Analysis of Updated IRCC Processing Times (May 2026)
Last month I compared April 7 and March 9 updates. I just looked at the new May 12 numbers and have compared them to April 7. In short, it looks like IRCC is estimating that the waitlist moves between 5,911 to 5,937 per month. (Note that we believe IRCC is actually processing more than that many per month, because applications that come in and are processed within a month don't show up on the waitlist stats.)
Here's the implied number of applications from each month that were processed between April 7 and May 12, keeping in mind IRCC rounds numbers to the nearest 100:
Dec 2024 and earlier: 100
Jan 2025: 200
Feb 2025: 100
Mar 2025: 0
Apr 2025: 0
May 2025: 0
Jun 2025: 0
Jul 2025: 0
Aug 2025: 100
Sep 2025: 0
Oct 2025: 0
Nov 2025: 100
Dec 2025: 200
Jan 2026: 600
Then things get weird. As of April 7, the waitlist for folks who applied on 2026-FEB-28 was 45,600. That has now *increased* to 56,400. This increase (where we would expect a *decrease*) messes up my analysis for how many Feb 2026, Mar 2026, and Apr 2026 applications were processed.