Monthly updates

October 2026: the largest fall yet, and a later date

Snapshot of 9 October 2026 · compared with 3 September 2026

The backlog fell 4,400, from 327,100 to 322,700, the largest fall in the five snapshots on record. This one also covered the longest stretch: 36 days, against 24 the time before.

Why an August ’24 date moved later anyway

The queue ahead of an August ’24 filer fell by 2,300 to 15,600, its biggest drop yet. Last month’s projection expected about 15,200 by now, so the queue very nearly kept to schedule. And yet the estimate moved from April 2027 to June.

The queue did not change the date; the rate did. Scaled to a month, the pace measured between each pair of snapshots has gone like this:

A band of roughly 1,950 to 2,300 a month, and this snapshot landed at the bottom of it. At the top, the same queue would project to early May; at the bottom it projects to early June. That five weeks is the honest width of the estimate, and it is worth reading the date as a range rather than as a month that slipped. The two short gaps produced the two high readings. With four points that may be coincidence, but it is worth watching.

The processing window moved forward again

Set aside the one cohort that was re-dated and about 28,300 applications genuinely left the queue. Four filing months took 74% of that, and which four has changed in a pattern that has now held for every snapshot on record:

One filing month forward with every snapshot, four times running. Most of the capacity is going to applications six to nine months old, and that window is moving with the calendar rather than working back through the queue.

The older cohorts still moved. October ’23 to August ’24, which is the same queue as the August ’24 figure above, fell 2,300. March ’24 lost 600 of its 1,400, the sharpest proportional fall in that range. November ’23 held at 400, the first snapshot in which it has not moved.

May ’26 emptied, but the records went further

May ’26 fell from 141,700 to 26,700, a drop of 115,000, the same shape as March and April before it. What changed is where they went. June ’26 barely moved this time. Instead August ’26, which held nothing at the September snapshot, now holds 94,200, with July and September ’26 up 22,200 and 21,300.

August and September ’26 are recent enough to be receiving genuinely new applications as well, so the feed can no longer separate re-dated records from fresh filings in those months. But 94,200 is more than three times what any filing month has held once its figures settled, which points to re-dating rather than a surge of August applications.

April ’26, last month’s frontier, fell an ordinary 17.5% this time and is selectable again, exactly as March ’26 was the month before. The estimator now quotes from October ’23 to April ’26, 31 filing months.

Changes to the estimator

The random-draw rate now comes from each cohort’s own history. It was a fixed 100 a month, which suited the middle of 2024 but not the front of the queue: March ’24 has fallen from 2,100 to 800 since June, about 320 a month, while August ’24 has lost about 70. One figure cannot describe both, so each filing month now uses its own pace, and an August ’24 filer’s chance of an early draw before the queue clears comes out at about 31% rather than 45%.

The estimator also shows your cohort’s own trend, as a sentence and a small chart under the figures at the top, with the earlier months clearing fastest named beneath it. It gives a date only where the pace supports one, and measures it to the 250 the stuck scenario assumes never clears rather than to zero: around November 2026 for March ’24, four months ahead of its no-assumptions estimate, and none for August ’24, where the same pace would take nearly two years.

Three figures the feed always carried are now on the page. IRCC’s own per-month estimate sits beside the four figures at the top; at this snapshot every filing month before May 2025 reads “we need more time”, a line that stood at December 2024 in July. At the foot of the page, the queue as a whole: 322,700 pending, down 4,400 since September, with about 28,200 new filings and 23,900 decisions a month. And a chart of where this month’s clearance went, which is the 74% in January ’26 to April ’26 drawn out.

Elsewhere on the feed

Protected persons in Canada outside Quebec fell 8,500 to 77,600, the third large fall running. Citizenship certificates fell 5,300 to 130,700 after two months of growth, with IRCC’s published time at about 34 months. Across all 28 categories, 12 fell, 12 grew and 4 held still, about 1.38 million applications pending in total. The categories page has the filing-month breakdown for each.

September 2026: the same shuffle, one month later

Snapshot of 3 September 2026 · compared with 10 August 2026

The backlog fell 1,100, from 328,200 to 327,100, after rising in August. Underneath that, the same re-dating wave that dominated August ran again, moved forward by exactly one filing month.

April ’26 emptied the way March did

Last month March ’26 shed 116,900 into April. This month April ’26 fell from 156,200 to 33,100, a drop of 123,100, while May ’26 rose from 23,300 to 141,700, June ’26 from 1,400 to 26,500, and July ’26 from 600 to 4,000. Falls across the series came to 148,100 and rises to 147,000.

Two snapshots is not a pattern, but it is no longer a one-off. The shape is identical: one recent cohort empties by roughly 80%, the next fills by about the same number, and the total barely moves. Anyone reading the newest filing months as fast processing is reading a bookkeeping cycle. At this snapshot the estimator stopped quoting a figure from April ’26 onward for that reason.

Where the actual processing went

Set April ’26 aside and about 25,000 applications genuinely left the queue. Four filing months took roughly 77% of that:

March ’26 is the interesting one. It was August’s settling frontier, dropping 81% in a month; this time it fell 12%, which is an ordinary month’s work. A cohort can finish being shuffled and go back to being processed, and that is what makes the frontier worth re-deriving from every snapshot rather than fixing by hand.

The older cohorts, and a caveat about this one

October ’23 to August ’24 went from 19,700 to 17,900, down 1,800, after 2,200 in each of the two months before. February ’24 lost 400 of its 1,000, the sharpest proportional fall in the tail, and November ’23 is down to 400 and still shedding about 100 a snapshot.

