CANADA INVITES 1,000 CANDIDATES TO APPLY FOR PERMANENT RESIDENCE

Canada has invited 1,000 candidates through its Express Entry system to apply for permanent residence under the Canadian Experience Class (CEC).

The invitation round was conducted on August 18, 2026, according to ministerial instructions published by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

Candidates required a minimum Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score of 523 to receive an invitation.

The department stated that 1,000 invitations were issued to eligible foreign nationals who ranked among the highest candidates in the draw.

The round was conducted at 10:13:44 UTC on August 18, with a tie-breaking rule of August 17, 2026, at 22:09:00 UTC.

The tie-breaking rule means that where candidates have the same CRS score, the cut-off is determined by the date and time they submitted their Express Entry profiles.

The invitations were issued under the Canadian Experience Class, one of the three federal economic immigration programmes managed through Canada’s Express Entry system.

Express Entry is Canada’s primary online system for managing permanent residence applications from skilled workers. It covers the Canadian Experience Class, Federal Skilled Worker Program and Federal Skilled Trades Program.

Candidates create profiles and are ranked using the CRS, which awards points based on factors including age, education, language ability, work experience and other human-capital characteristics.

The highest-ranked candidates are invited to apply for permanent residence during periodic invitation rounds.

The Canadian Experience Class is designed for skilled workers who already have Canadian work experience and want to become permanent residents.

Eligibility generally requires at least one year, or 1,560 hours, of skilled work experience in Canada within the previous three years, in occupations classified under National Occupational Classification TEER categories 0, 1, 2 or 3.

Applicants must also meet minimum language requirements, with Canadian Language Benchmark 7 required for TEER 0 or 1 occupations and CLB 5 for TEER 2 or 3 occupations.

The programme has no education requirement and no settlement-funds requirement, while applicants must plan to live outside Quebec.

The August 18 draw followed a series of CEC-focused rounds in 2026. A previous CEC draw on August 5 issued 3,000 invitations with a lower CRS cut-off of 516.

The latest draw’s smaller number of invitations and higher 523 CRS cut-off made it one of the more selective CEC rounds of the year.

As of mid-August 2026, IRCC had issued more than 113,000 Express Entry invitations in 2026, with a substantial proportion going to Canadian Experience Class candidates.