General Express Entry Draws (All-Program)

General rounds (formerly called "No Program Specified") invite candidates across the Canadian Experience Class, Federal Skilled Worker, and Federal Skilled Trades programs without any category-based filter. These are the most representative of overall pool competitiveness.

Since 2015, IRCC has run 179 General rounds, issuing 519,417 invitations to apply. CRS cutoffs have ranged from 413 to 886, averaging around 478.

Last updated April 23, 2024 — reflects draws through round #294. Source: IRCC Express Entry rounds.

General CRS cutoff trend, 2024–2026

Every General round plotted by date and CRS cutoff. Hover or tap any point for round details.

2003004005006007008002024Jul 242025Jul 252026CRS cutoff

Each line traces one round type's CRS cutoffs over time. Hover or tap any point to see round details. 9 rounds plotted.

Who qualifies for General Express Entry draws

General rounds invite any Express Entry candidate who meets baseline program criteria for Canadian Experience Class, Federal Skilled Worker, or Federal Skilled Trades, without filtering by occupation or language. Every candidate in the pool is eligible; the round is ranked purely by CRS score.

Why General CRS cutoffs look the way they do

General all-program draws represent the pool's overall competitiveness. IRCC paused general rounds from May 2023 through September 2024 while prioritizing category-based draws, then resumed them at reduced frequency. Cutoffs through this modern phase have ranged from roughly 490 to 550, reflecting a larger, more selective pool than the pre-2023 peaks near 470.

Want to know where your profile would land? Use the CRS calculator to estimate your score against these rounds.

OINP EOI mechanics: work permits, wage, and employer tenure now drive the score

Ontario's confirmed Workforce Priority Stream EOI grid reshapes what a skilled-worker profile is worth. A valid work permit scores 10 points against 5 for a study permit, and the old International Student points for field of study and study location are gone, so being in the labour market on a work permit now beats studying on paper. Wage counts twice: a current hourly-wage score up to 15 points at $40 an hour or more, plus a Canadian earnings score of 4, 6 or 8 points based on a single year's CRA Notice of Assessment in the last five. The biggest single lever is time in your job-offer position with the supporting employer, worth up to 18 points. Language, two-plus Canadian credentials, and a Northern Ontario regional focus round it out. Our OINP EOI scoring analysis walks through every band and what it means for how you position an application.

Read the full OINP EOI Scoring 2026 Analysis →

Express Entry 2026 reform: where general-pool candidates should focus

General all-program rounds reflect the underlying CRS distribution more honestly than any category-specific draw, which is exactly why IRCC's April 2026 information session is most directly aimed at this audience. The reform direction the briefing laid out: CRS will lean harder on what IRCC calls strong economic-outcome predictors — language, education, age, work experience — and lean less on what it called weak predictors, including spousal points, sibling-in-Canada, French bonus, and Canadian study points. None of that is law yet. But the change can move through Ministerial Instructions, which is faster than the 12–18 months program-level legislation typically takes. For general-pool candidates, the practical takeaway is to harden the core human-capital factors before any rules change: top up language scores to CLB 9 or 10 if reachable, and avoid building a profile that depends on the factors IRCC is openly re-evaluating. The high-wage occupation factor is also being designed in this window — if your occupation lands on the eventual list, that becomes a meaningful new lever.

Read the full Express Entry 2026 Reform Analysis →

High-Wage Occupations: the new CRS factor every general-pool candidate should track

Of every reform signal IRCC put on the table at the April 2026 information session, the high-wage occupation factor is the one most likely to move first and the one most likely to reshuffle the general all-program pool. The design is deliberate. CRS scoring already weights language, education, age, and work experience — what IRCC calls strong economic-outcome predictors. The high-wage factor adds a new layer aimed at a measurable downstream signal: whether the candidate's occupation, by national median wage, predicts higher post-landing earnings. This is not about how much the candidate personally earns. It is about whether the NOC the candidate maps to typically earns above the overall national median. C.D. Howe's 2026 Selection Matters report and the IRCC consultation materials both lean on the same finding — pre-landing occupational earnings beat most other factors at predicting how a new permanent resident will perform after landing. For general-pool candidates, that means the simple advice is to know exactly which NOC code your work history supports, and check where it sits in the national wage distribution before assuming the new factor will or will not help your case.

