Canada Express Entry 2026: Latest Draws, CRS Cut-offs and Dates

Last updated: 28 September 2026, 10:15 IST (04:45 UTC). Draw data checked against IRCC’s rounds data at that time; latest round #444.

The Express Entry latest draw is round #444, held on 16 September 2026: 250 invitations for senior managers with Canadian work experience, at a lowest CRS score of 389. The day before, round #443 invited 2,000 Canadian Experience Class candidates with a lowest score of 519. IRCC’s own data, checked at 04:45 UTC on 28 September, shows nothing newer. What a table of recent draws cannot show is the round that is missing from it. Canada has not held an all-programme draw since 23 April 2024, according to the trackers that record every round, which puts it 150 rounds back. In IRCC’s own 2026 data, no round has been open to a skilled worker abroad who has no French, no provincial nomination and no job in a listed occupation.

Every current figure here is read directly from IRCC’s rounds of invitations data; tracker sites copy one another and sometimes miss a round.

Express Entry latest draw results: the last 15 rounds

Newest first, from IRCC’s rounds data as checked on 28 September 2026.

Tie-break time for #444: 1 September 2026 at 23:05:13 UTC. IRCC’s pool figures for rounds #442 to #444 are dated 13 September 2026.

Reading the table

Each row is one round, identified by its date and IRCC’s round number.

The draw type decides who is even considered. A Canadian Experience Class round looks only at profiles eligible for that programme; a Provincial Nominee Program round only at people holding a provincial nomination; a category round (French, healthcare, trades, transport and the rest) only at people who meet that category’s rules. A profile outside the draw type is invisible to it, however high it scores.

Invitations counts the Invitations to Apply sent. Lowest CRS is the score of the last person invited, which is known only once the round is over. When several candidates share that score, IRCC’s tie-breaking rule favours whoever submitted their profile first, and the tie-break time marks the line.

Provincial Nominee Program cut-offs of 697 to 805 look absurd until you remember that a nomination adds 600 points (IRCC’s CRS criteria). Strip those out and this year’s nominees were invited with 97 to 205 points of their own. For them, the province was the hurdle, and the draw a formality.

Where the 2026 invitations went

From 1 January to 16 September 2026 IRCC issued 128,982 invitations across 56 draws. Rounds that require Canadian work experience took 55,141 of them (43%); French speakers 50,500 (39%); healthcare, trades and transport workers 14,800 (11%); provincial nominees 8,537 (7%); skilled military recruits 4.

To be fair to Canada, more than half of those invitations, about 57%, went to rounds that do not ask for Canadian experience at all: French, the three occupation categories and provincial nominees. The door is not shut to everyone abroad. It is shut to the candidate who has only what the Federal Skilled Worker Program was built to reward: a degree, good English and skilled experience earned somewhere else.

Our count from IRCC’s rounds data (rounds #392 to #444), read on 28 September 2026. The three early-January rounds (#389 to #391) did not load from IRCC’s data that day and are taken from two independent draw records that agree. STEM, education and researcher categories exist for 2026 but have had no draw yet.

Cut-offs by route, 2026

Which door you stand at sets your cut-off more than your score does. What 2026 has asked for so far:

• Canadian Experience Class: 507 to 523 across 16 rounds. For anyone in Canada on a PGWP or another work permit, this is the main route, and its bar has sat above 500 all year.
• Provincial Nominee Program: 697 to 805, including the 600 nomination points.
• French-language proficiency: 382 to 420, in the largest rounds of the year (up to 8,500 invitations). You need NCLC 7 or higher in all four French abilities.
• Healthcare and social services, trades, transport: 467 to 477. These need 12 months of work in a listed occupation within the past three years, and IRCC’s category page sets no Canadian-experience rule for them.
• Senior managers and physicians with Canadian work experience: 389 to 429 and 169 to 223, in small rounds.
• Federal Skilled Worker, abroad, no category: no 2026 cut-off exists, because no round has been held for you.

What Express Entry has become

When Express Entry opened in January 2015, the idea was easy to explain in any IELTS coaching centre in Pune or Hyderabad: put your profile in a pool with the world’s skilled workers, collect points for age, education, language and experience, and the best-scored get invited, wherever they happen to live. That machine still exists. In 2026 Canada has been using the machine for something else.

The most revealing numbers sit in IRCC’s own Express Entry Year-End Report 2024. That year Indian citizens received 43,004 of the 98,903 invitations issued, 43% of the total and more than four times the next country, Cameroon. The same report counts where invited candidates were living. Canada: 67,817. India: 3,104. In 2023 the India figure had been 7,401. So for every invitation that reached someone living in India in 2024, Indian citizens received almost fourteen. India dominates Express Entry, but the Indian being invited is, overwhelmingly, the Indian who has already left India. The report does not cross-tabulate citizenship by residence, so it cannot say how many of those Indian citizens lived in Canada, but with 67,817 invitations going to Canadian residents, the likeliest answer is most of them. And 2024 still had nine general rounds, all held before May. 2025 had none, draw trackers agree, and 2026 has had none either. IRCC has not yet published its 2025 report, so I cannot tell you how far the India figure fell last year, and I will not guess.

