The 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan by the Numbers

Published 5 August 2026. Behind every Express Entry draw sits a bigger document: Canada's Immigration Levels Plan, the federal government's published schedule of how many permanent and temporary residents it plans to admit each year. The current plan covers 2026 through 2028, and its numbers explain a great deal about the draw patterns South Africans have been watching this year. Here is what the published plan says.

The headline figures

According to the government's published 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan, Canada has set permanent resident admissions at 380,000 per year through 2028 — a deliberately flat line rather than the year-on-year increases of earlier plans. On the temporary side, the plan reduces new temporary resident arrivals to 385,000 in 2026 and 370,000 in each of 2027 and 2028, covering work and study streams.

The full plan, including its supplementary breakdown by immigration category, is published on canada.ca — that page is the authoritative version of every figure in this article.

What a levels plan actually is

The levels plan is a planning document the immigration minister tables in Parliament, required under Canada's immigration legislation. It sets admission targets by broad class — economic, family reunification, refugees and protected persons, humanitarian — and, in its supplementary tables, by program within those classes. It is not a quota system in the sense of applications accepted; it is a target for how many people are granted permanent residence (that is, actually admitted) in the year.

For Express Entry watchers, the economic-class lines matter most: the plan's allocations to federal economic programs shape how many invitations IRCC issues across the year, and the allocations to the Provincial Nominee Program shape how many PNP rounds appear in the draw record.

Flat permanent numbers, falling temporary numbers

Two features of the current plan stand out in the published tables. First, permanent admissions are held level at 380,000 rather than growing — a change of posture after years of rising targets. Second, the sharper adjustment is on the temporary side: the reduction in new temporary resident arrivals continues the government's stated effort, begun in 2024, to bring the temporary population down as a share of Canada's total population.

The temporary-side numbers matter to Express Entry indirectly. IRCC's draw record through 2026 shows heavy use of Canadian Experience Class rounds — invitations to people already working in Canada on temporary status. The size of the temporary intake in any year shapes the pool of potential CEC candidates a few years later, which is one reason analysts read the two halves of the plan together.

The francophone thread

The plan materials also carry Canada's francophone immigration targets: 9 percent of permanent admissions outside Quebec in 2026, rising to 12 percent by 2029. We covered how those targets show up in French-language Express Entry rounds in yesterday's article; the levels plan is where the commitment is formally recorded.

Reading the plan from South Africa

A levels plan describes the size of Canada's front door, not any individual's path through it. Nothing in the 380,000 figure says who qualifies, how any application will fare, or what any reader's own position is — those are questions only IRCC can determine on an actual application, with individual advice restricted by Canadian law to licensed Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultants and immigration lawyers.

What the plan is genuinely useful for is context. When you see a month of draw results — like July 2026's eight rounds spanning Canadian Experience Class, Provincial Nominee Program, French-language and occupation-based categories — the levels plan is the budget those rounds are drawing against. A flat 380,000 target means the mix between categories, rather than overall growth, is where the movement happens. That is exactly what the 2026 draw record has shown so far, and it is the lens we will keep using as the August rounds land.

Sources

All figures from the Government of Canada's published 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan supplementary information and IRCC's rounds of invitations record.