Read the full High-Wage Occupations Deep Dive →

Study permit tightening: how a smaller student cohort reshapes the all-program pool

General all-program rounds draw from the entire Express Entry pool — CEC, FSW, and FST candidates who meet program-baseline criteria, ranked purely by CRS. A meaningful share of CEC and FSW profiles in any given year come through the international-student-then-PGWP-then-skilled-work pipeline. IRCC's 2025–26 Departmental Plan set the 2025 new-student-arrivals target at 305,900; through February 28, 2026, actual arrivals were 115,270, about 38 percent of target. That is a one-year cohort 190,630 students smaller than IRCC was planning around. With PGWP eligibility narrowed to specific public-college program lists in 2024 and again in 2025, even the share of those 115,270 arrivals who eventually qualify for PGWP-based Canadian work experience is smaller than in the pre-cap era. Compounded over a few years, the result is a thinner CEC-via-PGWP pipeline feeding the 2027 to 2029 general-pool draws. None of that determines what happens to CRS cutoffs in the next round, but it does mean the underlying pool composition is shifting beneath the draw cadence. Candidates whose CRS edge depends on Canadian study points are also exposed to the parallel reform direction IRCC discussed at its April 2026 information sessions.

Read the full Canada Study Permit Tightening 2025–2026 Analysis →

Study permit second attempt: the integrity layer beneath every Express Entry profile

Most general-pool candidates have a temporary resident history somewhere on file, whether or not it directly led to their current Express Entry profile. The 2025–2026 Federal Court study permit refusal jurisprudence is more relevant to the all-program pool than it looks at first glance, because IRCC's integrity checks at the Express Entry stage cross-reference a candidate's full TR history. A study permit that was approved after a thin second-attempt rebuild can resurface as an integrity flag at the PR stage, especially around financial-source consistency, undisclosed family members, employment-history gaps, or program changes that were never explained on the record. With IRCC scaling AI-assisted decisioning across application categories and operating with stronger inter-database cross-checks than three years ago, the practical implication is that any record produced under a tightening environment is held to a higher consistency standard than it was during the 2022–2023 study permit window. For candidates building toward the general all-program pool today, the second-attempt phase is where the underlying record either gets put on solid footing or quietly accumulates into a future PR-stage problem.

Read the full Study Permit Second Attempt Analysis →

Rural PR fast-track: what the 33,000-spot federal program does and does not change for the general pool

The 2026 Spring Economic Update reaffirmed a 33,000-spot, two-year, one-time fast-track to PR for temporary residents already in Canada — visibly aimed outside the existing Express Entry CRS framework. For general-pool candidates, the practical question is what this changes about all-program competitiveness. The honest answer: probably very little. Recent public comments from Immigration Minister Lena Diab suggest the program will exclude every Census Metropolitan Area, defining "rural" against Statistics Canada's CMA boundary. That carve-out points the 33,000 spots toward a narrow geographic slice — Vernon, Prince George, Squamish, Cornwall, Pembroke, Timmins, and similar smaller centres — rather than the cities where most general-pool candidates have built their work history. Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Montreal, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Oshawa, London, Kingston, Guelph, Halifax — all CMAs, all out under the likely reading. For a candidate sitting in the Express Entry pool with a CRS in the 470 to 530 range and a CMA-based work history, the 33,000 program does not move the cutoff math at general all-program rounds. It also does not change category-draw cadence, the high-wage occupation factor still being designed for late 2026, or any of the levers reform sessions have been discussing. The pragmatic frame is to read the new program as a parallel pipeline for one specific population, not as a redirection of general-pool dynamics.

