Physicians with Canadian Work Experience

Canada created a separate Express Entry category in 2026 for physicians who have already worked in the Canadian healthcare system.

It is a small category. Only three NOCs qualify, and the required physician experience must have been gained in Canada.

That last point separates it from the broader Healthcare and Social Services category.

A family physician who has worked for several years outside Canada may qualify for the Healthcare category, but foreign medical experience alone cannot qualify that doctor for the Physicians with Canadian Work Experience category.

IRCC requires at least 12 months of full-time Canadian work experience, or an equivalent amount of part-time work, within the previous three years in one eligible physician occupation. The experience does not need to be continuous.

The category has also produced unusually low CRS cut-offs in its first year. Three physician-specific draws have been held in 2026, with cut-offs ranging from 169 to 223.

Who This Category Is For

Requirement	2026 Rule
Eligible occupations	3 physician NOCs
Required work experience	12 months
Experience must be within	Previous 3 years
Experience must be Canadian	Yes
Must it be continuous?	No
Part-time equivalent accepted	Yes
Must experience be in one NOC?	Yes
Foreign physician experience enough?	No
Must physician NOC be primary occupation?	No
Separate Express Entry profile required	Yes
Job offer required by this category	No
CRS still used	Yes

This is not a separate permanent residence program. The physician category operates inside the Express Entry pool. A candidate still needs to qualify for one of the programs managed through Express Entry before category-based selection becomes relevant.

Eligible Physician NOCs

Only three physician occupations are currently included.

Occupation	NOC 2021	TEER
Specialists in clinical and laboratory medicine	31100	1
Specialists in surgery	31101	1
General practitioners and family physicians	31102	1

These three NOCs also appear in the broader Healthcare and Social Services category, but the experience rules are different.

Canadian Experience Only

The 12 months used for this physician category must have been worked in Canada.

Experience from another country does not count toward this category’s Canadian-experience requirement, even if it was performed in exactly the same physician NOC.

Consider a family physician with:

• six years of family medicine experience abroad;
• eight months working as a family physician in Canada.

The candidate does not yet have the 12 months of Canadian experience required for this category.

Now consider another physician with:

• ten years of foreign experience;
• fourteen recent months working in Canada under NOC 31102.

The Canadian portion may satisfy the category’s experience requirement, provided the rest of the profile also qualifies.

Foreign experience can still matter elsewhere in the Express Entry profile. It simply does not replace the required Canadian year for this specific category.

Doctors Outside Canada

A physician who has never worked in Canada should look at the Healthcare and Social Services Express Entry category instead.

The same three physician NOCs (31100, 31101, 31102) are included there, and the broader Healthcare category accepts qualifying work experience gained in Canada or abroad.

That creates two different situations:

Profile	Healthcare Category	Physician Canadian Experience Category
Family physician with 2 years abroad	Potentially eligible	No
Surgeon with 18 months in Canada	Potentially eligible	Potentially eligible
Specialist with 8 months Canada + 5 years abroad	Potentially eligible	Not yet based on 8 Canadian months
Physician with 12+ recent Canadian months	Potentially eligible	Potentially eligible

Internal-link anchor: Healthcare and Social Services Express Entry Category 2026

Healthcare vs. Physician Category

The overlap between these two categories can be confusing because they include the same three physician NOCs.

The difference is not the occupation. It is the location of the qualifying experience.

IRCC can consider candidates for any category they meet; there is no requirement to choose only one category in advance.

Can You Combine Different Physician NOCs?

The required 12 months must be accumulated in one eligible occupation.

For example:

14 months as a family physician (NOC 31102)

may potentially satisfy the requirement.

But:

7 months under NOC 31102 + 6 months under NOC 31100

should not simply be combined and treated as 13 months in one occupation.

The same applies to physicians who change specialties during the three-year period.

A Break in Employment Is Allowed

The Canadian experience does not need to be continuous.

A physician could have:

• seven qualifying months;
• a break from practice;
• another six qualifying months in the same NOC.

If both periods fall within the required three-year window and otherwise meet the rules, the break itself does not prevent the experience from being accumulated.

The 12 months must still be in the same eligible occupation.

Fee-for-Service Physicians

Physician employment in Canada does not always look like a traditional employer–employee relationship.

