Austrade Export Market Development Grants (EMDG): Round 4 Historical Reference and How to Prepare

Status: historical reference. Austrade’s official EMDG page states that “Applications are closed for Round 4 of EMDG” and that “Currently there are no grant rounds open to applications. We will update our website when timing of the next grant round is confirmed.” Round 4’s final application deadline was 20 December 2024. There is no published opening date for a next round, and no application you can submit today.

If you arrived here looking for a deadline, that is the honest answer: there isn’t one right now, and anybody quoting you a specific date for the next EMDG round is guessing. What you can do is understand exactly how the last round worked, what the government has been told to change, and what evidence you should be assembling in the meantime — because when EMDG rounds open, they have historically closed fast.

This page is a preparation guide, not a live listing.

EMDG at a Glance (Current Status)

About That “Up to $150,000” Figure

You will still find advisers and aggregator sites advertising EMDG as a path to AUD 150,000. Treat that as history, not as a forward-looking promise.

The maximum amounts Austrade published for Round 4 were considerably smaller: $20,000 up to $30,000 per financial year for Tier 1, $20,000 up to $50,000 for Tier 2, $20,000 up to $80,000 for Tier 3, and up to $50,000 per financial year for representative bodies. Grant agreements ran for up to two financial years, covering 2025–26 and 2026–27.

Those caps also come with a matching obligation. Round 4 applicants had to show they could spend at least $20,000 per financial year of their own money on the proposed eligible activities — money that could not come from Commonwealth, state, territory or local government sources. In other words, EMDG was never free money for a marketing budget you did not already have. It was a co-investment, and Austrade wanted proof you could carry your half.

Because the program is under review, the next round’s ceilings could move in either direction. Build your export budget on what your business can actually fund, then treat any future grant as acceleration rather than as the thing that makes the plan viable.

What Round 4 Actually Looked Like (And Why Speed Mattered)

Round 4 is the clearest evidence of how competitive this program has become. Austrade’s own Round 4 statistics tell the story:

• The representative bodies tier opened at 10 am AEDT on 6 November 2024 and closed at 5 pm AEDT on 20 December 2024.
• Tiers 1, 2 and 3 opened at 10 am AEDT on 12 November 2024.
• Tier 1 and Tier 3 closed at 5 pm AEDT on 20 December 2024.
• Tier 2 closed at 1:30 pm AEDT on 12 November 2024 — roughly three and a half hours after it opened, because the available funding was fully subscribed.

In total, 2,693 applications were received. As at 31 March 2026, Austrade reported $218.1 million committed to 2,232 grantees: $17.2m in Tier 1, $94.4m in Tier 2, $96.2m in Tier 3, and $10.4m to representative bodies. The average annual grant value across executed agreements was $54,000, well above the roughly $24,000 average of earlier rounds.

The Tier 2 outcome is the detail worth remembering. Under a first-in, first-served model, a genuinely strong applicant who submitted at 2 pm was simply too late. Preparation was not a nice-to-have; it was the whole contest.

The 2026 Independent Review: Why the Next Round May Not Look Like the Last One

The Export Market Development Grants Act 1997 requires an independent review of the program every five years. Austrade says the Export Market Development Grants Independent Review 2026, conducted by Mr Timothy Yeend, is complete. The Minister for Trade and Tourism, Senator Don Farrell, has released the report and is considering its recommendations.

The report contains 29 recommendations aimed at making the program fairer, simpler and more accessible. The changes most relevant to a future applicant include:

• Replacing first-in, first-served with merit-based assessment, judged on the quality of the application, the capability of the business and the expected benefits — rather than on how fast you can click submit.
• Consolidating the three business tiers into two: one for businesses exporting for the first time, and one for businesses expanding existing export activity.
• Returning to annual application rounds and annual grant agreements.
• Better communication with applicants during assessment.
• Improving the online portal, including examining where artificial intelligence could sensibly assist the application and assessment process.

