Express Entry Draw 385 – 1,000 Healthcare and Social Services Workers Invited on December 11, 2025

This is the seventh (and quite possibly last) round of invitations targeting healthcare and social services workers in 2025.

Key Takeaways for Express Entry Candidates from the December 11, 2025 Draw 

Type of Draw: Healthcare and Social Services Occupations (Version 2) 

Invitations Issued: 1,000

CRS Score: 476

Tie-Breaking Rule: November 26, 2025 at 07:44:30 UTC

Next Draw Prediction: The next bi-weekly draw would fall on 22 December 2025. We anticipate that IRCC may take a short break from Express Entry draws, with activity resuming in mid-January 2026. Please keep an eye on our When is the next Express Entry draw page for updates.

Our Analysis of This Express Entry Draw 

Today’s healthcare and social services category-based draw is the smallest we’ve seen since June 2025. It also has a relatively high CRS cut-off of 476, making it the highest cut-off since June 2025 (though very close to the score in July which saw a cut-off of 475).

The cut-off is quite interesting, since it’s so similar to the July 2025 healthcare round. That draw was just a point lower, at 475, but saw 4,000 invitations issued. The fact that today’s draw had a similar score but lower number of invitations shows that competition may be easing within the healthcare category. Earlier in the year, a round issuing 1,000 healthcare invitations may have seen a score closer to 485+.

If you’re keen to learn more about what we expect to see in terms of future CRS cut-offs in Express Entry, check out our recent piece covering our predictions for whether the CRS will drop in 2026.

Why Only 1,000 Invitations in This Healthcare Round? 

If I had to speculate, today’s healthcare draw was likely a little smaller than the past rounds to help ease any operational strain at IRCC. We already saw the biggest CEC round for 2025 yesterday, and a solid PNP round on Monday this week. This means that IRCC’s team will have some work ahead of them processing the high volume of applications coming in from this week’s invitation recipients.

Overall in 2025, the healthcare and social services category saw 14,500 invitations issued (assuming no further draws in December 2025). This is much higher than the 10,250 invitations issued in this category in 2024 and 5,600 from 2023.

What To Expect in Healthcare and Social Services Category Draws in 2026?

We don’t have exact estimates from IRCC as to how many invitations we can expect to see in the healthcare category in 2026. However, we would not be surprised to see regular draws — similar to the level of activity we’ve seen in the latter part of 2025.

Canada needs healthcare workers, and the category-based draws targeting those workers is the current strategy to attract and retain workers in roles Canada urgently needs to fill.

That being said, we may see a shift towards more category-based draws targeting workers who are already living and working in Canada – or who have Canadian work experience already. We know that Canada plans to run targeted draws for physicians in early 2026 based on their Canadian work experience (more on this here).

What we don’t yet know is whether the CEC-Category hybrid draws will only happen for physicians, or if that will extend more broadly across Canada’s categories. We wouldn’t be surprised to see it go beyond physicians.

For more information:

• Learn more about the latest Express Entry draws.
• Learn more about the state of the Express Entry pool.
• Learn when to expect the next Express Entry draw.
• Learn more about Express Entry healthcare draws.

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