Comparing Express Entry Category List Changes by Year: 2023, 2025 and 2026 Side by Side
Which categories has Express Entry actually run, year by year? Here’s the straight answer, no preamble: six in 2023, the same six in 2024, four in 2025, and effectively ten in 2026. That’s how the category list has changed each year since 2023, and it’s the shape of express entry category list changes by year since the whole system began.
Q: What were the original 2023 categories? Six, launched 31 May 2023: French-language proficiency, healthcare occupations, STEM occupations, trade occupations, transport occupations, and agriculture and agri-food occupations. 2024 ran the identical six, unchanged.
Q: What changed for 2025? Announced 27 February 2025: French-language proficiency continued; healthcare occupations was renamed and broadened to health care and social services; trades continued; and education occupations was added as new. Three of the original six — STEM, transport, and agriculture and agri-food — were dropped from the active list and received no draws at all that year.
Q: What changed for 2026? Announced 18 February 2026: French-language proficiency, healthcare and social services, and trades continued. Four new categories arrived — physicians with Canadian work experience, carried over from a December 2025 announcement; researchers with Canadian work experience; senior managers with Canadian work experience; and skilled military recruits — plus transport returned, rebuilt around a different occupation list of pilots, aircraft mechanics and inspectors rather than the truck-driving-heavy 2023 list. Agriculture and agri-food was removed entirely. IRCC’s current page still lists STEM and education as technically live, though neither had received a 2026 draw as of 23 July.
Q: So how many categories exist right now? Ten, per IRCC’s own published list — the most of any year since category-based selection began, even though only six or seven of them had actually run a draw by the end of July 2026.
Q: Which categories have appeared and disappeared over time? Agriculture and agri-food ran in 2023–2024 and then vanished for good. Transport ran in 2023–2024, disappeared for 2025, then returned in 2026 under a completely different occupation list — worth noting separately, since it isn’t really the “same” category picking back up. STEM and education have each had gaps in actual draws despite staying nominally listed.
Q: Tracking category continuity across three annual announcements — what’s the one thread that hasn’t moved? French-language proficiency. It’s the only category to have run in every year since categories began, with no eligibility change beyond the flat NCLC 7 requirement across all four abilities. For a South African applicant weighing where to invest study time, that’s the most durable signal in this whole comparison. That’s the real payoff of watching this list move year after year — durability matters more than whatever the current headline list happens to say.
None of this tells you whether a specific occupation or language plan suits your own file — that’s a question for a licensed RCIC, working from your actual documents rather than a year-by-year table. What this comparison is good for is knowing how much the list itself moves, so a category you’re counting on doesn’t quietly disappear the way agriculture and agri-food did.