Two important caveats. First, these are recommendations under consideration, not settled policy. Second, until Austrade publishes the next round’s materials, nobody can tell you the eligibility bands, tier definitions, application dates or funding caps that will apply.

What you can reasonably infer is a direction of travel: if merit assessment replaces the race to submit, the quality of your export plan becomes the deciding factor rather than your reflexes. That is good news for businesses willing to do the work early.

Round 4 Eligibility as Your Planning Baseline

Use the Round 4 criteria as a rough shape for the kind of business EMDG supports, not as a checklist you can bank on.

Across all tiers, Round 4 applicants needed a valid Australian Business Number, had to have operated under the same ABN for at least two years, and had to be tax compliant and fit to receive a grant. Everyone needed a high-quality plan to market that was specific to their own business — not a template and not borrowed from another applicant.

Tier 1 (ready to export) was for businesses that had not exported before but were ready to start. Turnover had to be more than $100,000 and less than $20 million. Grants ran $20,000 to $30,000 per financial year, and applicants had to demonstrate export readiness through recognised training or Austrade’s Export Readiness Test. Lifetime access was capped at two financial years of Tier 1 funding.

Tier 2 (exporting within existing markets) required turnover above $500,000 and below $20 million, plus evidence of recent export sales. Grants ran $20,000 to $50,000 per financial year, with a lifetime cap of four financial years at this tier.

Tier 3 (exporting to new key markets) required turnover above $1 million and below $20 million, evidence of recent export sales, and a plan to enter one of 27 nominated key markets where the business had not previously sold. Grants ran $20,000 to $80,000 per financial year, again capped at four financial years.

Across all tiers, total lifetime access to EMDG was capped at eight financial years, which need not be consecutive.

How the Round 4 Application Worked

There is no live application form to submit now, but the Round 4 process is useful preparation for a future opening. Austrade’s application pages set out a practical checklist that applicants had to follow:

1. Read the round’s guidelines. The guidelines set the legal eligibility rules, eligible products and expenses, tier conditions, grant limits, and evidence requirements. A future round may replace these documents, so do not treat Round 4’s checklist as a promise about the next round.
2. Set up identity and business access. Applicants needed a Digital ID through myID and had to link it to the business in Relationship Authorisation Manager. The person submitting needed authority to act for the applicant.
3. Identify the business activity. The application asked for the four-digit Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification code that best described the main business activity.
4. Choose the correct tier. Tier 1 was for a business that had not exported before and was ready to start. Tier 2 was for an exporter expanding activity in existing markets. Tier 3 was for an exporter pursuing a strategic shift into a new key market. Applicants had to apply for the relevant tier rather than describe one plan vaguely across all three.
5. Complete the plan to market in the online form. Austrade did not accept a separate generic plan as a substitute. The answers had to describe the proposed export marketing and promotional activities, business goals, measures of success and planned eligible expenditure for each financial year. Tier 2 and Tier 3 plans also had to explain the relevant expansion within existing markets or shift into new key markets.
6. Complete the mandatory templates for the selected tier. The templates were uploaded with the online application. The application pages also provided sample forms and sample plans so applicants could see the questions before drafting.
7. Prepare evidence before submission. Depending on the tier, this included financial statements, tax-compliance evidence, bank statements showing the capacity to match the grant and spend at least $20,000 per financial year, evidence of export readiness for Tier 1 or past export sales for Tiers 2 and 3, evidence of substantially Australian origin, and any applicable trust deed. Supporting documents had to be PDFs rather than screenshots and had to stay under the stated file-size limit.
8. Submit when Austrade opens a round. Round 4 applications were submitted through the online EMDG process and were assessed in chronological order after the round closed. That process is historical; Austrade has not yet said whether a future round will use the same order or portal steps.

The application evidence mattered because EMDG was matched funding, not an advance against an uncosted idea. A strong plan connected a defined export market to a specific activity, a reasonable budget and an observable result. For example, a distributor visit, a foreign-buyer program or a translated product campaign should have had a clear market purpose and a way to show what happened. A list of conferences without a buyer or export objective was much weaker than a smaller plan with named prospects, dates, deliverables and follow-up measures.