Read the full Rural PR Fast-Track 2026 Analysis →

Managed migration: how the NPR cap and stable PR envelope reshape the all-program pool

The all-program pool is exactly where managed migration is most visible. IRCC's 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan keeps PR admissions stable at roughly 380,000 per year while explicitly capping the temporary-resident share of population below 5 percent by the end of 2027, and Statistics Canada's NPR estimate has already fallen from about 3.149 million in October 2024 to 2.676 million in January 2026 — a 473,000 drop in fifteen months. The Century Initiative report on Canada's strategic immigration planning frames this as a structural shift from rapid expansion toward a managed model that emphasizes selection, planning, and absorptive capacity. For general all-program candidates, two compounding effects matter. Upstream, fewer NPRs through study and work permit channels means a thinner CEC and FSW pipeline 18 to 36 months out, which over time tightens the underlying CRS distribution in the pool — the same draws are pulled from a smaller, more selective set of profiles. Downstream, the 380,000 PR envelope is being divided across category-based draws (healthcare, French, trades, STEM) and PNP allocations (including the 5,000-nomination Francophone earmark), leaving fewer slots for general all-program rounds at any given month. The strategic implication for general-pool candidates is that human-capital factors — language at CLB 9 or 10, credential mapping, work-experience accumulation — matter more than they did in the 2022 expansion era, not less. The managed era is not a closing door; it is a more selective one.

Read the full Managed Migration 2026 Analysis →

Loss of status: the compliance layer beneath every in-Canada EE profile

General all-program rounds rank candidates purely by CRS, but a large share of the in-Canada pool — CEC and FSW profiles built on Canadian study or work — depends on something the CRS score never measures: continuous, compliant status. Status and authorization are two different questions. A visitor record lets someone stay legally but not work; a study or work permit authorizes the activity but can lapse before its printed date, change conditions, or be cut short when a program ends. Most loss-of-status events do not happen on the day a document expires — they happen when a condition is quietly breached: a closed-permit holder switches employers, a student stops attending the DLI named on the permit, or someone works beyond what their permit allows. None of that shows up in a CRS score, yet any of it can undermine the work experience or study credential the score is built on, and can resurface as an integrity flag at the PR stage. For anyone building an Express Entry profile from inside Canada, the compliance layer is the foundation the points sit on — worth a deliberate self-check before every status-renewal decision.

Read the full Loss of Status in Canada 2026 Analysis →

General Express Entry CRS cutoffs — all 179 rounds

Newest first. The CRS column shows the lowest-ranked candidate invited in each round. Looking for a different round type? Jump to Canadian Experience Class, Provincial Nominee Program, French Language, or all categories.

