The Start-up Visa is paused, and the queue is not protected by a promise.

How the intake actually closed, and why the wording matters

The usual description, repeated on immigration sites and in two places on this firm's own website until this page was written, is that designated organisations were stopped from issuing commitment certificates after 31 December 2025. That is not what happened, and if you are holding a certificate the difference decides your position.

• What IRCC did. It stopped accepting commitment certificates. Its commitment certificate page reads "We stopped accepting commitment certificates from organizations after December 31, 2025. Applicants with a valid 2025 commitment certificate had to apply by June 30, 2026. We'll continue to process applications we received before that date."
• What IRCC did not do. It did not order designated organisations to stop issuing certificates, and it did not revoke their designation as a class. The organisations remained designated. The change was at the receiving end.
• The test is receipt by IRCC, not issue by the organisation. Ministerial Instructions 90 allows an application into processing only where it "is supported by a valid commitment certificate from a designated entity that is received by IRCC before 12:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on January 1, 2026". A certificate signed in December 2025 but received later does not satisfy that. A certificate issued in 2026 cannot satisfy it at all.
• Two other conditions sit alongside it. The same instructions require that during 2025 and 2026 "applications supported by 10 other commitment certificates from that same designated entity were not accepted into processing", and that "all applications associated with the commitment have been received by IRCC within six months following the date of commitment mentioned in the first valid version of the commitment certificate that was received by the Department".
• The consequence of missing any of them is disposal, not delay. "Applications received by the Department that do not meet the conditions outlined in these Ministerial Instructions will not be accepted into processing and fees will be returned." You get your money back and you are not in the queue.

If your application is already filed

There are firm commitments and there are things people assume are commitments. The firm ones are that IRCC will continue to process applications accepted before 30 June 2026, and the ordering rules in Ministerial Instructions 90. There is no published date, no service standard and no undertaking that the existing inventory will be finished before anything replaces the route.

• Admissions space is now the binding constraint, not eligibility. Ministerial Instructions 90 processes applications "as annual admissions (levels) space allows", and the space is published. the 2026 to 2028 Immigration Levels Plan supplementary tables give the federal business line as a target of 500 with a low of 250 and a high of 1,000 for 2026, and then the identical 500, 250 and 1,000 for 2027 and for 2028. An applicant who satisfies every legal requirement may still wait years, and nothing about the strength of a file changes that arithmetic.
• The 500 does not improve, and it is not yours alone. Read the three years together, because a single year read on its own suggests a squeeze that later eases. It does not. The plan holds the target flat at 500 through 2028. That figure is also the whole federal business line, covering the Start-up Visa and the Self-employed Persons Program together, so the self-employed inventory of roughly 8,500 applications is drawing on the same space as the Start-up Visa queue. IRCC's deputy minister transition binder of 27 July 2026 states the 2026 figure in the same terms, and the Self-employed evaluation gives the same series, recording "the major reductions in Business admissions space in 2025 and 2026, dropping to 2,000 and 500 admissions, respectively".
• The priority bands turn on a work permit that can no longer be obtained. Ministerial Instructions 90 puts an application in the first band only where "at least one member of the entrepreneurial team holds a valid work permit that is available only to applicants in the Start-Up Business Class", together with a commitment from an authorised venture capital fund of at least $200,000, or an authorised angel investor group of at least $75,000, or an authorised business incubator that is a member of Canada's Tech Network or has committed at least $75,000. The second band is the same conditions without the work permit. The third is everything else. Within each band it is first in, first out.
• That door shut on 19 December 2025. Since that date the Start-up Visa work permit has been closed to new applicants, extensions aside. So a team that does not already hold one cannot now get into the first band at all. If a team member does hold one, letting it lapse may cost the team its band, which makes the extension a strategic decision rather than a formality.
• One teammate can stall or sink the whole team. IRCC does not begin processing a team's applications until all of them arrive, and Ministerial Instructions 90 fixes the first application received as "the lock-in date for the associated commitment certificate, after which no changes can be made to that commitment and no updated or subsequent commitment certificate will restart the six-month time frame". A single non filing teammate could therefore have taken the entire team out of processing, with fees returned.
• Certificates from one designated organisation are in a worse position than the general queue. IRCC's designated organisations list, date modified 21 July 2026, records against Biomedical Commercialization Canada Inc., operating as Manitoba Innovates and previously as Manitoba Technology Accelerator, that its "ability to issue commitment certificates suspended from December 19, 2025 to September 19, 2026". Under regulation 98.03(4) the Minister may, on suspending an entity, refuse to consider applications associated with commitments that entity made. If your certificate came from that organisation, do not assume you are in the same position as everyone else.
• Peer review is paused, and an officer can still refuse without one. IRCC's peer review page carries the heading "Peer reviews have been paused August 1, 2024" and reads "We're making changes to the peer review process. Any new peer reviews have been paused. If you're part of an ongoing peer review, it will be cancelled." We could not source anything lifting or superseding that pause, and the page still read that way at its date modified of 21 July 2026. Regulation 98.08(1) leaves an officer able to refuse without a peer review in any event.

