2025 in Express Entry: Every Policy Change That Actually Landed

If you stepped away from Express Entry for all of 2025 and came back at the start of 2026, you’d have missed a genuinely eventful year. No general draws ran at any point — a first for the modern era of the programme — but underneath that quiet surface, the rules themselves shifted repeatedly. Here’s the full Express Entry 2025 year in review of Express Entry policy changes 2025, in order.

27 February — the categories get reshuffled

Minister Marc Miller announced the 2025 priority categories: French-language proficiency, health care and social services, trades, and a brand-new education category. The same release confirmed the federal economic focus for the year would centre on inviting candidates with Canadian work experience through CEC. Notably absent from the list: STEM, transport, and agriculture and agri-food, none of which received a single draw in 2025. The healthcare category was also renamed and broadened at this point, from “healthcare occupations” to “health care and social services.”

25 March — job-offer CRS points removed

This is arguably the single biggest change of the year. The 200 CRS points for a qualifying senior-management job offer, and the 50 points for other skilled job offers, were eliminated entirely — for both current and future candidates, with points stripped automatically from profiles already sitting in the pool. IRCC framed it as a temporary anti-fraud measure targeting illegal LMIA buying and selling, with no announced end date. Candidates who already held an invitation, or whose PR application was already underway, weren’t affected.

1 May — first Education category round

The brand-new education category held its first-ever round: 1,000 invitations at a CRS cut-off of 479.

Through the year — PNP allocation cuts bite hard

With the national Provincial Nominee Program allocation halved to 55,000 (a change that traces back to the 2025–2027 levels plan), PNP nomination became noticeably scarcer through 2025. PNP-round cut-offs sat between 667 and 855 across the year — figures that look enormous next to CEC or category cut-offs, but 600 of that number is simply the automatic nomination bonus, so the underlying CRS being cleared was often well under 255.

21 August — upfront medicals become the norm

Immigration medical exams shifted to being required before submitting a PR application, reversing the previous approach where IRCC requested the exam after a complete application was already in. This changes the practical order of operations for anyone preparing to apply.

18 September — a second version of the trades category

Trade occupations moved to “Version 2,” holding its first round under the new instrument at 1,250 invitations and a CRS cut-off of 505.

5 November — the levels plan gets a hard reset

The Immigration Levels Plan 2026–2028 was tabled, holding overall permanent resident admissions flat at 380,000 for each of 2026, 2027 and 2028. Federal High Skilled — the Express Entry line specifically — was set back to a single combined figure of 109,000 for 2026, after the previous plan had split it into two separate streams. Provincial Nominee Program allocation was restored upward to 91,500 for 2026, a partial reversal of the mid-year cuts. New student arrivals were cut sharply, to 155,000 for 2026, down from 305,900 under the previous plan.

8 December — the physicians category is born

A new “Physicians with Canadian work experience” category was announced, aimed squarely at boosting Canada’s doctor supply. It requires at least one year of Canadian work experience in an eligible occupation gained in the previous three years, across three specific occupations: general practitioners and family physicians, surgery specialists, and clinical and laboratory medicine specialists. The accompanying package also gave provinces extra federal nomination spaces for doctors with job offers, plus 14-day work permit processing for nominated doctors.

The year in totals

58 rounds were held across 2025, issuing 113,998 invitations in total — the highest annual ITA count in the dataset covering this period. French-language proficiency was the single largest category by volume for the year, and no general or STEM draws happened at all.

This walkthrough describes the policy record for the year as published by IRCC; it isn’t a forecast of what 2026 or 2027 will bring, and it isn’t advice on how any of these changes affect your own application. A licensed RCIC or Canadian immigration lawyer can help translate a year like this one into what it actually means for your specific file.