Is Express Entry About to Set a Massive New Record?

2026 is currently only 802 invitations away from issuing the highest number of Express Entry ITAs in a single year.

Again, having been reporting on Express Entry for nearly a decade, this is a pretty astounding update to me. I remember back in 2017 and 2018 when draws were small and strategies to improve CRS scores felt like little secrets. Oh, how the system has changed!

These days, everybody already knows how to maximize their “Skill Transferability” points. Instead, it’s all about qualifying for the programs and categories that are actually being invited.

Yes, certain candidates are still retaking their IELTS to get more language points. But, the real go-getters are also enrolling in French courses, trying to gain eligibility for the coveted French draws (which so far in 2026 have invited more than 45,500 ITAs, or more than 40% of all ITAs issued this year).

And when you zoom out a little, the evolution of Express Entry has been pretty wild.

The very first Express Entry draw took place in January 2015. IRCC invited just 779 candidates and the CRS cut-off was an eye-watering 886 points.

A couple of years later, as I was settling into my very first immigration job, things looked completely different. I remember the excitement in 2017 as CRS scores dropped lower and lower. On May 31 of that year, IRCC held a general draw with a CRS cut-off of 413 (the lowest on record for a general draw). A score like that today would have a lot of candidates thinking they’ve got a pretty good chance of being invited.

Then came 2020 and 2021, when the pandemic basically ripped up the Express Entry playbook. IRCC stopped inviting Federal Skilled Worker candidates and focused almost entirely on people already in Canada. And then, on February 13, 2021, came the draw.

If you were following Canadian immigration at the time, you probably know exactly which one I’m talking about. I remember it happened on a Saturday morning. I was having a lazy morning, reading a book on the couch, when my colleague texted me and we both scrambled to report the news.

27,332 CEC invitations with a CRS score cut-off of 75 points. Yes, 75 points!

It remains the largest Express Entry draw ever held, essentially inviting every CEC candidate from the pool and cementing IRCC’s new priority: target workers with Canadian work experience. (We’ve seen this continue into 2026 with CEC candidates receiving more ITAs than any other program or category, close to 50,000 so far. But the cut-offs look very different now.)

That strange pandemic year also produced the annual record we’re on track to break: 114,224 ITAs issued in 2021. Then, a few years later, came category-based selection.

In 2023, these new categories gave IRCC the ability to specifically target candidates based on things like their occupation or French-language ability. Suddenly, being the highest-scoring person in the room wasn’t always enough… which brings us to 2026.

We’re sitting at 113,423 invitations as I write this, just 802 shy of the record. And yet, despite issuing more ITAs than almost any year in Express Entry history, IRCC hasn’t held a single general draw in 2026 (or, for that matter, in 2025).

I think that’s the statistic that best captures how much Express Entry has changed: the old version of Express Entry was essentially a giant ranking exercise. Get into the pool, maximize your CRS score, wait for IRCC to draw from the highest-ranking candidates.

The 2026 version feels much more like a series of smaller competitions happening inside the same system. Are you CEC eligible? Great, now how do you rank against other CEC candidates? Speak French? Fantastic, there’s a separate competition happening over there.

And if you’re a Federal Skilled Worker sitting overseas with an exceptional CRS score, but you don’t qualify for any of the categories IRCC happens to be targeting? Well… as of right now, you’re stuck waiting.

There are currently about 230,000 profiles in the Express Entry pool. So even as IRCC hands out invitations at a record pace, the system doesn’t necessarily feel generous. There are simply a lot of people who want Canadian permanent residence, and the federal government has become much more precise about deciding which of those people it wants to invite.

If you’d told me back in 2017 that Canada would eventually issue more than 114,000 Express Entry invitations in a single year, I probably would have assumed CRS scores would be through the floor. Instead, we’re about to break the record while CEC cut-offs are still hovering around 515-520.

And, looming over all the changes from recent years is a new set of proposed reforms that would completely reshape Express Entry, creating a new streamlined system.

But before we get there, we just need another 802 invitations to make 2026 the biggest year in Express Entry history. Let’s see if it happens next week!