Canada has said why, if not in so many words to the candidate in Pune. The 2025–2027 Levels Plan expected ‘more than 40% of overall permanent resident admissions‘ in 2025 to be students or workers already in Canada, as part of aligning immigration with what it called community capacity. The 2026–2028 plan aims to bring non-permanent residents below 5% of the population by the end of 2027, sets aside a one-time route to permanent residence for up to 33,000 work permit holders in 2026 and 2027, and raises the target for French-speaking admissions outside Quebec from 9% in 2026 to 10.5% in 2028 (supplementary information). When IRCC announced the 2026 categories on 18 February, it noted that Canadian Experience Class draws had continued through early 2026 to prioritise candidates ‘already contributing to Canada’s economy’.

I think that is a defensible policy. A country that let its temporary population grow very fast, and now wants it smaller without expelling people, will give permanent status first to those it already has: people with Canadian employers, Canadian references and a lease in their name. The francophone targets serve a real commitment to French-speaking communities outside Quebec. In the minister’s chair I might choose the same.

What I object to is the silence.

Take a hypothetical candidate in Pune with 470 points, a master’s degree and an IELTS band of 8. No round has been able to reach that profile since April 2024, and nothing on the profile says so. The arithmetic makes it starker. On 13 September 2026, 62,479 profiles scored above 470. No round of any kind in 2026 has invited more than 8,500 people. Even a general draw, if one came, would have tens of thousands of higher scores to pass before it reached that candidate.

The machine may yet be rebuilt. In April 2026 IRCC added to its forward regulatory plan a proposal to repeal the Federal Skilled Worker, Canadian Experience and Federal Skilled Trades classes and replace them with one federal high skilled class. Its consultation, open from 23 April to 24 May 2026, floated counting a year of skilled work ‘in Canada or elsewhere’ for eligibility, new points for Canadian work experience or a job offer in a high-wage occupation, and listed French bonus points and points for Canadian study among the ‘weaker predictors’ of success. None of this is law. I could find no draft regulation in the Canada Gazette by 28 September 2026. If one appears, it could cut both ways for Indian candidates abroad: foreign experience counted equally would help, and fewer French points would hurt.

Four doors that still open, and what each costs

Adding 20 points will not help if no draw is looking at your profile. What changes your odds is changing which draws can see you. There are four ways to do that, and none of them is quick.

French. Ten rounds and 50,500 invitations in 2026, with cut-offs around 400, make it the widest door open to people abroad. The price of entry is NCLC 7 in all four abilities (reading, writing, listening and speaking), which also brings up to 50 extra CRS points if your English is at CLB 5 or above. My own view is that for most Indian professionals starting from nothing this means well over a year of serious study. It is also the door Canada has written into its targets through 2028, which makes it, for now, the most durable of the four.

A provincial nomination. Worth 600 points, and the 2026 Levels Plan makes room for 91,500 admissions through provincial programmes. The CRS stops mattering once you have it; the province decides everything before that. Read each stream’s own criteria on the province’s official site, and treat anyone who promises a nomination for a fee as someone selling what only a province can give.

A listed occupation. Healthcare and social services, trades and transport rounds have invited at 467 to 477 this year without requiring Canadian experience, but you need 12 months in one of the listed occupation codes within the past three years. Check the exact codes on IRCC’s category page before you assume you fit. This is a door built for a nurse in Kochi or an electrician in Dubai more than for a software engineer in Bengaluru.

Canada first. Studying or working in Canada is the route most 2026 invitations have rewarded, and the most expensive. A study permit now needs proof of CAD 23,448 a year for living costs alone, before tuition (about ₹15.9 lakh at ₹67.7 to the Canadian dollar, 27 September 2026), and Canada plans only 155,000 new student arrivals in 2026. After graduation, the Canadian Experience Class bar has sat above 500 all year, which is why so many PGWP holders reading this are still waiting too. It is a real door. It is also a bet of several years and many lakhs that the rules will look the same when you arrive at it.

A higher IELTS or CELPIP score still counts, because every round ranks by CRS once you are in it. Be careful who you pay: since 25 March 2025 a job offer adds no CRS points, so anyone selling one ‘for the points’ is selling nothing. If you are also weighing the United States, our piece on the India EB-2 and the FY2027 Visa Bulletin reset shows what the other long queue looks like.

If you would like to see which of these doors your own profile is closest to, our CRS calculator sets your score against every 2026 route. Other routes to permanent residence are on the Migration guide.