We do not print a processing time for either route, and you should be careful of any page that does. IRCC changed its method in the autumn of 2025, moving from a historical measure, being the time in which 80 percent of applications were finalised, to a forward looking estimate built from the number of applications on hand divided by the space available under the annual levels plan. Figures published before and after that change are not comparable. Check IRCC's processing times tool for the number that is live today.

Whether you can withdraw, and what you would actually get back

This is the live practical question for people who have been waiting, and the honest answer is that withdrawal is available and refunds are much smaller than people are told.

• You can ask, at either stage. IRCC's page, date modified 2 April 2026, says you can ask to withdraw "if we haven't started processing it, or we are still processing it", processing beginning when IRCC determines the application is complete and ending at a final decision. It may refuse a request made after processing has finished, and may also refuse one "if your application is undergoing additional review".
• Before processing starts, a full refund is possible. IRCC's wording is "You may get a full refund". The Help Centre puts the general position as "In most cases, you can only get a refund if you withdraw your application before we start processing it."
• After processing starts, the processing fees are gone and the right of permanent residence fees come back. IRCC will "refund only some fees", listing the right of permanent residence fee, the right of citizenship fee, the open work permit fee for holders exempt from a labour market impact assessment, the employer compliance fee and International Experience Canada fees. On a permanent residence application in this class that means every right of permanent residence fee paid on the application comes back, and the processing fees do not. The fee is charged at $600 to the principal applicant and again to an accompanying spouse or common-law partner, so how much you recover depends on how many people on your application paid it.
• Worked example for a couple, because this is where people are told the wrong number. You paid the $2,495 line for yourself, which is $1,895 of processing plus $600 of right of permanent residence fee, and the $1,590 line for your spouse or partner, which is $990 of processing plus a second $600 right of permanent residence fee. That is $4,085 paid. Withdraw after processing has started and $1,200 comes back, being both right of permanent residence fees, while $2,885 of processing fees does not. If you paid the $990 line instead, having deferred the right of permanent residence fee for your spouse or partner, only your own $600 comes back. Dependent children are charged $270 each with no right of permanent residence fee, so nothing on a child's line is recoverable. Anyone who tells a couple that withdrawal recovers $600 is understating it by $600.
• Two full refund situations arise from IRCC's action rather than yours. The designated organisation limit carries "we'll return your application and reimburse the processing fees", and Ministerial Instructions 90 provides that applications not meeting its conditions "will not be accepted into processing and fees will be returned". Neither of those is a withdrawal and neither is something you elect.
• Refunds are not quick. IRCC states that "Eligible refunds can take between 2 and 8 weeks to appear in your account".

What the route required, so you can tell whether it ever fitted

Recorded for two reasons. Applications already accepted are still assessed against these requirements, and anyone weighing whether to keep waiting or whether they were ever a realistic candidate needs to see the actual test rather than a sales description of it.