#DateRound typeInvitationsCRS cutoff
294April 23, 2024General2,095529
292April 10, 2024General1,280549
290March 25, 2024General1,980524
288March 12, 2024General2,850525
286February 28, 2024General1,470534
283February 13, 2024General1,490535
281January 31, 2024General730541
280January 23, 2024General1,040543
279January 10, 2024General1,510546
275December 18, 2023General1,325542
272December 6, 2023General4,750561
268October 10, 2023No Program Specified3,725500
265September 26, 2023No Program Specified3,000504
263September 19, 2023No Program Specified3,200531
262August 15, 2023No Program Specified4,300496
259August 1, 2023No Program Specified2,000517
257July 11, 2023No Program Specified800505
253July 4, 2023No Program Specified700511
251June 27, 2023No Program Specified4,300486
250June 8, 2023No Program Specified4,800486
249May 24, 2023No Program Specified4,800488
247April 26, 2023No Program Specified3,500483
246April 12, 2023No Program Specified3,500486
245March 29, 2023No Program Specified7,000481
244March 23, 2023No Program Specified7,000484
243March 15, 2023No Program Specified7,000490
240February 2, 2023Federal Skilled Worker3,300489
238January 18, 2023No Program Specified5,500490
237January 11, 2023No Program Specified5,500507
236November 23, 2022No Program Specified4,750491
235November 9, 2022No Program Specified4,750494
234October 26, 2022No Program Specified4,750496
233October 12, 2022No Program Specified4,250500
232September 28, 2022No Program Specified3,750504
231September 14, 2022No Program Specified3,250510
230August 31, 2022No Program Specified2,750516
229August 17, 2022No Program Specified2,250525
228August 3, 2022No Program Specified2,000533
227July 20, 2022No Program Specified1,750542
226July 6, 2022No Program Specified1,500557
170December 23, 2020No Program Specified5,000468
169December 9, 2020No Program Specified5,000469
168November 25, 2020No Program Specified5,000469
167November 18, 2020No Program Specified5,000472
166November 5, 2020No Program Specified4,500478
165October 14, 2020No Program Specified4,500471
164September 30, 2020No Program Specified4,200471
163September 16, 2020No Program Specified4,200472
162September 2, 2020No Program Specified4,200475
158August 5, 2020No Program Specified3,900476
155July 8, 2020No Program Specified3,900478
138March 4, 2020No Program Specified3,900471
137February 19, 2020No Program Specified4,500470
136February 5, 2020No Program Specified3,500472
135January 22, 2020No Program Specified3,400471
134January 8, 2020No Program Specified3,400473
133December 19, 2019No Program Specified3,200469
132December 11, 2019No Program Specified3,200472
131November 27, 2019No Program Specified3,600471
130November 13, 2019No Program Specified3,600472
129October 30, 2019No Program Specified3,900475
127October 2, 2019No Program Specified3,900464
126September 18, 2019No Program Specified3,600462
125September 4, 2019No Program Specified3,600463
124August 20, 2019No Program Specified3,600457
123August 12, 2019No Program Specified3,600466
122July 24, 2019No Program Specified3,600459
121July 10, 2019No Program Specified3,600460
120June 26, 2019No Program Specified3,350462
119June 12, 2019No Program Specified3,350465
118May 29, 2019No Program Specified3,350470
116May 1, 2019No Program Specified3,350450
115April 17, 2019No Program Specified3,350451
114April 3, 2019No Program Specified3,350451
113March 20, 2019No Program Specified3,350452
112March 6, 2019No Program Specified3,350454
111February 20, 2019No Program Specified3,350457
110January 30, 2019No Program Specified3,350438
109January 23, 2019No Program Specified3,900443
108January 9, 2019No Program Specified3,900449
107December 19, 2018No Program Specified3,900439
106December 12, 2018No Program Specified3,900445
105November 28, 2018No Program Specified3,900445
104November 14, 2018No Program Specified3,900449
103October 29, 2018No Program Specified3,900442
102October 15, 2018No Program Specified3,900440
101October 3, 2018No Program Specified3,900445
99September 19, 2018No Program Specified3,500441
98September 5, 2018No Program Specified3,900440
97August 22, 2018No Program Specified3,750440
96August 8, 2018No Program Specified3,750440
95July 25, 2018No Program Specified3,750441
94July 11, 2018No Program Specified3,750442
93June 25, 2018No Program Specified3,750442
92June 13, 2018No Program Specified3,750451
90May 23, 2018No Program Specified3,500440
89May 9, 2018No Program Specified3,500441
88April 25, 2018No Program Specified3,500441
87April 11, 2018No Program Specified3,500444
86March 26, 2018No Program Specified3,000446
85March 14, 2018No Program Specified3,000456
84February 21, 2018No Program Specified3,000442
83February 7, 2018No Program Specified3,000442
82January 24, 2018No Program Specified2,750444
