A Timeline of Every Express Entry Category Added Since the 2023 Launch
Nobody who reads about Express Entry categories once and comes back three years later recognises the list. A full timeline of Express Entry categories since 2023 shows a system that has redrawn its own priorities every single year — and understanding the history of category-based selection in Express Entry explains why yesterday’s blog post about “the six categories” is already out of date.
2023 — the launch
Category-based selection began on 31 May 2023 with six categories: French-language proficiency, healthcare occupations, STEM occupations, trade occupations, transport occupations, and agriculture and agri-food occupations. Each occupation-based category asked for six months of continuous full-time (or equivalent part-time) experience within the past three years. The first-ever category round ran a month later, on 28 June 2023, inviting healthcare candidates.
2024 — a year without change
IRCC confirmed the same six categories continued into 2024 with no additions or removals. It was the quietest year in the category system’s short life — useful mainly as proof that the pace of change in 2023 and 2025 wasn’t accidental.
2025 — a genuine reshuffle
Everything moved on 27 February 2025. The categories were narrowed to four: French-language proficiency; a renamed and broadened “health care and social services” occupations category; trades; and a brand-new education occupations category. STEM, transport, and agriculture and agri-food were dropped entirely — none of the three received a single draw in 2025.
2026 — the biggest expansion yet
The 18 February 2026 announcement is the answer to which categories were added each year in the clearest possible terms: it added more new categories in one announcement than any prior year. New for 2026: researchers with Canadian work experience; senior managers with Canadian work experience; a transport category rebuilt around an entirely different occupation set (pilots, aircraft mechanics and inspectors, rather than the truck-driver-heavy 2023 list); and skilled military recruits. A physicians with Canadian work experience category, announced separately in December 2025, also became active. French-language proficiency, health care and social services, and trades continued from 2025. Agriculture and agri-food, dropped the year before, did not return.
By IRCC’s own live category page, that brings the total to ten current categories. STEM and education remain listed with published eligibility criteria, though neither had received a 2026 draw as of the most recent data available.
What the shape of the change tells you
Track the express entry category changes from 2023 to 2026 and a pattern appears: categories tied to Canadian work experience (physicians, senior managers, researchers) keep multiplying, while categories open to candidates who’ve never set foot in Canada have stayed roughly flat or shrunk. For an offshore South African applicant, that’s the detail worth sitting with — the growth in options hasn’t necessarily grown the number of doors actually open to you.
The honest takeaway
A list this unstable isn’t a flaw to complain about; it’s simply the operating reality of the programme. Whatever you read about “the current categories” should be checked against IRCC’s live category page before you plan around it, and if you’re weighing which category realistically fits your own work history, that’s a question for a licensed RCIC rather than a blog post with a publish date on it.