Study Permit

A study permit lets an international student study at a designated learning institution for a program longer than six months. It is not a visa, and it is not a general permission to work. The school has to be designated. The student has to be accepted before they apply.

Your options on this page

• Federal study permit — outside Quebec, this is the study permission, plus a visa or an eTA if one is required.
• Quebec — a CAQ from the province, and then the federal study permit. One does not replace the other.
• Study without a permit — a program of six months or less, and a few specific exemptions. It does not lead to a post-graduation work permit.
• Student Direct Stream — closed since 8 November 2024. There is no replacement fast lane.
• A later permanent path — only if the program can produce a post-graduation work permit and the work that follows is the kind a permanent program counts.

How we can help

• Test the permanent path before tuition is paid: post-graduation rules, field of study, and current draws.
• Prepare the study permit with the right funds figure, the attestation letter if it is required, and the travel document.
• In Quebec, sequence the letter of acceptance, the CAQ, and the federal permit.

Federal

What the file usually needs

• A letter of acceptance from a designated learning institution.
• Proof you can pay tuition and living costs. IRCC publishes the living-cost amount and has raised it. An old bank figure from last year’s guide is not the test.
• Admissibility checks, and a convincing answer to whether you will leave if the permit ends.
• Most new post-secondary applicants also need a provincial or territorial attestation letter. The exemption list changes. Do not assume a master’s, a doctorate, or a particular school is exempt without reading the current list.
• A visa or an eTA if your passport requires one.

Work while studying

• On campus, and off campus if the permit allows it, up to the weekly cap during the term. Recent rules have set that cap at 24 hours a week, with full-time hours in scheduled breaks.
• The cap is a rule. Working more is a violation of status.
• A co-op or internship that is part of the program needs a co-op work permit as well as the study permit.

How we can help

• Check the school is designated, the funds match the current amount, and the attestation letter is required or not.
• Put the work conditions on the plan before the student arrives, including the co-op permit if the program has a placement.

Quebec

1. Letter of acceptance from the school.
2. Quebec Acceptance Certificate for studies, the CAQ, with the program, the school, and funds on Quebec’s terms.
3. Federal study permit filed with the CAQ.

• A letter from a Montreal school is not a CAQ. A CAQ is not a study permit.
• A change of level, school, or program inside Quebec often means an amended CAQ as well as whatever IRCC requires.
• Quebec has used its own limits on international students, on top of the federal attestation system.

How we can help

• File the CAQ and the federal permit in that order, and amend the CAQ when the program changes.

Study without a Study Permit

• The clearest case is a program of six months or less. You still enter as a visitor, and you leave or change status when that stay ends.
• A short course does not become a study permit, and it does not by itself lead to a post-graduation work permit.
• Minor children already in Canada as accompanying family, or as claimants in some situations, can often study at primary or secondary level without their own study permit.
• Family of accredited foreign representatives, and members of certain armed forces, have their own exemptions. Each exemption is specific.
• Anyone outside those exemptions needs a permit before a program longer than six months begins. Starting the program and applying later is how people lose status.

How we can help

• Say whether the course is short enough to stay a visit, or long enough that a permit has to come first.
• If a child is already in Canada, check the exemption before a study-permit application is filed for them.

Student Direct Stream

• Closed. IRCC ended it, and the Nigeria Student Express, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time on 8 November 2024.
• Applications received before that moment were processed under the stream. Anything after it is a regular study permit.
• There is no replacement fast lane.
• A Guaranteed Investment Certificate can still be one way to show funds, if it meets the current rules. It no longer buys a separate stream.
• A “Student Direct Stream package” in 2026 describes a program that no longer exists.

How we can help

• File a regular study permit. We do not prepare a closed stream.

Study Pathways to PR

A study permit is not a permanent-residence application. The usual sequence, when it works, is:

1. A program at a designated school that can qualify for a post-graduation work permit.
2. That work permit, if the language and field rules are met.
3. Skilled work during the permit.
4. A permanent program that counts Canadian experience, or a provincial nomination, or, for Quebec, the PSTQ.

• The Canadian Experience Class is the federal program built for that Canadian work. Provincial graduate streams usually want study in that province and a local job.
• Quebec graduates look at the PSTQ, and at the PEQ only inside the window on the Quebec page, through 31 October 2026, and only if the diploma already existed on 19 November 2025.
• None of this is owed. Bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral graduates need language at benchmark 7 for the post-graduation permit. College and other non-university graduates need level 5. Many college and non-degree programs also need an eligible field if the study permit was filed on or after 1 November 2024. The 2026 field list is frozen.
• A program that does not qualify produces no work permit, and without it the Canadian-experience path does not start.
• The right time to test this is before tuition is paid.

How we can help

• Read the program against the current post-graduation rules before the student accepts the offer.
• After graduation, prepare the work permit, then the permanent file that the work actually supports.