Express Entry Round Types by the Numbers Since March 2022

By round 430 on 23 July 2026, Express Entry had run 214 rounds of invitations since 2 March 2022 — and IRCC’s own dataset lets you count exactly what kind of round each one was. Walking through express entry round types since 2022 by their actual frequency tells a very different story than most forum threads do, because a handful of round types account for almost everything, and one supposedly “main” programme barely features at all.

General and all-program draws: the shrinking category

Under its old label, “No Program Specified,” a general draw inviting all three federal programmes together ran 28 times through October 2023; under the relabelled “General,” it ran a further 11 times, taking the combined all-program total to 39 rounds. Then it stopped. Round 294, on 23 April 2024, was the last general draw to date — meaning general draws have made up exactly zero of the roughly 175 rounds run since.

Program-specific draws: one workhorse, one ghost

The Canadian Experience Class has been the real workhorse of the system, drawn 37 times in this window, almost always at cut-offs between 507 and 520. The Provincial Nominee Program ran even more often — 66 rounds, the single most frequent round type of all, though its CRS cut-offs (667 to 855) are inflated by an automatic 600-point nomination bonus and aren’t comparable to any other number in this article. The Federal Skilled Worker Program, by contrast, has been drawn exactly once: round 240, on 2 February 2023, issuing 3,300 invitations at a cut-off of 489. For a South African applicant without Canadian experience or a provincial nomination, that single fact matters more than any CRS calculator.

Category-based draws: the newer, busier layer

Introduced in mid-2023, category-based selection has since fragmented into several separate instruments as IRCC rewrites the eligible occupation lists each year:

• French-language proficiency — 26 rounds under the original 2023–24 instrument, plus 8 more under the 2026 version, for 34 rounds total — by far the busiest category, and consistently the lowest-CRS route available to a candidate without Canadian experience.
• Healthcare and social services — 6 rounds under the 2023–24 list, 7 under the 2025 version, 2 under the 2026 version — 15 rounds in all.
• Trade occupations — 4 rounds under the original list, 1 under a 2025 revision, 1 under the 2026 version — 6 rounds.
• STEM occupations — 3 rounds, none since 2024.
• Transport occupations — 3 rounds under the 2023–24 list, none yet under the redefined 2026 occupation list.
• Agriculture and agri-food — 3 rounds, and the category has since been dropped entirely for 2026.
• Education occupations — 2 rounds, both in 2025.
• New for 2026 and still thin on data: physicians with Canadian work experience (2 rounds, and the lowest CRS cut-off ever recorded — 169), senior managers with Canadian work experience (2 rounds) and skilled military recruits (a single round of just 4 invitations, the smallest in Express Entry history).

What the walkthrough actually adds up to

Look at the express entry draw type frequency data as a whole and two families of round — Provincial Nominee Program and Canadian Experience Class — account for over a hundred of the roughly 175 rounds run since the general draws stopped. Category-based selection fills most of the rest, and French-language draws alone outnumber every occupation-based category combined. The Federal Skilled Worker Program, the route most South African applicants without Canadian ties or French would naturally expect to use, has appeared exactly once in over four years.

These are counts from IRCC’s own published dataset, not a forecast of what comes next — categories and eligibility rules are rewritten most years, and this year’s list is not a promise about next year’s. Read together, it’s the fullest picture of express entry round types since 2022 that the public record actually supports. For what any of this means for your own eligibility, a licensed RCIC can walk through your specific profile; this article only walks through the public record.