This snapshot arrived early, and that used to matter. There were 24 days between 10 August and 3 September, against 34 for the month before. Every rate here was measured per snapshot and then projected as though a snapshot were a month, so a short gap quietly understated the pace and pushed the dates later. That is now corrected: the observed fall is divided by the days between the two snapshots and multiplied back up to 30.44, so the estimate moves when the queue moves and not when IRCC changes its publishing day.

For an August ’24 filer that leaves 17,900 ahead and a head-clearance rate of 2,283 a month, from an observed fall of 1,800 over 24 days. The projected date came out at April 2027. Under the old arithmetic the same snapshot would have read 1,800 a month and July 2027, so three months of that gap was the calendar rather than the queue.

A hundred applications, and what they broke

August ’24 ticked up from 1,900 to 2,000. The feed rounds to the nearest hundred, so that is the smallest move it can express and may be nothing at all, but the rule for detecting a settling cohort treated any rise as evidence, and the frontier is the first month to trip it. One rounding step marked August ’24 and every one of the 25 months after it as unusable.

The rule now requires a rise to clear one rounding step before it counts. Real re-dating does not arrive a hundred at a time, as the 123,100 that left April ’26 makes plain. That made thirty filing months selectable again, and the methodology has the detail.

Elsewhere on the feed

Citizenship certificates rose 14,200 to 136,000, and IRCC’s published time for them moved from about 25 months to about 33. Protected persons in Canada outside Quebec fell 6,100 for the second month running, to 86,100, and spouses or partners abroad outside Quebec rose 4,600 to 62,600. Across all 28 categories the feed reports about 1.4 million applications pending. The categories page has the filing-month breakdown for each.

August 2026: the backlog grew while 146,000 applications moved

Snapshot of 10 August 2026 · compared with 7 July 2026

The headline number went the wrong way. Citizenship grants pending rose from 326,200 to 328,200, up 2,000 in a month, and yet roughly 145,700 applications left the filing month they had been sitting in. Almost none of that was decisions.

The re-dating event

One cohort accounts for nearly all of it. March ’26 fell from 144,300 to 27,400, an 81% drop in a single month. Nothing IRCC has ever done comes close to that pace: the fastest genuine month anywhere in this data is around 40%. The applications did not go away; they moved. April ’26 rose from 31,300 to 156,200, and May ’26 from 1,300 to 23,300. Falls across the whole series came to 145,700; rises came to 147,700.

This is why the estimator refuses to quote a number for March ’26 onward. A clearance rate calculated across those months would be measuring a bookkeeping change and reporting it as progress, which would make the newest filers, the ones with the least information, the most badly misled.

Where the actual processing went

Strip March ’26 out and about 28,800 applications genuinely left the queue. Four filing months took roughly 70% of that:

Those are recent filings. Processing is running conspicuously out of order, and has been for every snapshot on record here.

The older cohorts barely moved

Everything filed between October ’23 and August ’24 (eleven filing months, the applications this site was built for) went from 21,900 to 19,700. That is 2,200 decisions across eleven cohorts in a month, against 20,200 in four recent ones. November ’23 shed 100 applications and has 500 left. April ’24 and June ’24 did not move at all, for the second snapshot running.

For a filer from August ’24, that leaves 19,700 ahead and a head-clearance rate of 2,200 a month, which produced the May 2027 figure the front page carried at the time. The rate is real, but note what it is made of: it is dominated by cohorts two years newer than yours clearing quickly.

Elsewhere on the feed

The largest single move in any category was not citizenship grants at all. Citizenship certificates (proof) jumped 22,300 to 121,800, with IRCC's own published time at about 25 months. Protected persons in Canada (outside Quebec) fell 6,100, Federal Skilled Worker fell 3,400, and spouses or partners abroad (outside Quebec) rose 3,900. Of the 28 categories the feed reports, 13 fell, 11 grew and 4 held still, about 1.39 million applications pending in total. The categories page has the filing-month breakdown for each.

July 2026: flat on the surface, 31,000 moving underneath

Snapshot of 7 July 2026 · compared with 8 June 2026

The total barely twitched: 326,400 to 326,200, down 200 in a month. Underneath it, 31,500 applications left their filing months and 31,300 arrived in others. A month that looks like nothing happening is a month where intake and processing very nearly cancelled.

The re-dating was already visible

March ’26 rose 12,600 and April ’26 rose 18,000: the same shuffle that would become unmissable in August, an order of magnitude smaller. Backdated registrations landing in the newest cohorts are a normal feature of this feed. What made August unusual was the scale, not the kind.

The steepest cohort fall on record

December ’25 dropped from 22,800 to 15,300, a third of the cohort in a single month and the sharpest fall by any settled filing month across the three snapshots here. January ’26 fell 5,600 and November ’25 fell 5,300. Once again the four fastest-moving cohorts took two thirds of all the clearance.

The October ’23 to August ’24 tail fell from 24,100 to 21,900, a drop of 2,200 and the identical figure it would post again the following month. Two data points is not a trend, but it is the closest thing to a steady rate these old cohorts have shown.

The first archived feed

July is where the raw archive starts. Everything before it survives only as the distilled citizenship figures in the site's own history file, which is why the June entry below is so much thinner than this one.

June 2026: the baseline

Snapshot of 8 June 2026 · no prior snapshot

The first snapshot in this site's history: 326,400 citizenship applications pending across 33 filing months. There is nothing to compare it against, and so no rate, no projection and no estimate: a single snapshot is a photograph of a queue, and tells you nothing about how fast it is moving. Every figure the estimator produces needs two.

Its raw feed is not in the archive below. The feed publishes only the current backlog, so a month not saved on the day is gone: what survives from June is the citizenship counts, distilled at the time into the history file the estimator reads. That is the reason the archive exists at all, and the reason every month since has been kept whole.