Deciding Whether to Definitely Wait for an Express Entry Category You Might Qualify For or Improve Your CRS Score Instead

A candidate with a solid but not spectacular profile has two broad options while sitting in the Express Entry pool: hope a new category opens up that fits their background, or spend the next several months actively raising their CRS score through retesting, further study, or other concrete steps. Deciding whether to wait for Express Entry category or improve CRS score is really a bet about which is more predictable — and the historical record gives a useful answer.

Worked example: the category-waiting bet

Consider the pace at which new categories have actually appeared. Category-based selection launched in May 2023 with six categories. For 2024, the same six continued unchanged. For 2025, the list was reshuffled — French, healthcare and social services, trades, and a new education category, with STEM, transport and agriculture dropped from active drawing (though not formally removed from the books in every case). For 2026, four new categories appeared — researchers, senior managers, transport (rebuilt), and skilled military recruits — while agriculture and agri-food was removed entirely.

What this tells you: new categories do appear roughly once a year, at predictable announcement points (typically around February), but whether a new category will fit your specific profile is not predictable at all. The three newest 2026 categories — physicians, senior managers, researchers — all require Canadian work experience, which by definition excludes anyone who hasn’t worked in Canada yet. Waiting for “a new category” isn’t a strategy; waiting for “a new category that specifically matches your occupation and doesn’t require Canadian experience you don’t have” is a much narrower and much less certain bet.

Worked example: the CRS-improvement bet

Now compare that against raising your own CRS score directly. The levers here are concrete and largely within an applicant’s control: retesting a language exam to move up a CLB band, adding French as a second language, completing further education, or securing a provincial nomination through a separate PNP application process. Unlike waiting for a category, these are actions with a known mechanism and a knowable, if not guaranteed, timeline.

The case for this path is reinforced by what’s happened to the CRS itself. Arranged employment points were removed entirely as of 25 March 2025 — one less unpredictable variable in the system, since a job offer can no longer swing a score by 50 or 200 points overnight. That leaves the CRS today built more purely around age, education, language ability and work experience: exactly the factors an applicant can deliberately improve.

Where French tips the scales

The French-language proficiency category deserves specific mention in this framework, because it sits somewhere between the two options. On one hand, it’s a category — you’re not simply raising your general CRS score, you’re qualifying for a specific selection pool. On the other hand, unlike physicians, senior managers or researchers, meeting NCLC 7 is entirely achievable through your own study and testing, with no occupation restriction and no Canadian-experience requirement at all. French category cut-offs have consistently run well below CEC cut-offs throughout 2025 and 2026, and the category has drawn frequently and in large volumes. For many candidates, this functions as a hybrid strategy: a concrete, controllable action (learning French to a testable standard) that also opens a specific, currently active category.

Should I wait for a new Express Entry category — the honest framework

If your occupation clearly and specifically matches a currently-drawing category’s list, and the only missing piece is time in the pool, waiting inside that category makes sense. If your occupation doesn’t match any currently-active category, or your best hope rests on a hypothetical future category that hasn’t been announced, that’s a genuinely weaker bet than putting the same energy into raising your CRS score through French, further study, or other concrete factors within your control.

This framework describes the pattern in how categories have appeared and how CRS points behave; it isn’t a recommendation for your specific circumstances, since the right strategy depends heavily on your occupation, current score, and personal timeline. A licensed RCIC or Canadian immigration lawyer can help build a plan around your actual profile.