What the permit now requires
This permit used to follow almost automatically from graduating at an eligible institution. Since November 2024 it has two additional requirements that are assessed at the end, and a student who discovers them at graduation has no remedy.
Two requirements decided by choices you made years earlier
The language requirement applies to every application made on or after 1 November 2024, at CLB 7 in all four abilities for a university graduate and CLB 5 for a college, polytechnic or other non university graduate. Graduates of an eligible flight school are the only exemption, and it is conditional rather than automatic, requiring either flight training at an eligible institution's training centre with a Canadian commercial pilot's licence, or an instructor's rating with a job offer as a flight instructor from such a centre.
The field of study requirement applies to college and other non degree programs where the study permit application was made on or after 1 November 2024. Eligibility runs by a six digit program classification code on a published list, and the test is satisfied if the code was listed either when you applied for the study permit or when you apply for the work permit. Degree graduates at bachelor's, master's and doctoral level are outside this requirement altogether.
For 2026 the list is frozen, so no field is added or removed during the calendar year. That is the one piece of certainty this route currently offers, and it is worth using.
- Eight months, and full time throughout. The program must be at least eight months long, or 900 hours for a Quebec credential, with full time status in each semester and part time permitted only in the final one.
- A 180 day window that depends on your study permit. Apply within 180 days of confirmation that you completed the program, and your study permit must have been valid at some point during those 180 days.
- Once in a lifetime, not once per credential. If you have already held a post graduation work permit after completing an earlier program, no further study produces another one, however long or advanced the new program is. This is the single most consequential fact on the route, and it means the first permit is the one to plan around rather than the first thing to use up. What is left afterwards is set out below.
- Never longer than your passport. The permit is issued to the passport's validity where that is shorter. If a longer period was available to you, there is a paper application to extend it once you hold a passport covering the full period.
- The institution being eligible is not enough. The specific program has to be eligible for the permit. That is a property of the program, not of the school as a whole.
- The public private partnership bar catches more people than any other exclusion. A program delivered by a private college on behalf of a public college that is itself eligible does not support the permit. Within the same province it is excluded unless you began on or before 15 May 2024, and across provinces unless you began on or before 31 January 2023. These arrangements are marketed hard and the exclusion is the single most common way a student ends up with a credential and no work permit behind it.
- The other published exclusions, in full. Having already held one of these permits. English or French as a second language programs. General interest programs. A non credit program, unless it is flight school. Study funded by Global Affairs Canada with a requirement to return home. Completing more than half the program by distance learning. A program at a non Canadian institution located in Canada. And any program at an institution that is not eligible for the permit.
How long a permit you get
| Your program | Permit length |
|---|---|
| At least eight months and under two years | Up to the length of the program |
| Two years or more | Up to three years |
| A master's degree of at least eight months | Three years, even where the program was shorter, since 15 February 2024. This does not extend to certificates or diplomas |
| Completed early, in an accelerated format | Possibly the full normal length of the program rather than the time you actually took |
| More than one eligible program | Lengths can be combined where each was eligible and each was at least eight months, and where the two carry different language thresholds you must meet the higher one |
| Any of the above, with a passport expiring sooner | The passport governs, with a paper extension available afterwards |
Two separate rules bite here and both matter. Time spent studying online from outside Canada after 31 August 2024 never counts towards the length, whatever your lock in date. And separately, completing more than half a program by distance learning makes you ineligible for the permit altogether, which is a bar rather than a reduction. Time studied before the department received your study permit application never counts either.
Distance learning can shorten the permit, and past a point it removes it. Completing more than half a program by distance learning, meaning online courses, e-learning or correspondence, makes you ineligible for the permit at all. Below that line the length rules apply. For a lock in date on or after 1 September 2024 at least half the program must be completed in class in Canada. For a lock in date between 1 September 2022 and 31 August 2024 at least half must be completed within Canada, whether online or in class. And whatever your lock in date, time spent studying online from outside Canada after 31 August 2024 does not count towards the length. The lock in date is the earlier of your program start date and the date your study permit application was received.
Turning the experience into permanent residence
- One year, or 1,560 hours, in the three years before you apply. Paid skilled work in Canada in an occupation at TEER 0, 1, 2 or 3, performed while authorised to work. It can be one full time job, the part time equivalent, or several jobs together. Hours beyond thirty a week do not make it count faster.
- Work you did while studying does not count. Including a co-op placement. This is the most common misunderstanding on the route and it is why the post graduation work permit, rather than the degree, is what starts the clock.
- Language again, at the same levels as the work permit by coincidence rather than design. The Canadian Experience Class asks for CLB 7 for an occupation at TEER 0 or 1, and CLB 5 at TEER 2 or 3.
- Volunteering and unpaid internships do not count. The work must be paid.
- Remote work counts only if you were physically in Canada. Working for a Canadian employer from abroad does not build this experience.
- A profile in the pool is not an application. Submitting an Express Entry profile does not start anything. An invitation depends on your ranking score.
- The three year window runs to the date you apply. The Regulations measure the experience against the three years before the date the permanent residence application is made. An earlier draft of this page described two competing readings and planned to the invitation date instead. That was wrong, and it would have shortened your usable window by however long you sat in the pool, discarding experience the Regulations count.
If the work permit runs out before permanent residence is decided
A bridging open work permit exists for exactly this gap, and its conditions are precise. You must be in Canada, be the principal applicant, have submitted a complete permanent residence application that has passed the completeness check, and hold the acknowledgement of receipt. You must have valid status and a valid work permit, or an expired permit with maintained status, or be eligible to restore status.
You may leave Canada while it is processed, and you must be in Canada with valid temporary resident status when the decision is made or the application may be refused. It is available to applicants under Express Entry and the provincial nominee programs, and where a nomination carries employment restrictions it is not available at all.
If the permit is used up, or was never available
A student who has already held a post graduation work permit, or whose program does not support one, has not run out of options. They have run out of this option, and the routes that remain are different in kind rather than simply harder.
- An employer supported work permit. Where an employer obtains a labour market impact assessment, a work permit can follow on its own footing rather than on the strength of your studies. It ties you to that employer and that position, which is the trade off.
- A work permit that needs no labour market assessment. The International Mobility Program covers a range of situations where no assessment is required, including intra company transfers, the free trade agreements, francophone mobility and significant benefit cases. Nationality and treaty often matter more here than the job does, which is why it is worth checking rather than assuming. We are building that part of the site and it is not published yet.
- Permanent residence directly, without more Canadian experience. The federal programs count foreign work experience as well as Canadian, so a graduate with a career behind them abroad is not starting from nothing. How the federal pool works.
- A provincial nomination. Several provinces run streams aimed at people already working or studying in the province, and a nomination adds 600 points to a federal score on the enhanced streams. Nine provinces, reviewed against their own material.
- A family relationship, if one exists. Sponsorship is not a fallback for a study plan, but if a spouse, partner or parent is Canadian it is an entirely separate route with no score attached. What family sponsorship actually covers.
- Studying again, with clear eyes. There is no bar on further study, and it can still be worth doing for its own sake. What it will not produce is a second post graduation work permit, so it should not be sold to you as an immigration step.
The order to think about this in is the reverse of the order it usually gets thought about. Most people ask what to study and then what it leads to. If the permit is already used, ask which permanent or temporary route you could actually satisfy, and then whether any further study genuinely serves it. That is a shorter conversation and a much cheaper one.
Requirements checker
A structured way to see where you stand against the published criteria. It returns an indication only, not an eligibility decision, not legal advice, and not a prediction that you will be invited.
Your situation
Nothing you enter leaves your browser.