Three rounds closed this batch, the last of the year covered here. Round 386, a Provincial Nominee Program round on December 15, 2025, issued 399 invitations at a cut-off of 731. Round 387, a Canadian Experience Class round on December 16, issued 5,000 invitations at 515. Round 388, on December 17, was a French-language proficiency round issuing 6,000 invitations at a cut-off of 399, the first sub-400 cut-off seen in this run of batches.
The Canadian Experience Class cut-off of 515 continues a steady decline from 520 in the previous batch and 531 the batch before that, a three-round slide of sixteen points that would continue into January.
A CRS of 399 for the French-language round is a genuinely low bar within the Express Entry system as a whole, and it underscores how much a verified strong French result can change a candidate's prospects independent of the general pool's competitiveness.
| Round | Date | Category | Invitations | CRS cut-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #386 | December 15, 2025 | Provincial Nominee Program | 399 | 731 |
| #387 | December 16, 2025 | Canadian Experience Class | 5,000 | 515 |
| #388 | December 17, 2025 | French language proficiency (Version 1) | 6,000 | 399 |
Each bar is the lowest CRS score invited in that round. Invitation counts differ by orders of magnitude between rounds, so they are given as text rather than as a second axis.
PNP
#386 · 399 ITAs
731
CEC
#387 · 5,000 ITAs
515
French
#388 · 6,000 ITAs
399
600 points is what a provincial nomination adds on its own.
- Provincial nomination
- General programme round
- Category-based selection
A smaller PNP round at a familiar cut-off
At 399 invitations, round 386 is far closer in size to the modest PNP rounds seen in mid-October than to the 1,123-invitation round earlier in December. Its cut-off of 731 sits squarely within the range this stream has occupied across the cycle, a reminder that invitation volume and cut-off level do not move in lockstep from one PNP round to the next.
As with every PNP round, the 731 figure includes the fixed 600-point nomination bonus, meaning the remaining human capital and skill transferability points averaged well under 150 among invited candidates. A nominated candidate's own planning should centre on securing the nomination itself, since that step, not the CRS cut-off, is usually the harder part of this pathway.
CEC's three-round slide continues
From 531 in late November, to 520 in early December, to 515 here, the Canadian Experience Class cut-off has now fallen sixteen points across three consecutive rounds while invitation volume has stayed high, 6,000 and then 5,000. Looking ahead from this point, the decline would continue into January before the cut-off found a floor closer to 507 the following March.
For a candidate with a CRS in the low 500s, this stretch of falling cut-offs is worth watching closely on the live draw table, since a score that missed the cut-off in November might clear it within a few more rounds if the trend continues.
A sub-400 French-language cut-off
This round's cut-off of 399 is the lowest recorded across any category up to this point in the run. Paired with 6,000 invitations, matching the volume of the two French-language rounds before it, the round reached deep into the pool of candidates with strong French test results, regardless of how modest their remaining CRS score was otherwise.
This is precisely the scenario where a candidate's own assumptions about eligibility can be wrong in either direction. Anyone with French test results close to the NCLC 7 threshold across all four abilities should check the exact equivalency using the CLB and NCLC converter rather than estimating it, since the category's low cut-off only helps candidates who can document that they meet it.
Closing out the year's data
Taken together, the rounds from mid-October through this batch show three streams behaving in three distinct ways. The PNP cut-off swung between 699 and 778 depending on the nominated candidates in the pool each week. The Canadian Experience Class cut-off fell in a fairly steady line, from 533 down to 515. The category rounds, healthcare and French-language alike, moved within their own narrower bands.
None of these patterns is a forecast. IRCC's category selections and invitation volumes have changed considerably from one year to the next, and a candidate's best source of current information remains the live draw table rather than any extrapolation from months-old batches such as this one.
What to take from this round
- The Canadian Experience Class cut-off has now fallen sixteen points over three rounds, a trend that continued into the new year before levelling off in the spring.
- A French-language proficiency cut-off of 399 was the lowest recorded up to this point in the run, illustrating how far a category-specific bar can drop from general rounds.
- PNP cut-offs remain dominated by the fixed 600-point nomination bonus regardless of the invitation count in a given round.
- Candidates near the CRS 515 mark should track the live draw table over the coming rounds rather than judge their chances from a single batch.
Round numbers, dates, invitation counts and CRS cut-offs are IRCC's own, from their published rounds of invitations. The analysis is general information, not immigration advice, and reading it creates no consultant-client relationship.