This round: 10 invitations, cut-off of 117

British Columbia held a selection round on July 28, 2026 for candidates who intend to establish a new business in the province or purchase and grow an existing one, issuing 10 invitations to apply (ITAs) through the Base Stream of the BC PNP Entrepreneur Immigration category. Candidates needed a registration score of at least 117 to be invited.

Invited candidates have four months to submit a complete provincial nomination application. Receiving an ITA is not the same as receiving a nomination. Under the province's process, an applicant must first sign a Performance Agreement, then use the province's support letter to apply for a work permit, move to BC, and establish and actively operate the business. Only after meeting the investment, ownership and job creation terms set out in the agreement — typically about 20 months of operation, followed by a final report — is a provincial nomination issued, at which point the applicant may submit a permanent residence (PR) application to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

Eight rounds this year: cut-offs confined to a narrow 115–121 band

The July 28 round was the province's eighth entrepreneur draw date of 2026. Counted by stream, BC has now held 13 entrepreneur rounds this year: eight under the Base Stream and five under the Regional Stream.

(Note: the province reports any round with fewer than five invitations as "<5" to protect candidate privacy.)

The trend shows Base Stream cut-offs holding within a narrow 115 to 121 band all year. This round's 117 sits slightly below the mid-point of that range, matching the rounds held in March and in early June. Regional Stream cut-offs, by contrast, have swung far more widely, climbing from 105 in February to 129 in March before falling back to 113 at the end of June — a direct consequence of the very small number of invitations issued in each Regional round, where a single high-scoring candidate can lift the threshold sharply.

A comparison with historical data shows how intensively the category has been running in recent years. In all of 2025, BC held 16 entrepreneur rounds and issued no more than 132 invitations in total, with Base Stream cut-offs ranging from 115 to 124. In 2026, the Base Stream has already issued 88 invitations in seven months, approaching the full-year 2025 figure.

With allocations halved, the entrepreneur stream has become the steady one

The steady cadence of the entrepreneur category stands against a backdrop of severe volatility in the province's nomination allocation. In 2024, British Columbia received 8,000 nomination spaces and used all of them, with 7,972 going to Skills Immigration and just 28 to Entrepreneur Immigration. In January 2025, the province confirmed that Ottawa had granted only 4,000 spaces — a 50 per cent cut from the previous year, against the 11,000 the province had requested. BC responded in April 2025 by announcing it would accept only about 1,100 new applications for the year, pausing invitations for general occupations, narrowing the health category to positions delivering health services directly, and postponing the planned student streams. Two top-ups, in October and December, brought the 2025 allocation back up to a final 6,214. For 2026, BC became the first province in the country to publish its annual allocation, receiving 5,254 nomination spaces — about 31 per cent more than the 2025 initial figure, but still below the previous year's final total and well short of the 9,000 the province had requested.

Even at the tightest point in 2025, the province explicitly kept the health category and the entrepreneur category open. Analysts have observed that because Entrepreneur Immigration consumes such a small share of the nomination allocation — just 0.35 per cent of the province's total nominations in 2024 — while delivering direct investment and job creation, it tends to be spared when allocations are squeezed. According to the province's annual report, entrepreneur nominees created 438 new businesses and 1,433 jobs in BC and invested CAD $208 million over the decade from 2015 to 2024.

The contrast with the wholesale restructuring of Skills Immigration is stark. On April 23, 2026, the BC PNP announced it was reorganizing Skills Immigration around three pillars: Care, covering 36 in-demand occupations across health, education, early childhood and veterinary services; Build, covering nine categories of certified trades such as welders, electricians and plumbers; and Innovate, aimed at high-wage, high-scoring candidates with long-term job offers and high economic impact. At the same time the province formally closed the Entry Level and Semi-Skilled (ELSS) category, cancelled the planned student streams, ended tech-targeted draws, and set a target of directing at least 35 per cent of nominations to candidates outside Metro Vancouver. As of mid-July, BC had issued more than 3,700 Skills Immigration invitations in 2026, with roughly 8,683 active profiles in the registration pool.

