Prepare for the OPRA exam and Australian registration.

The Overseas Pharmacist Readiness Assessment (OPRA) is the Australian Pharmacy Council's exam on its Knowledge Stream, for pharmacists who qualified in any country other than Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK or the USA. It has 120 multiple-choice questions in 150 minutes: a closed-book, computer-based exam at approved test centres, across five content areas, the largest being therapeutics and patient care at 45%.

The APC's fees are $810 for the eligibility check, $2,245 per OPRA attempt and $300 for a Skills Assessment Outcome if you need one for a visa application: $3,355 for one attempt (our sum). A first provisional registration with the Pharmacy Board then costs $421 ($397 in NSW, our sum; schedule effective 1 October 2026), plus any English test you need. Check the APC and the Board before you pay.

22-24 March 2027 (registration 19 January 2027 to 22 February 2027; results 6 May 2027); 26-28 July 2027 (registration 11 May 2027 to 28 June 2027; results 9 September 2027); 8-10 November 2027 (registration 14 September 2027 to 11 October 2027; results 23 December 2027). You can only register once you have completed the eligibility check and received the APC’s email saying you are eligible. The APC doesn’t guarantee your application will be assessed in time for your preferred exam, and asks you to lodge at least 8 weeks before registration closes (its overview says “make sure”; its process steps say “it may help”).

We have found no OPRA pass rate published by the APC, so treat any site quoting one with caution. The OPRA uses scaled scoring. The passing score is set by psychometric standard setting, you must meet the standard for your randomly allocated exam form, and the APC does not disclose raw scores or percentages. The APC Annual Report 2024-25 gives volumes: 6,805 exams attempted in 2024-25, against 6,856 the year before (all APC exams including the Intern Written, not the OPRA alone), with no pass rates. The OPRA replaced the KAPS: the last KAPS sitting was November 2024 and the OPRA began in March 2025. The APC describes the redesign as a change in how questions are selected and scored (the Rasch model), a revision of the content areas, a reduced exam duration and a single paper instead of two, with greater emphasis on therapeutics and applying knowledge.

You can't practise as a pharmacist in Australia until you are registered. Before any supervised practice, your provisional registration and your supervised practice arrangements must both be approved by the Board and showing on the public register. Whether you can work in another role depends on your visa, which is a question for the Department of Home Affairs.

The APC says some pharmacists take 6-18 months, and some may have to wait years to secure a visa and a job. It also says completing the process does not guarantee a job or a successful migration.