attaching to 1 October is to have lodged. | See "the gap in the guidance" below |
This is the single most consequential detail and it is the one most often lost. The published obligation is to submit an application. Registration itself involves an independent audit by an approved quality auditor, which takes months and is not within your control. If the rule were "be registered by 1 October", it would be unachievable for most providers reading this in August. It is not the rule.
The practical read: get an application in. A lodged application is what preserves your ability to keep operating and keep being paid past 1 October. The audit follows.
Your date is 1 October 2026. You were permitted to continue after 1 July because you were already delivering SIL before that date. You must submit a registration application by 1 October to keep going. You do not need the audit finished. If 1 October passes without an application, you must stop delivering SIL supports.
Your date was 1 July 2026, and it has passed. You are not facing the 1 October lodgement deadline, because you are registered. What changed for you on 1 July is the substance: the new SIL practice standards now apply to you, and claiming moved from 0115 to 0138. Your exposure is not a registration form, it is whether your practice and evidence meet the new standards at your next audit. If you have not read the new standards against your actual service, that is the work in front of you.
Neither date helps you. New entrants to the market cannot provide SIL until they have successfully registered and been audited. The transitional arrangement is specifically for providers who were already delivering SIL before 1 July 2026. You cannot start trading on 1 October by lodging an application on 30 September. Plan the audit into your start date.
For services delivered from 1 July 2026 onward, you may pay a SIL invoice where the provider is registered under 0138, or is an unregistered provider that was delivering SIL before 1 July 2026 and has lodged an application. After 1 October 2026, an invoice from a SIL provider that is neither registered nor has an application on foot should be rejected. The NDIA's wording is that plan managers may only pay where "the provider is registered under 0138, or an unregistered provider that delivered SIL supports prior to 1 July 2026 and has lodged an application" (source).
The awkward part of your job is that "has lodged an application" is a fact you have to take from the provider. Ask for it in writing, keep it, and date it.
There are pages in circulation headlined around 1 July that a reader could take as an application deadline. We checked the two most prominent before writing this, because a claim that other people are wrong is worth nothing unless you have actually read them. Here is what we found, and it is more boring than the accusation.
Sky Staff's page is headlined "Mandatory SIL Registration 2026: Everything Providers Need to Know" and opens with "From 1 July 2026, every provider delivering Supported Independent Living supports must be registered with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission under a new standalone registration class: 0138." Read alone, that sentence would frighten you. But the same page then states plainly: "You do not need to be fully registered on July 1, 2026", and its key-dates table gives October 2026 as the "cut-off for unregistered providers who have not commenced registration." In context, Sky Staff is correct. The opening sentence is compressed, not wrong.
ClinicComply publishes under the headline "NDIS SIL Mandatory Registration 2026: The Provider Checklist Before 1 July" and then draws the distinction explicitly: "Mandatory registration commenced on 1 July 2026, but the NDIS Commission's transitional arrangements mean a provider is not required to have completed registration by then", followed by "an unregistered SIL or platform provider who has not applied for registration by 1 October 2026 must stop providing those supports." Also correct.
Provider+ states it cleanly: unregistered SIL providers "will be required to apply for registration by 1 October 2026 to continue delivering SIL supports during the transition period."
One page we could not verify. Centre of Hope is indexed under the title "SIL Mandatory Registration 2026: 1 July Deadline + Penalties". Its robots.txt blocked our automated retrieval on 31 July 2026, so we have not read the body and make no claim about what it says. The title is what search engines show; the article may well draw the same distinction the others do.
Two things are genuinely unresolved in the published material, and it is worth saying so rather than papering over them.
Where a claim on this page rests on a secondary source rather than the NDIA or the Commission, we have said which. The registration-group detail and the new-entrant rule come from DSC's summary, which is a well-regarded sector publication but is not the regulator. If you are making a decision with money attached, read the NDIS Commission's own mandatory registration page for SIL and take advice.
| If you | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Lodge before 1 Oct | You may continue delivering SIL during assessment, and plan managers may continue paying you, on the basis that you were delivering before 1 July 2026 and have an application on foot. |
| Do not lodge by 1 Oct | You must cease providing SIL supports. Plan managers should stop paying your SIL invoices. Participants are told by the NDIA that if their provider does not register, "you will need to move to a registered provider." |
| Lodge, then fail the audit | Not addressed in the published transition material. Treat as unresolved and get advice specific to your situation. |
| Are a new entrant and start early | You are delivering a registrable support without registration. The transition arrangement does not cover you. |
The practical consequence for participants sits behind all of this: a provider that stops being able to deliver SIL is a household that has to change providers. That is the reason the lodgement date has teeth.
Every date on this page comes from one of these. All checked 31 July 2026.
SIL Ready sells self-assessment documentation. We have a commercial interest in providers preparing for registration, which is a reason to check this page against the sources above rather than take it on trust. We have linked all of them for that purpose. This page is general information, not legal advice.