Canada · Business & founder
Start-up Visa Programme
CLOSED TO NEW APPLICATIONS FROM 1 JANUARY 2026 by ministerial instructions published in the Canada Gazette on 20 December 2025. IRCC stopped accepting new commitment certificates from designated organisations on that date. Only SUV applications supported by a commitment certificate issued by a designated entity in 2025 are still accepted, and those had to be filed by 30 June 2026 — that window has now passed. Everything filed on or after 1 January 2026 without a 2025 certificate is returned without processing. The cause was a backlog reported at roughly 42,000–46,000 files with processing times exceeding a decade. A replacement 'high impact' entrepreneur pilot has been announced but had not opened as of July 2026.
This is the single most important North American change of the last eighteen months for entrepreneurial families: Canada's only realistic federal business route to PR is gone, and the announced replacement does not exist yet. Anyone still being sold a Start-up Visa in 2026 is being sold a place in a closed queue.
Qualifying routes
Closed to new applicants
Closed to new applicants
No investment required — this is the route the market abused, and a principal reason the programme was shut
The facts
- Minimum investment
- 200k CAD
- Total landed cost
- Historically CAD 50–120k in incubator, legal and settlement-fund costs for a family; academic now
- Timeline
- 37–120 months — Processing times exceeded 10 years at closure — the backlog is the reason it closed
- Physical presence
- Historic: intent to settle outside Quebec and actively manage the business from Canada
- Family
- spouse or common-law partnerdependent children
- Permanent residency
- Direct PR on approval (for those already in the queue)
- Citizenship
- 3 years of physical presence in Canada out of the preceding 5
- Language test
- CLB 4 English or French for applicants aged 18–54
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- historic: qualifying business, commitment certificate from a designated organisation, CLB 5 language, settlement funds
- Closed to new applications since 1 January 2026; the 30 June 2026 transition deadline for 2025 commitment certificates has passed.
- The Self-Employed Persons Program was paused on the same date.
- Under the 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan, the federal business immigration target was cut by roughly half, to about 500 principal applicants a year. Even if a replacement pilot opens, it will be small.
- Applicants sitting in the legacy backlog have no guaranteed processing date and, in several cases, no live business left to point to.