81January 10, 2018No Program Specified2,750446
80December 20, 2017No Program Specified2,750446
79December 6, 2017No Program Specified2,750452
78November 15, 2017No Program Specified2,750439
77November 8, 2017No Program Specified2,000458
74October 18, 2017No Program Specified2,757436
73October 4, 2017No Program Specified2,801438
72September 20, 2017No Program Specified2,871433
71September 6, 2017No Program Specified2,772435
70August 23, 2017No Program Specified3,035434
69August 9, 2017No Program Specified2,991433
68August 2, 2017No Program Specified3,264441
67July 12, 2017No Program Specified3,202440
66June 28, 2017No Program Specified3,409449
65May 31, 2017No Program Specified3,877413
62May 17, 2017No Program Specified3,687415
61May 4, 2017No Program Specified3,796423
60April 19, 2017No Program Specified3,665415
59April 12, 2017No Program Specified3,923423
58April 5, 2017No Program Specified3,753431
57March 24, 2017No Program Specified3,749441
56March 1, 2017No Program Specified3,884434
55February 22, 2017No Program Specified3,611441
54February 8, 2017No Program Specified3,644447
53January 25, 2017No Program Specified3,508453
52January 11, 2017No Program Specified3,334459
51January 4, 2017No Program Specified2,902468
50December 22, 2016No Program Specified2,878475
49December 16, 2016No Program Specified1,936497
47November 16, 2016No Program Specified2,427470
46November 2, 2016No Program Specified2,080472
45October 19, 2016No Program Specified1,804475
44October 12, 2016No Program Specified1,518484
43September 21, 2016No Program Specified1,288483
42September 7, 2016No Program Specified1,000491
41August 24, 2016No Program Specified750538
40August 10, 2016No Program Specified754490
39July 27, 2016No Program Specified755488
38July 13, 2016No Program Specified747482
37June 29, 2016No Program Specified773482
36June 15, 2016No Program Specified752488
35June 1, 2016No Program Specified762483
34May 18, 2016No Program Specified763484
33May 6, 2016No Program Specified799534
32April 20, 2016No Program Specified1,018468
31April 6, 2016No Program Specified954470
30March 23, 2016No Program Specified1,014470
29March 9, 2016No Program Specified1,013473
28February 24, 2016No Program Specified1,484453
27February 10, 2016No Program Specified1,505459
26January 27, 2016No Program Specified1,468457
25January 13, 2016No Program Specified1,518453
24January 6, 2016No Program Specified1,463461
23December 18, 2015No Program Specified1,503460
22December 4, 2015No Program Specified1,451461
21November 27, 2015No Program Specified1,559472
20November 13, 2015No Program Specified1,506484
19October 23, 2015No Program Specified1,502489
18October 2, 2015No Program Specified1,530450
17September 18, 2015No Program Specified1,545450
16September 8, 2015No Program Specified1,517459
15August 21, 2015No Program Specified1,523456
14August 7, 2015No Program Specified1,402471
13July 17, 2015No Program Specified1,581451
12July 10, 2015No Program Specified1,516463
11June 26, 2015No Program Specified1,575469
10June 12, 2015No Program Specified1,501482
9May 22, 2015No Program Specified1,361755
8April 17, 2015No Program Specified715453
7April 10, 2015No Program Specified925469
6March 27, 2015No Program Specified1,637453
5March 20, 2015No Program Specified1,620481
4February 27, 2015No Program Specified1,187735
2February 7, 2015No Program Specified779818
1January 31, 2015No Program Specified779886

Frequently asked questions about General Express Entry draws

What is a general or all-program Express Entry draw?

A round that invites candidates from any Express Entry program (CEC, FSW, or FST) based purely on CRS score, with no category or language filter.

When did general draws return?

IRCC paused all-program rounds between May 2023 and September 2024, then resumed them at roughly one round per month.

What CRS score do I need in a general draw?

Recent general-round cutoffs have ranged from about 490 to 550. A score 10 to 20 points above the recent cutoff range is the practical target.

Why were general draws paused?

To prioritize category-based rounds aligned with labour-market needs and the federal francophone immigration target. General rounds resumed once category throughput stabilized.

Is it easier to get invited in a general or category-based round?

For candidates with eligible occupations or strong French, category rounds have had lower cutoffs. For candidates without category eligibility, general rounds are the primary path.

Other Express Entry draw categories

Estimate your CRS score

The Comprehensive Ranking System assigns points for age, education, language, and work experience. Calculate yours, then check which of these General rounds you would have qualified for.

Open the CRS calculator