126,156 Invitations in 53 Draws: Express Entry’s Record Year So Far
Updated 11 September 2026. Between 5 January and 4 September 2026 IRCC ran 53 Express Entry rounds and issued 126,156 invitations to apply, already a record annual total with almost four months of the year left. This piece looks at what that figure measures, where the recent invitations went, and what a record does not mean.
The published totals
| Measure | 2026 to 4 September |
|---|---|
| Rounds of invitations | 53 (5 January to 4 September) |
| Invitations to apply issued | 126,156 |
| Average invitations per round | about 2,380 |
| Largest round since July | 5,000 (French-language rounds) |
| Smallest round since July | 229 (physicians, 3 September) |
Source: IRCC’s rounds of invitations page on canada.ca, which lists every round with its date, type, size and cut-off. The average is our division of the two published figures.
What an invitation is, and what it is not
An invitation to apply is exactly that: permission to submit a permanent residence application within a fixed window, currently 60 days. It is not a visa, not a decision, and not a guarantee of one. Some invitations are declined, some applications are refused, and none of the 126,156 becomes a permanent resident until IRCC finalises a file. A record ITA count is a record number of doors opened, measured at the moment of opening.
Where the recent invitations went
IRCC’s rounds page lists each round individually rather than a running total by type, but the most recent seven rounds show the shape of the year. Of the 12,733 invitations issued between 17 August and 4 September, 5,000 went to the French-language category, 3,500 to healthcare and social services, 3,000 to the Canadian Experience Class across two rounds, 1,004 to provincial nominees across two rounds, and 229 to physicians. Put differently, roughly two in five recent invitations went through a French-language filter, and none went through no filter at all: no general or all-programme round, and no round limited to the Federal Skilled Worker programme, has run in 2026.
What a record does not mean
A record total is a statement about volume, not about access. The 2026 record is built from Canadian Experience Class rounds, provincial rounds, French rounds and category rounds, each with its own filter, and a year of that composition looks very different from a year of the same size made up of general draws. It also says nothing about the remaining four months: IRCC publishes no forward schedule and does not announce how many invitations it intends to issue in a given month, so the year-end figure is unknown until the year ends. Finally, a record number of invitations is measured against the pool that received them, and the pool on 30 August held 226,673 profiles; the two numbers are not a ratio, a point we take up separately.
From a South African desk
From Johannesburg or Cape Town, the honest summary is that 2026 has produced more invitations than any previous year, and that of the recent invitations roughly seven in ten went through filters defined by Canadian work experience, a provincial nomination or French test results, with the remainder going through occupation-based category filters. Those are descriptions of the rounds, not of any reader. Our move-to-Canada guide sets out where Express Entry fits among the routes, and the guides section holds our longer explainers on how the system works. Any individual’s eligibility, score or strategy 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.