Many doctors provide publicly funded medical services through fee-for-service arrangements and may technically be treated as self-employed.

That historically created an Express Entry problem because self-employed Canadian work generally does not count toward Canadian Experience Class work experience.

IRCC introduced a temporary public policy specifically to address this issue for certain foreign national physicians providing publicly funded medical services in Canada. Under the policy, qualifying physician work can be counted as Canadian work experience even when the physician’s arrangement would otherwise be treated as self-employment.

IRCC also gives physicians specific instructions for entering this experience in their Express Entry profiles so that eligible publicly funded physician work can be counted.

This does not mean that all self-employed medical work automatically qualifies. The type of medical service, work authorization and circumstances of the physician’s practice still matter.

A physician working under a fee-for-service model should therefore review the public policy before treating the experience as ordinary Canadian employment.

Do Physicians Need CEC?

No. Being in the Physicians with Canadian Work Experience category does not mean you must necessarily enter the Express Entry pool through the Canadian Experience Class.

Category eligibility and Express Entry program eligibility are separate.

Express Entry manages:

• Canadian Experience Class;
• Federal Skilled Worker Program;
• Federal Skilled Trades Program.

A physician might qualify for CEC based on Canadian experience, but another physician may enter the pool through the Federal Skilled Worker Program and still meet the physician-category requirements.

The category does not become a fourth Express Entry program.

Medical Licensing Is Separate

Permanent residence and medical licensing solve different problems.

Express Entry determines whether a physician may qualify for permanent immigration.

The medical regulator in the province or territory determines whether that physician may practise medicine there.

The federal government explicitly states that physician credential recognition and licensing remain the responsibility of provinces and territories.

For example, a physician who wants to practise in Ontario must meet the registration requirements of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. CPSO confirms that physicians must be registered with the College to practise medicine in Ontario.

A permanent resident document does not replace that licence.

Likewise, obtaining a Canadian medical licence does not itself grant permanent resident status.

ECA for Foreign Medical Degrees

Doctors with foreign medical education should also distinguish an Educational Credential Assessment from professional licensing.

If your primary occupation is:

• NOC 31100;
• NOC 31101; or
• NOC 31102,

IRCC requires the ECA for your primary medical diploma to be issued by the Medical Council of Canada when an ECA is required for your Express Entry profile.

An ECA confirms the Canadian equivalency of the foreign credential for immigration purposes.

IRCC specifically warns that an ECA does not guarantee a licence to practise in a regulated profession.

So for an internationally trained physician:

MCC ECA ≠ provincial medical licence

They serve different purposes.

Do You Need a Job Offer?

The physician category itself does not list a Canadian job offer as an eligibility requirement.

The core category requirements are qualifying Canadian physician experience and eligibility for the relevant Express Entry round.

This should not be confused with a separate physician initiative announced by the federal government in December 2025.

Canada also reserved 5,000 additional federal admission spaces for provinces and territories to nominate licensed doctors with job offers. Physicians nominated through that initiative can receive expedited work permit processing.

That is a different measure.

The 5,000 PNP Spaces

The announcement that created the physician Express Entry category also introduced another immigration measure for doctors.

Canada reserved 5,000 federal admission spaces, in addition to regular Provincial Nominee Program allocations, for provinces and territories to nominate licensed physicians who have job offers.

Those nominated physicians can receive 14-day work permit processing while waiting for permanent residence.

This should not be mixed into the requirements of the Express Entry physician category.

A simple distinction is:

Measure	Key Feature
Physician Express Entry category	12 months of eligible Canadian physician experience
Additional physician PNP spaces	Provincial nomination + licensed doctor + job offer
Expedited work permit	Available to physicians nominated under the announced measure

For some physicians, a provincial route may be relevant even when the Express Entry physician category is not.

2026 Physician Draws

The physician category has already been used three times in 2026.

Date	Invitations	CRS Cut-Off
February 19, 2026	391	169
June 24, 2026	271	223
September 3, 2026	229	198
Total	891	169–223

IRCC’s published draw data show 891 invitations across the three physician rounds held so far in 2026.

The latest round was held on September 3, 2026, with 229 invitations and a CRS cut-off of 198.

Why Are the CRS Scores So Low?

A CRS cut-off of 169 looks extraordinary when compared with broader CEC or Healthcare rounds.

But it should not be interpreted as a general Express Entry standard for doctors.

