Category-Based Selection History in Express Entry: Three Years, Draw by Draw
There’s a myth worth retiring early: that category-based selection is a settled, stable feature that has worked the same way since it launched. It hasn’t. Category based selection history express entry actually shows a system that has been rebuilt at least three times in three years, adding categories, dropping others, and changing its own eligibility rules along the way.
2023: the launch
Minister Sean Fraser announced category-based selection on 31 May 2023, naming six categories: French-language proficiency, healthcare occupations, STEM occupations, trade occupations, transport occupations, and agriculture and agri-food occupations. Each first round followed within weeks: healthcare on 28 June (500 invitations, CRS 476), STEM on 5 July (500, 486), French on 7 July (2,300, 439), trades on 3 August (1,500, 388), transport on 20 September (1,000, 435), and agriculture and agri-food on 28 September (600, 354). Every occupation category required six months of qualifying experience at this point.
2024: steady continuation
The same six categories carried through 2024 without additions or removals — industry reporting described IRCC as confirming this continuation, though no standalone canada.ca release specifically announcing it was located in this research; the continuation itself is clearly confirmed by the draw record regardless. This was also the year the last general, all-program draw ran, on 23 April (round 294) — from 30 May onward, only category, CEC, French and PNP rounds followed.
2025: the first rebuild
On 27 February 2025, Minister Marc Miller announced a genuinely different lineup for the year: French-language proficiency, health care and social services (the healthcare category renamed and broadened), trades, and a brand-new education category. STEM, transport and agriculture and agri-food weren’t named, and none of the three drew a single round all year. Education held its first-ever round on 1 May (1,000 invitations, CRS 479).
2026: the second rebuild
On 18 February 2026, Minister Lena Metlege Diab announced the International Talent Attraction Strategy, adding four entirely new categories: researchers with Canadian work experience, senior managers with Canadian work experience, a rebuilt transport category (aviation and technical-trades occupations, replacing the 2023’s truck-driver-heavy list), and skilled military recruits — plus the physicians with Canadian work experience category that had already been announced the previous December. French, health care and social services, and trades continued from 2025. Agriculture and agri-food was gone entirely. The same announcement doubled the standard occupation-category experience requirement from six months to twelve.
How category based selection started versus where it stands now
Ten categories are live on IRCC’s page as of the most recent check in this research, spanning experience rules that range from no work-experience requirement at all (French-language) through Canadian-or-abroad experience (most occupation categories) to Canadian-only experience (physicians, senior managers, researchers).
What this timeline of express entry category draws actually teaches
Express entry categories 2023 to 2026 haven’t been a fixed list that occasionally gets a new addition — they’ve been substantially rebuilt at both major annual turning points so far, with entire categories disappearing (agriculture and agri-food) and entirely new eligibility structures appearing (Canadian-only experience). Assume next year’s list could look meaningfully different from this year’s, because it already has, twice.
If your occupation currently fits a category that’s active today, confirming that fit — and understanding how quickly it could change — is worth doing with a licensed RCIC rather than assuming this year’s rules will still apply when you’re ready to act.