Article · Population · 6 min read
Canada Immigration in 2026: Fewer Students, Fewer Workers, More Protected Persons
The 2015–2024 acceleration that culminated in 2024's record 482,570 permanent residents has reversed in most streams and levelled off since early 2026. One category is rising.
Download chart · Download data (CSV) The chart above plots the 12-month rolling sum of three Canadian immigration streams from January 2017 through August 2026. Each line is the number of people with a study permit or temporary foreign worker permit signed, or admitted as permanent residents, in the trailing twelve months at every month-end. The data comes from IRCC's monthly open-data files, and work permits cover the Temporary Foreign Worker Program only. The dashed lines mark January 2024, when the first study-permit cap was announced, and October 2024, when the 2025–2027 levels plan was released.
What these lines measure. Each line counts new permit or admission events in a 12-month window: people with a study permit or Temporary Foreign Worker Program permit signed, and people admitted as permanent residents. They do not count how many students, workers or permit holders are in Canada today. That stock changes as people arrive, leave, renew permits or become permanent residents, and Statistics Canada tracks it separately in Table 17-10-0121-01. A 46 % fall in study-permit signings is not a 46 % fall in international students living in Canada.
Update, October 2026: one stream has reversed
Newer IRCC data (January to August) shows the decline in permanent resident admissions has slowed to 5%, and one category has turned sharply up. The figures below are sums of IRCC's rounded monthly cells, so totals can drift by a few hundred.
| Permanent resident admissions, Jan to Aug | 2025 | 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| All categories | 276,380 | 262,245 | −5% |
| Economic | 171,465 | 142,330 | −17% |
| Sponsored family | 63,180 | 59,025 | −7% |
| Refugees and protected persons | 34,505 | 56,530 | +64% |
| All other | 7,230 | 4,360 | −40% |
The jump is almost all protected persons already living in Canada: 12,465 admitted in the first eight months of 2025 and 37,440 in 2026, about three times as many. Resettled refugees fell 13 % (22,040 to 19,090). Humanitarian and other admissions fell 40 % (7,230 to 4,360).
Compared with the plan, protected persons alone (37,440) are already above the 20,000 annual target for that group, and the combined refugee and protected-person category (56,530) is above its 49,300 target. The plan also announced a separate one-time initiative to move about 115,000 protected persons in Canada toward permanent residence, "in addition to" the annual targets. IRCC's monthly data do not flag which admissions belong to that initiative, so the data cannot confirm how much of the jump it explains.
The permit and PR totals in the rest of this article were refreshed to August 2026. "Every stream is declining" no longer describes permanent residence, and all three totals have flattened since early 2026.
For how Canadians' views on immigration levels have moved over the same years, see nearly 50 years of polls on whether there is too much immigration.
What the data actually says
Peak and current values, from IRCC open-data files dated 31 August 2026. Each figure is a sum of IRCC's rounded monthly cells, so totals can drift by a few hundred. Study permits are counted as people with a permit signed in each month; summing 12 months counts someone twice if they signed in two different months, so totals run 3–6 % above IRCC's annual unique-person counts.
| Stream | 12-month peak | Peak month | Aug 2026 (12-month) | Decline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Study permits (people) | 732,095 | March 2024 | 395,695 | −46.0 % |
| Permanent residents admitted | 495,980 | July 2022 | 378,605 | −23.7 % |
| Temporary foreign worker permits | 197,205 | January 2025 | 162,725 | −17.5 % |
Three observations worth pulling out before the explanation:
- Study-permit signings have fallen 46 % from their March 2024 peak. The fall took 29 months and is the largest of the three series.
- The streams are moving in the same direction at different paces. Study permits collapsed first and fastest. PR admissions slipped from about 480,000 in late 2024 to a low of 367,225 in June 2026. Temporary foreign worker permits peaked last, in January 2025, and have fallen least. All three have flattened since early 2026, and the study-permit and PR lines are now close together.
- 2024 was the record calendar year, but not the 12-month peak. The widely-cited 2024 figure (IRCC's current data show 482,570, revised from the 483,645 first reported) sits within a 12-month window that has since fallen to 378,605. The 12-month peak came earlier, in July 2022.
What the policy timeline shows
The decline did not start in October 2024. The 12-month study-permit total was already down from 732,095 in March 2024 to 591,465 by October 2024, after the first federal cap on study permits was announced in January 2024. Later steps followed:
- 18 September 2024: IRCC announced a 2025 study-permit cap of 437,000, 10 % below the 2024 cap, and a goal of bringing temporary residents from 6.5 % of the population to 5 % by 2026.
- 24 October 2024: the 2025–2027 levels plan cut the 2025 permanent-resident target from 500,000 to 395,000. That was a change to the planned target, not a measured fall in admissions.
The timing is consistent with a policy effect, but rolling totals alone cannot separate policy from seasonality, processing delays and applicant behaviour. Since December 2025 the study-permit total has hovered between 378,000 and 410,000.
TFW has fallen the least. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program total is down 17.5 % from its January 2025 peak. The figure excludes the International Mobility Program, so it is not the whole work-permit picture.
What this adds up to
Permanent-resident admissions reached a record 482,570 in 2024, after a decade of expansion. Flows have since fallen from their peaks in most streams: study-permit signings are down 46 % (March 2024 peak), Temporary Foreign Worker Program permits 17.5 % (January 2025) and trailing-12-month PR admissions 24 % (July 2022). Protected-person admissions are the exception.
The open question is whether the decline stops at the target the federal government has set (380,000 PRs a year through 2028) or overshoots it. Through August 2026 the trailing-12-month PR total is 378,605, almost exactly on that target, and all three lines have flattened. That is a rough indication of scale, not proof that 2026 will finish on target.
Update, 22 October 2026: A record 728,960 work permits took effect from January to August 2026. Most of the increase came from post-graduation permits, and the number of people holding a work permit fell. Read the follow-up.
Related: over the same years, Canadian Election Study respondents grew more skeptical of immigration, and Conservative voters moved furthest. How attitudes shifted by party, 2019 to 2025.
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