This category has a very narrow eligible pool:

the candidate must already be in Express Entry, must have at least one year of recent Canadian physician experience and must fall within one of only three NOCs.

In other words, the occupational and Canadian-experience filters do a large amount of the selection before CRS ranking begins.

That helps explain why the CRS cut-offs have been much lower than those seen in broader rounds.

It does not mean that a doctor with CRS 169 and no Canadian physician experience has a route through this category.

A CRS of 198 Is Not a Permanent Requirement

• The September 3 draw closed at 198.
• The February draw closed at 169.
• The June draw closed at 223.

There is therefore no fixed physician CRS threshold.

The cut-off depends on the candidates who are eligible at the time and the number of invitations IRCC decides to issue.

A physician at CRS 190 would have been invited in February but not in June or September.

A physician at CRS 225 would have cleared all three recorded cut-offs, assuming the category requirements and tie-breaking rules were also met.

Historical scores are useful context, not a guaranteed future benchmark.

Family Physicians

General practitioners and family physicians (NOC 31102) are included.

A family doctor who has accumulated at least 12 qualifying months in Canada within the previous three years may potentially meet the category experience rule.

A family doctor who has worked only outside Canada should instead review the broader Healthcare category.

The distinction is especially relevant to internationally trained family physicians who are still overseas and see the very low physician-category CRS cut-offs.

Those cut-offs do not apply to doctors who have not first acquired the required Canadian physician experience.

Specialists

Specialists fall into two broad eligible NOCs:

• Specialists in clinical and laboratory medicine (NOC 31100)

and:

• Specialists in surgery (NOC 31101)

The exact NOC depends on the specialty.

Examples that may fall under clinical and laboratory medicine include various internal medicine and diagnostic specialties, while surgical specialties fall under NOC 31101.

The physician’s actual occupation should still be matched to the appropriate NOC rather than treating all specialist physicians as interchangeable.

Canadian Work Must Be Properly Documented

The category is built specifically around Canadian physician experience, so weak or unclear employment evidence can become a serious issue.

The documents should support the actual work being claimed, including relevant details such as:

• dates;
• hours;
• place of work;
• medical duties;
• type of practice;
• and the relationship under which services were provided.

Fee-for-service physicians may need particular care because their work structure can look different from conventional salaried employment.

The goal is not simply to prove that you were physically present in Canada for a year.

You need to support qualifying Canadian experience in one of the three physician NOCs.

Examples of Physician Eligibility

Issues Physicians Commonly Miss

• Foreign experience does not replace the Canadian year. Ten years as a physician abroad may strengthen your overall profile, but it does not satisfy this category’s requirement for 12 months of qualifying physician work in Canada.
• Healthcare and physician draws are not the same. A doctor may qualify for both categories, but the work-experience rules and CRS cut-offs are different.
• Fee-for-service work needs to be reviewed carefully. It should not automatically be excluded as self-employment, but it should not automatically be assumed to qualify either. IRCC has a physician-specific public policy that may apply depending on the arrangement.
• Permanent residence does not give you a medical licence. Provincial and territorial medical regulators decide whether a physician can practise medicine in Canada.
• An MCC ECA is not a medical licence. It is used to assess foreign medical education for immigration purposes where required; it does not authorize medical practice.
• A low physician-draw CRS does not remove the other requirements. A CRS of 169 was enough in one 2026 physician round, but only candidates who already met the category’s Canadian work-experience and NOC requirements could be considered.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Takeaway

This category is designed for a very specific group: physicians who are already working in Canada.

The occupation list is short, the Canadian-experience rule is strict, and foreign physician experience cannot replace the required year in Canada.

For physicians already practising here, the category has been significant because its first three CRS cut-offs—169, 223 and 198 have been far below many broader Express Entry rounds.

For doctors still outside Canada, those numbers can be misleading if viewed without the eligibility rules. Their more relevant Express Entry category may be Healthcare and Social Services, where eligible physician experience from abroad can count.

Doctors working under fee-for-service arrangements also need to pay particular attention to IRCC’s physician public policy rather than assuming their Canadian work is excluded as self-employment.

Finally, permanent residence and medical licensing should always be kept separate. Express Entry can resolve immigration status. The provincial or territorial medical regulator decides whether a doctor may practise medicine.