Ontario has announced that the federal government has granted the province 14,119 provincial nomination slots for 2026 for the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP). This is a significant increase from the 10,750 allocation of 2025. Further, this aligns with Canada’s Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) admissions target for 2026, which is 91,500 (in 2025 it was 55,000). This allocation, however, remains lower than that of 2024, which was 21,500, meaning that only around 67% of Ontario’s 2024 nomination levels have been recovered.
In 2025, there has been a series of important changes to Ontario’s immigration program, which included the expansion of eligibility for self-employed internationally trained physicians under the Employer Job Offer: Foreign Worker stream, suspension of the Express Entry Skilled Trades Stream, broader authority for provinces to return or suspend the applications, the implementation of a new electronic Employer Portal, limited eligibility criteria for early childhood educators and assistants, and the introduction of mandatory in-person interviews. In 2025 there was no increase to the nomination in Ontario, and all throughout the year it remained at 10,750. The changes in 2025 reflect an effort to align the nomination according to labour market requirements.
For 2026, Ontario has put forward major consolidation of OINP streams with the initial phase of merging the three Employer Job Offer streams into a multiple-track single stream and eliminating and replacing the current streams with three new pathways targeting healthcare professionals, entrepreneurs, and exceptional talent. These changes are expected to come into effect in 2026, after the regulatory approval.
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