• Ownership and voting rights. IRCC's rule was that "each applicant must hold 10% or more of the total voting rights" and that "applicants and the designated organization together must hold more than 50% of the total voting rights". Regulation 98.06(3) requires the Minister to set both a minimum percentage for the applicant and a maximum for anyone who is not a qualified participant. Qualified participants under 98.06(4) are an applicant, a person already issued a permanent resident visa in this class for the same business, and a designated entity.
• A qualifying business. Regulation 98.06(1) required a business in which the applicant provides active and ongoing management from within Canada, for which an essential part of operations is conducted in Canada, that is incorporated in Canada, and whose ownership structure complies with the percentages above. Under 98.06(2) a business failing the first three still qualified if the applicant intended to bring it into line after a permanent resident visa was issued.
• How many people per business. Regulation 98.01(3) is categorical. "No more than five applicants are to be considered members of the start-up business class in respect of the same business." IRCC put it as applying "as an individual or as part of a group of up to 5 owners".
• Essential persons, and there is no fixed number of them. We could not source any rule setting a number. Regulation 98.04(3) requires a multi applicant commitment to identify those applicants the entity considers essential, and the IMM 5766 instructions require at least the first applicant to be identified that way. Beyond that it is the designated entity's judgement, and the consequence of a refusal or withdrawal by any of them is the cascade set out above.
• The letter of support and the commitment certificate are different documents with different recipients. The designated organisation gave the entrepreneur a Letter of Support, form IMM 0211, which the applicant filed with the application. The same organisation sent the commitment certificate, form IMM 5766, with a term sheet or client agreement, directly to IRCC. In IRCC's words the certificate "is an immigration document used to evaluate your application", and the applicant never handles it.
• Six months, on both documents. IRCC stated that "A commitment certificate is valid for 6 months after the date it is issued", and regulation 98.01(2)(a) required the commitment to be less than six months old on the date the application was made.
• No fee could be charged for assessing the business. Regulation 98.04(2) is explicit. "A commitment does not respect these Regulations if the entity that made it charges a fee to review and assess the business proposal or to assess the business." If you were charged an assessment fee by a designated entity, the commitment itself was defective.
• Language. At least CLB 5 in listening, reading, writing and speaking, in English or French. Regulation 98.01(2)(b) required results less than two years old at the date of application showing benchmark level 5 in one official language across all four skill areas. There was no averaging and no higher level was required.
• Peer review. Regulation 98.09 allowed an officer to send the commitment, the applicants, the designated entities and the business for independent assessment by a peer review panel, either because the officer thought it would help or "on a random basis". The assessment had to be independent and take industry standards into account, and an officer who requested one "is not bound by it". IRCC described the goal as making sure activities are in line with industry standards and protecting against fraud, with panels looking at due diligence, the terms of the commitment including any fees charged to applicants, incorporation, verified ownership, the viability of the model, the management team, ownership of intellectual property, a high growth focus and incubator acceptance. Where a review identified concerns, IRCC said it might send a procedural fairness letter. Peer reviews have been paused since 1 August 2024.

The three categories of designated organisation

Regulation 98.03(1) requires the Minister to designate entities in these three categories. The minimums are IRCC's, from the designated organisations list at its date modified of 21 July 2026. These triggers set the first two of the three processing bands under Ministerial Instructions 90. An application that meets one of them and where a team member holds a Start-up Visa specific work permit is in the first band. An application that meets one of them without that work permit is in the second band, ahead of everything else. Everything else is in the third. So a queued team with a $200,000 venture capital commitment and no work permit is in the second band, not the third.

Settlement funds by family size

For more than seven people, add $4,112 for each additional family member. IRCC's rule is "You can't borrow this money from another person." Regulation 98.01(2)(c) sets the amount at one half of the Statistics Canada low income cut off for urban areas of 500,000 people or more, and money invested by a designated entity does not count towards it.

The work permit, as it stood and as it stands

Fees

The right of permanent residence fee is $600, being the difference between the first two lines and again between the third and fourth. IRCC charges it to the principal applicant and to an accompanying spouse or common-law partner, and not for dependent children, so a couple who pay the 2,495 and the 1,590 lines have paid it twice. That matters on withdrawal, because it is the one substantial refundable item. The open work permit holder fee of 100 is a separate line from the work permit fee of 155 and the two are not interchangeable. IRCC lists medical examinations, police certificates and language testing as third party costs on top of these figures. Fees are set by regulation and change without notice.

What has been announced to replace it

The 2026 Express Entry category announcement of 18 February 2026 contains no entrepreneur or business category. Read it for what it is, a set of additions rather than the whole list. It introduces them "in addition to a new category for foreign medical doctors", and the additions are researchers and senior managers with Canadian work experience, transport occupations, foreign medical doctors, and applicants recruited by the Canadian Armed Forces. IRCC's list of Express Entry categories runs to ten and also includes French language proficiency, healthcare and social services, science, technology, engineering and mathematics occupations, trades and education. None of the ten is a business or entrepreneur category, so the point stands. If you were told a business category was coming to Express Entry, it did not.

Whether this route would ever have fitted you

This is a retrospective test, not an application tool. The Start-up Visa is not currently open, so nothing this widget returns can change that, and no answer here means you can apply. It is here so that someone who has been told they are a strong Start-up Visa candidate can see the actual conditions the route imposed and judge the advice they were given.