The next date: the 2027–2029 Levels Plan

Section 94 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act requires the immigration minister to table the annual report, with next year’s admission numbers, by 1 November, or within 30 sitting days if a House of Parliament is not sitting that day, as IRCC’s own briefing explains. 1 November 2026 falls on a Sunday. Last year’s plan was issued on 4 November 2025.

The current plan sets 109,000 Federal High Skilled admissions for 2026 (the Express Entry line, range 85,000 to 120,000) and pencils in 111,000 for 2027, alongside 91,500 through the Provincial Nominee Program as a whole. When the new plan lands, look first at that 2027 figure and at the French-speaking target. A higher number gives IRCC room for more rounds; it will not tell you which kind. We will update this page the day it appears. We do not predict cut-offs.

On categories, the 2026 list was announced on 18 February 2026 and IRCC’s category page was last modified on 22 June 2026. No further changes had been announced by 28 September 2026. IRCC also consulted the public on 2027 categories from 4 August to 1 September 2026, according to Moving2Canada, so a new list for 2027 is likely to follow. If a STEM, education or researcher round runs, it will appear at the top of the table above. Express Entry Category Draws 2026

Questions people ask

When is the next Express Entry draw?

IRCC does not announce draw dates. In 2026 rounds have come in clusters on consecutive weekdays, usually about two weeks apart, with longer gaps such as 28 May to 22 June 2026. Treat any ‘next draw date’ you see elsewhere as a guess.

Will there be a Federal Skilled Worker or all-programme draw in 2026?

IRCC has not said. Draw trackers agree there has been no all-programme round since 23 April 2024, and IRCC’s data shows no Federal Skilled Worker-only round in 2026. We do not forecast draws; the Levels Plan and any category announcement are the signals to watch.

Is a CRS score of 480 good enough in 2026?

That depends on which rounds can see you. A 480 cleared every 2026 French, healthcare, trades and transport round, but no Canadian Experience Class round, where the lowest cut-off was 507. If you are abroad without French, a nomination or a listed occupation, no 2026 round has been open to you at any score.

Does a job offer still add CRS points?

No. IRCC removed job-offer points for current and future candidates on 25 March 2025. Its 2026 consultation floated bringing them back for high-wage occupations only; that is still only a proposal.

This page is general information as of 28 September 2026, built from IRCC’s published data, and Canada changes its categories and draw patterns without notice. Before you spend money or change your status, check IRCC’s own pages and speak to a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant (RCIC) or a Canadian immigration lawyer.

Changelog

• 28 September 2026, 10:15 IST: page launched with draws to #444 (16 September 2026), the 2026 summary to that date, IRCC’s 2024 data on invitations by citizenship and residence, and the four routes still open. Feed checked at 04:45 UTC: no round after #444.

Sources

1. IRCC, Express Entry rounds of invitations data (ee_rounds_123_en.json). Accessed 28 September 2026.
2. IRCC, Express Entry: Rounds of invitations (tie-breaking rule; CRS distribution bands; date modified 10 July 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
3. IRCC, Express Entry category-based selection (date modified 22 June 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
4. IRCC, Comprehensive Ranking System criteria (date modified 22 June 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
5. IRCC news release, Canada prioritizes top talent in 2026 immigration Express Entry categories (18 February 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
6. IRCC, Supplementary Information for the 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan (issued 4 November 2025). Accessed 28 September 2026.
7. IRCC, Minister transition binder, May 2025: The Immigration Levels Plan (section 94 IRPA timing). Accessed 28 September 2026.
8. Bartlaw LLP, Express Entry Draws: January 2026. Accessed 28 September 2026.
9. Amir Ismail, Express Entry Draw Results 2026. Accessed 28 September 2026.
10. Moving2Canada, Express Entry Latest Draw (latest shown: 16 September 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
11. IRCC, Express Entry Year-End Report 2024 (PDF; Tables 14a and 15a, Table 9, general rounds). Accessed 28 September 2026.
12. IRCC, Express Entry Year-End Report 2015 (launch date). Accessed 28 September 2026.
13. IRCC, Notice: Supplementary Information for the 2025-2027 Immigration Levels Plan (24 October 2024). Accessed 28 September 2026.
14. IRCC, Forward Regulatory Plan: Regulations to modernize the federal high skilled classes (date modified 7 April 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
15. IRCC, 2026 consultations on potential Express Entry reforms (23 April to 24 May 2026, archived). Accessed 28 September 2026.
16. IRCC, Study permit: proof of financial support (date modified 28 August 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
17. CIC News, 2025: Express Entry year in review (January 2026). Accessed 28 September 2026.
18. Canadim, Express Entry Draw #294. Accessed 28 September 2026.
19. XE, CAD to INR mid-market rate (27 September 2026, 23:31 UTC). Accessed 28 September 2026.