September 2026 Canadian immigration roundup: Express Entry, PNP changes and program delivery updates

This is our monthly roundup. Everything below comes from official announcements and provincial websites, with the source linked after each section. The raw daily updates are on our policy updates page, which collects from these sources every four hours.

1. Express Entry: seven rounds in September

Round	Date	Category	Invitations	Lowest CRS
#445	28 Sept	Provincial Nominee Program	733	725
#444	16 Sept	Senior managers with Canadian work experience	250	389
#443	15 Sept	Canadian Experience Class	2,000	519
#442	14 Sept	Provincial Nominee Program	576	734
#441	4 Sept	Healthcare and social services occupations	3,500	475
#440	3 Sept	Physicians with Canadian work experience	229	198
#439	1 Sept	Canadian Experience Class	2,000	521

What this shows:

• CEC cut-offs are flat. September's two rounds came in at 519 and 521; August's three sat between 516 and 523. Two months inside the same narrow band. If your score is near that line, retaking the language test is worth it — five points can decide whether an invitation arrives this month.
• The PNP cut-offs (725, 734) look alarming but are not. A nomination adds 600 points, so these rounds are structurally above 600. What is really being tested is whether you hold a nomination, not your base score.
• Category-based rounds remain the main opening for lower scores. In September the physicians category went down to 198, senior managers to 389 and healthcare and social services to 475 — all far below the CEC's 519. If your occupation matches a category, your real threshold is much lower than the general draws suggest.
• There was no French-language round in September. August had two, 5,000 invitations each, at 382 and 391. French is still the most valuable single advantage in the system, but the rhythm of these rounds is not fixed — do not plan on one every month.

Source: IRCC rounds of invitations

2. Provincial nominee programs: allocations and rules both moved

British Columbia (BC PNP). On 18 August the province announced an extra 1,000 nominations from the federal government, taking its 2026 allocation to 6,254, and said it plans to use the full allocation by 31 December. The additional nominations go to the program objectives announced on 23 April. The registration period for the Temporary Rural/Remote Health Support Initiative was also extended to 7 October. Source: BC PNP news

Ontario (OINP). The regulatory amendments for phase one of the redesign came into force on 25 June, removing the eight existing streams; the expression-of-interest portal for the new Ontario Workforce Priority Stream opened on 4 August. Source: OINP updates

Alberta (AAIP). Additional allocations were announced on 10 August, followed on 12 August by clarified eligibility information for the entrepreneur streams. Source: AAIP updates

Manitoba (MPNP). Expression of Interest draw #280 was held on 24 September, keeping to the roughly two-week cadence. Source: MPNP news

3. IRCC program delivery updates: easy to miss, hard to ignore

Program delivery updates are the internal instructions officers actually apply. They come with no press release, but they often say more about how decisions are being made than the news does. Four from September:

• 22 Sept — Study permits: guidance on minor children was updated. Relevant to families with accompanying minors or children studying on their own.
• 18 Sept — Employer-specific work permits: general processing, and employer compliance inspections. This one bears directly on how employer-sponsored applications are scrutinised.
• 17 Sept — Assessing the genuineness of the offer of employment on a work permit application. One of the most common reasons a work permit is refused is an officer finding the offer not genuine; this guidance is how they decide that.
• 22 Sept — Clarified eligibility for the TPP exemption from an immigration medical exam in Canada.

Source: IRCC program delivery updates

4. Where we read all this

Our policy updates page collects the following automatically, every four hours:

• Federal, official: the IRCC newsroom, IRCC program delivery updates, and the official Express Entry rounds record.
• Provincial, official: BC PNP, Alberta AAIP, Ontario OINP, Manitoba MPNP, Saskatchewan SINP, Nova Scotia, plus entry points for the remaining Atlantic provinces, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Quebec's immigration ministry.
• Industry bodies: CICC (the regulator) and CAPIC.
• Industry media: CIC News, Immigration.ca, Canadim and the CanadaVisa forum.

IRCC's own channels are worth following too: Facebook, X, YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn. One caution: only the announcements and regulations on canada.ca carry legal weight. Social media is a distribution channel, not the rule — take any "insider information" circulating online back to the official page before acting on it.

If you want to know what these changes mean for your own file, book a consultation.