What to Do While the Program Is Closed

The businesses that did well in Round 4 were not the ones who started writing in November. Here is how to use a quiet period productively.

Write a one-page export plan summary now. Target markets, buyer type, channel strategy, activities, milestones, KPIs. If you cannot fit it on a page, you do not yet have a plan — you have an intention. This document also forces sales, marketing and finance to agree on what you are actually doing.

Name specific markets. “Asia” is a continent, not a market. Pick one or two countries and justify them with buyer behaviour, category demand, regulatory realities and the channel that fits. If merit assessment arrives as recommended, this is precisely where applications will be separated.

Gather evidence that the market is responding. Buyer correspondence, meeting schedules, distributor interest, pilot campaign metrics, early overseas revenue, documented feedback from serious prospects. You do not need guaranteed success; you need proof you are not guessing.

Build the recordkeeping system before you spend. Contracts with deliverables, clean invoices, proof of payment, a tracker that ties each expense to an activity and a date. If your accounting software supports tagging, set up an EMDG tag now. Audits can occur after payment, so keep records as though one is inevitable.

Sort out your matched funding. If the next round retains a co-contribution requirement anything like Round 4’s, you will need to demonstrate non-government money of your own. Work out where it comes from before you are drafting under time pressure.

Check your ABN history and tax compliance. The two-year ABN requirement and the “fit to receive a grant” test are unglamorous and non-negotiable. Find out now if you have a problem there.

Subscribe to the EMDG Update newsletter. Austrade’s EMDG page offers a subscription for program updates, and that is where round timing and revised guidelines are announced. Given how quickly Tier 2 closed in Round 4, being on the list is worth more than any amount of speculation about dates.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Chasing a headline number. Design your export push around what you need to do, then see what a grant can cover. Applications built backwards from a maximum grant amount tend to read that way.

Waiting for the announcement before starting. The announcement is the starting gun, not the training period. Round 4’s Tier 2 closed the same day it opened.

Writing in fog. Vague “global expansion” language is unassessable. Narrow to one or two markets and one or two buyer segments, with milestones someone else could verify.

Confusing motion with progress. “We will attend events” is motion. “We will book 20 qualified meetings and progress five distributor discussions” is progress.

Assuming the old rules will carry over. Read the guidelines published for the round you are applying to, every time. The 2026 review makes it likely that tiers, assessment and timing will change.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I apply for EMDG right now?

No. Austrade states that applications for Round 4 are closed and that there are no grant rounds currently open to applications.

When does the next round open?

Austrade has not announced a date. Its official page says it will update the website when the timing of the next grant round is confirmed. Any specific date you see elsewhere is speculation.

Is Round 4 funding still being paid out?

Round 4 grant agreements cover eligible activities in the 2025–26 and 2026–27 financial years, and Austrade continued reporting commitments through 31 March 2026. If you hold an agreement, manage it through the round’s own guidelines and milestone reporting.

Will the tiers stay the same?

Possibly not. The 2026 Independent Review recommends consolidating three business tiers into two. That recommendation is not yet policy.

Do I have to spend my own money too?

Round 4 required at least $20,000 per financial year of your own non-government funds, matched against the grant. Whether the next round keeps this requirement is unconfirmed, but planning for a genuine co-contribution is prudent.

Can I claim the same expense under another grant?

Generally no — you cannot claim the same expense twice across programs. Keep clean records and be transparent about other funding sources.

Can Austrade audit my claim?

Yes, including after payment. Strong documentation is the cheapest insurance available.

Official Source

Check the status of the next round, the published guidelines, and the EMDG Update newsletter subscription on the official Austrade page: https://www.austrade.gov.au/en/how-we-can-help-you/grants/export-market-development-grants

The Export Market Development Grants Independent Review 2026 is also published by Austrade and is worth reading if you intend to apply in a future round — it is the clearest available signal of where the program is heading.