What Nobody Tells Rather Flatly You About the STEM Category in Express Entry

Here’s what nobody tells you plainly enough about the stem category express entry occupations list: it’s still there. It’s still eligible. And it hasn’t produced a single invitation since April 2024.

The part everyone gets right

STEM occupations became a category in 2023, one of the original six alongside French-language proficiency, healthcare, trades, transport and agriculture. It covers 11 occupations, and experience toward it can be earned in Canada or abroad — the same structure as most of the other occupation-based categories. None of that has changed.

The part almost nobody says out loud

The last STEM round ran on 11 April 2024: 4,500 invitations at a CRS cut-off of 491. Since then — through all of 2025 and every round of 2026 up to the most recent data in this file — there has been no STEM draw at all. That’s not a rumour or a forum theory; it’s a direct read of IRCC’s own round-by-round record, and it’s genuinely unusual for a category that’s still formally live.

Why “still eligible” and “actually running” are different claims

IRCC’s 18 February 2026 announcement of new categories for the year named continuing categories explicitly — French-language proficiency, healthcare and social services, and trades — and named several new ones. STEM wasn’t on either list. And yet IRCC’s own category-based selection page, checked directly, still lists full, current eligibility criteria for it, even though the category has been dormant in Express Entry since April 2024. Both things are true simultaneously: STEM remains a category based selection stem eligibility a candidate can technically meet, and it has not been drawn from in more than two years.

Why this matters if you’re building an occupation profile

A South African engineer or tech worker reading an older, optimistic article might build an Express Entry profile assuming a STEM round is coming — the way trades or healthcare rounds arrive several times a year. That expectation isn’t supported by anything in the current draw record. That gap between paper eligibility and real invitations is the whole story behind the stem category express entry occupations question. If your profile genuinely qualifies under a different active category too — trades, healthcare and social services, or French-language proficiency — that category is doing the actual work, not STEM.

What we won’t tell you, because it isn’t knowable

Nobody, including IRCC, has published a reason STEM went dormant or a date for its return, and this file’s research explicitly warns against treating any rumoured NOC overhaul or category change as confirmed. The honest position is: eligible on paper, dormant in practice, no announced timeline either way.

What to actually do with an express entry stem occupation list match

Bank your qualifying experience, keep your profile current in case STEM ever draws again, but don’t build your primary strategy around it. Check IRCC’s live category-based selection page yourself before assuming anything here still holds, since the one thing that’s certain is that this picture will look different by the time you read it months from now. A profile that only qualifies under STEM is, honestly, a profile waiting on a category that hasn’t moved in over two years — plan your timeline around whichever route is actually drawing, and treat STEM as a bonus door rather than the one you’re counting on to open.