The week before: rural health support pathway opens for the first time

The July 28 entrepreneur draw followed an unusually targeted Skills Immigration round. On July 23, the province issued invitations for the first time under the newly created Temporary Rural / Remote Health Support Initiative: 60 invitations at a minimum score of just 50, the lowest cut-off the province has set anywhere in 2026.

The initiative is a time-limited, one-off pathway to permanent residence capped at 250 nominations. Registration opened on June 15, 2026 and closes on August 31, 2026. Eligible occupations are National Occupational Classification (NOC) 65312, janitors, caretakers and heavy-duty cleaners; NOC 65310, light duty cleaners; and NOC 64410, security guards and related security service occupations. Applicants must be employed by a BC health authority, must have worked full-time for the same employer for at least nine months, and must hold a position in an eligible rural or remote area — Metro Vancouver, the Central Okanagan and the Capital Regional District are excluded. The initiative is widely read in the sector as an exception carved out for support roles in the rural health system after lower-skilled pathways were closed across the board.

Base and Regional: how the requirements differ

British Columbia offers entrepreneur applicants two streams, with the following core differences.

*Applicants without a post-secondary credential must show that they have owned 100 per cent of a business and actively managed it for at least three of the past five years.

The permanent residence process is broadly the same under both streams, except that Regional Stream applicants must first complete two additional steps: identifying a participating community suited to their proposed business, and completing an exploratory visit to obtain that community's referral letter. From there the steps are identical: prepare a business plan, register in the BC PNP system and receive a score based on human capital and economic factors, wait for an invitation in a future draw, submit a complete provincial nomination application within four months of being invited, apply for a work permit at the federal level once approved, move to BC to establish and actively operate the business, and finally receive the provincial nomination after meeting the program's conditions.

It is worth noting that the practical odds of being invited differ substantially between the two streams. Industry analysis of data in the province's 2024 annual report found that about 49 per cent of Base Stream registrations ultimately received an invitation, compared with 94 per cent under the Regional Stream — the Regional pool is far smaller relative to the spaces available, so competitive pressure is markedly lower, but the up-front cost of securing a community referral letter and completing an exploratory visit is higher. Writing for the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association (CILA), lawyer Victor Ing noted that the BC PNP has shifted from a once wide-open program to a highly selective one, with demand exceeding supply by more than two to one.

As federal routes contract, provincial pathways carry more weight

For foreign nationals looking to start a business in Canada, the significance of the July 28 round is best understood alongside changes at the federal level. IRCC announced on December 19, 2025 that it would stop accepting optional work permit applications under the Start-up Visa (SUV) program from that date, and would stop accepting new SUV permanent residence applications as of 23:59 on December 31, 2025, with an exception for holders of a valid 2025 designated organization commitment. The Self-Employed Persons Program remains paused indefinitely. IRCC said the measures prepare the ground for a transition to a new, targeted immigration pilot for entrepreneurs, with details to be released in 2026. Under the 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan, the SUV admissions target is just 500 per year.

The same levels plan, meanwhile, raises the admissions target for the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) sharply, from 55,000 in 2025 to 91,500 in 2026 and 92,500 in 2027 — a clear reversal of the 2025 allocation cuts. A number of immigration firms have concluded that provincial business immigration routes will therefore take on a larger role during the gap in federal entrepreneur pathways.

Based on the roughly monthly cadence the province has maintained from January through July, the next entrepreneur draw could come in late August or early September. British Columbia does not publish a draw calendar in advance, however, so this is an inference rather than an official commitment, and the timing will be confirmed only by the province's own announcement. The province has also said it will continue to press Ottawa on allocations, seeking increases for 2026 and subsequent years — with the two mid-year top-ups in 2025 as precedent.