Check if you're eligible for bowel screening

Free bowel screening is offered every 2 years to:

• People aged 58 to 74, living in the Northland and Auckland areas (including Counties Manukau and Waitematā), and people living in the South Island.
• People aged 60 to 74 living in the rest of Aotearoa New Zealand (the Central and Midland regions of the North Island). 
• People eligible for publicly funded health care. 

Publicly funded health and disability — Health New Zealandexternal link

You will be sent a bowel screening kit around the time of your next birthday or contacted by a local healthcare provider.

The starting age for bowel screening is being lowered to 58 for everyone. The first stage began in October 2025 in Northland, Auckland and the South Island, and the second stage will begin in March 2026 for the rest of the country.

Now is a great time to check that we have your correct address, so your bowel screening kit reaches you without delay. If your address has changed, please update your details with your GP or email your new address to info@bowelscreening.health.nz. When emailing, include your date of birth or National Health Index (NHI) number to help us update your records.

To find out if you are eligible, call us on 0800 924 432

If you live in Northland, Auckland or the South Island | Te Waipounamu.

If you live in the Midland | Te Manawa Taki region (Bay of Plenty, Lakes, Tairāwhiti, Waikato, Taranaki) or the Central | Te Ikaroa region (Wellington, Kapiti Coast, Hutt Valley, Hawke's Bay, Manawatū, Whanganui, Wairarapa).

Free bowel screening is offered every two years to Māori and Pacific peoples aged 50–74 who live in MidCentral, Tairāwhiti, or Waikato and were invited to join the age extension to 50 pilot.

Lowering the starting age of bowel screening to 58 years will make screening available to about 122,000 more people in the first year.

Bowel screening requires support and treatment services to be available, such as colonoscopy for people who have a positive test. To ensure that the best possible services are provided by the health system, people who are newly eligible are invited on a staggered basis, around the time of their next birthday.

This is the approach that has been used by the National Bowel Screening Programme since it began to rollout in 2017. People in the eligible age range are then sent a bowel screening test kit every 2 years.

Everyone who was 58 or 59 when age range extension was introduced in their region will be invited within a year. This means all newly eligible people throughout the country will have been invited for free bowel screening by the end of March 2027. People who were aged 57 when their region introduced age extension will receive a kit around the time they turn 58. 

Between 2022 and 2025, free bowel screening was offered to Māori and Pacific Peoples aged 50 to 74 who lived in the MidCentral, Tairāwhiti, or Waikato areas, as part of a two-year learning pilot.

This pilot has now finished. If you were part of the pilot, you’ll continue to be invited for bowel screening until you turn 75, as long as you’re still eligible and live in one of those areas.

Contact us for more information about the pilot.

• Phone: 0800 924 432.