PNP Cut-offs of 760 and 697: Why Two Rounds Two Weeks Apart Differ
Updated 10 September 2026. Two Provincial Nominee Program rounds closed out August: 442 invitations at a CRS cut-off of 760 on 17 August, then 562 at 697 on 31 August. A 63-point swing in a fortnight looks dramatic until the 600-point nomination is laid over it. This piece walks through the mechanic and what the two rounds actually show.
The published facts
| Round | Date | Invitations | CRS cut-off | Cut-off minus 600 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 435 | 17 August 2026 | 442 | 760 | 160 |
| 438 | 31 August 2026 | 562 | 697 | 97 |
Source: IRCC’s rounds of invitations page on canada.ca. Earlier PNP rounds this site reported ran at 708 (6 July), 744 (20 July) and 768 (4 August). The last column is our subtraction, not an IRCC figure.
The 600-point mechanic
A provincial or territorial nomination adds 600 points to a candidate’s CRS score. That is by far the largest single award in the CRS grid, which is why PNP cut-offs sit near or above 700 while every other round in the recent record has closed at or below 523. The cut-off of a PNP round is really the underlying score of the lowest-ranked nominee invited, plus 600. Strip the 600 out and the two August rounds read 160 and 97: modest scores that, on their own, would not have featured in any other round of the summer. The nomination, not the arithmetic, is doing the work.
Why PNP cut-offs swing more than other rounds’
PNP rounds are small: 442 and 562 invitations against 2,000 for the Canadian Experience Class and 5,000 for French. They also draw from a group that is small by construction, because it contains only candidates who hold a nomination, and that group changes as provinces issue nominations at their own pace and as invited candidates leave the pool. With a few hundred invitations reaching deep into a small group, the cut-off is set by whichever nominee happens to rank last, and a handful of profiles arriving or leaving can move it by tens of points. The 63-point difference between 17 and 31 August is consistent with that: the 31 August round was 120 invitations larger, and it reached a nominee whose underlying score was 97.
What the two rounds do not say
They do not say that 697 or 760 is a score anyone “needs”. They do not say which provinces issued the nominations behind them, or under which streams; that information sits with the provinces, each of which publishes its own stream criteria and its own round results. And they do not say anything about the next PNP round, for which IRCC publishes no date. The published record shows PNP rounds recurring through the summer, usually as the first draw of a cluster, but a pattern in the record is not a schedule.
From a South African desk
For a reader in South Africa, a PNP cut-off is best read as two separate facts: a province chose to nominate a candidate, and IRCC then invited that candidate because the nomination placed them at the top of the ranking. The first of those decisions is made under provincial rules that vary widely and change often; the second is arithmetic. Our move-to-Canada guide places the provincial route among the others, and the working in Canada guide covers the employer side that a number of provincial streams involve. Any individual’s eligibility, score or strategy, including whether a provincial stream is open to them, is regulated advice for a licensed RCIC or immigration lawyer, and the figures above can be verified on IRCC’s rounds of invitations page at canada.ca.