The Canadian government has just released information about its target caps for study permit issuance for 2025 and a breakdown of how those targets will be distributed across the country according to the Provincial Attestation Letter (PAL) formula introduced in 2024.
For 2025, the government plans to issue a total of 437,000 new study permits, a 10% reduction compared to the overall cap level of 485,000 permits for 2024. Some of those study permits will go to students exempt from the cap (K-12 students, exchange students, students with study permits applying for extensions at the same institution) and some will be specifically reserved for graduate students, which are now factored in the cap as well.
Overall, 316,276 of the 437,000 study permits will go to students who must apply with a PAL. That includes college students, undergraduate students, language students, students in graduate diploma programmes, and master’s and doctoral programmes. Those segments make up most of the applications submitted every year to study in Canada.
These are the broad cap allocations for study permit issuance by type of student for 2025:
And these are the targets broken down by province:
The table below essentially shows the maximum number of PAL-required student applications allowed per province, i.e., the number of applications that Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) will process per province.
