New Express Entry Category Plus 5,000 PNP Spots for International Doctors

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) says the changes support Budget 2025’s push to address critical labour shortages with high-skilled talent, and aim to make permanent residence faster and more predictable for international doctors.

Here is what we know and what you need to know:

New Express Entry Category for doctors

IRCC will launch a dedicated Express Entry category for international doctors who:

• have at least 1 year of continuous work experience in Canada,
• in a single eligible occupation, listed below,
• gained the experience within the last 3 years.

The eligible occupations for this new category are the following NOC 2021 codes:

• 31102 — General practitioners and family physicians
• 31101 — Specialists in surgery
• 31100 — Specialists in clinical and laboratory medicine.

What’s still unclear is the scale and timing of this new stream. IRCC hasn’t said how many invitations will be set aside for the doctors category or how often these draws will happen. What is clear is who it’s for: this pathway is aimed at doctors already working in Canada on a temporary basis. It’s essentially an in-Canada stream tied to recent Canadian physician work experience, and it presumably means applicants will need to be in Canada to qualify and apply.

How this differs from the existing healthcare draws

This new doctor category is much narrower and far more in-Canada focused, than the broader healthcare category. In 2025, healthcare draws covered a wide range of health and social-services roles (roughly 35–37 occupations, including nurses, allied health professionals, and some social-services jobs), and they did not require Canadian work experience, meaning candidates could qualify based on foreign experience alone. Those healthcare rounds issued about 13,500 invitations over multiple draws last year.

By contrast, the doctors-only category announced today, targets just physicians and requires recent Canadian doctor work experience, so it’s clearly aimed at doctors already practising here on temporary status.

What we’ll be watching next is whether some invitation volume shifts out of the wider healthcare draws and into this doctors-only category, and how that affects overall healthcare draw size and frequency going into 2026.

Extra 5,000 PNP spots for doctors + faster work permits

Separately, the federal government will reserve 5,000 additional admission spaces for provinces and territories to nominate licensed doctors with job offers through the PNP.

Key points:

• These spots are on top of regular PNP allocations, so provinces or territories nominating doctors won’t have those nominations taken from existing quotas).
• Provinces/territories can use them to recruit doctors based on local shortages.
• Nominated doctors will get expedited 14-day work permit processing, so they can work while PR is finalized.

This is designed to speed up recruitment in regions that are struggling the most, and to let provinces act quickly once a doctor is licensed and matched to a job.

Why Doctors, Why Now?

Canada’s physician shortage is both large and immediate. Recent data shows millions of residents still lack a regular health-care provider, and provinces have been warning for years that domestic training alone can’t close the gap fast enough.

Targeting doctors through immigration does two things at once:

• Retains doctors already treating patients in Canada (through the new EE category), who may not have been eligible otherwise.
• Gives provinces more fuel to recruit practice-ready physicians directly (through extra PNP spaces and rapid work permits).

Together, the measures aim to stabilize staffing, reduce wait times over the medium term, and keep internationally trained doctors in Canada once they’ve already integrated into the system.

Impact Beyond Doctors, a Broader Express Entry Shift

While today’s announcement focuses on physicians, its design matters for Express Entry as a whole. IRCC is creating a category that requires recent Canadian work experience, effectively blending category-based selection with the traditional Canadian Experience Class (CEC) approach.

If this hybrid model proves successful for doctors, it could be a preview of what’s coming in 2026. We may see more occupation-based categories that specifically target candidates already working in Canada in high-need roles. That would increase the advantage for temporary residents with Canadian experience, reinforce a clearer “retain talent already here” direction within Express Entry, and reflect a broader push to better align immigration selection with real-time labour market needs.

This is a developing story, and we’ll share more details as soon as IRCC releases them. Join our community to get the latest updates and step-by-step guidance as new information becomes available.