Canada visa processing times from India

A Canada visitor visa from India takes 29 days, according to IRCC's own published figure, last updated 16 September 2026. Read what that number covers before you plan around it. It is the processing time after a complete application is submitted, and it does not include the weeks you spend gathering documents or the wait for a biometrics appointment, both of which sit before the clock starts and are usually where the real delay lives. The figure is also a median of applications IRCC has just finished rather than a commitment about yours, so half of all files take longer than it. IRCC republishes the number about weekly and it moves, sometimes by weeks, which is why the figure on this page is read from their feed rather than typed in once and forgotten. Check it again close to the date you file.

For visitor visas, India is not slower than the typical country. India's 29 days is 71st out of the 172 countries IRCC reports a figure for, against a median of 37 days, so an Indian applicant is marginally faster than average rather than at the back of a queue. For work permits it is a different answer altogether: India ranks 45th of 62, faster than only 28% of countries. So the belief that everything is slower from India is half right, and the half that is wrong costs people money. It is the assumption agents rely on when they sell speed, because someone who already believes the system is stacked against them will pay to jump a queue that does not exist. Check the route you are actually filing before paying anyone for urgency. The published table is free to read and settles it in a minute.

On IRCC's current figures, reapplying from India is roughly 14 times faster than extending from inside Canada. Extending a visitor stay takes 398 days, while a fresh visitor visa from India takes 29 days. That gap is wide enough to be worth knowing and narrow enough not to decide the question on its own. Speed is not the only consideration here. Leaving Canada has its own consequences, including a fresh admission decision at the border on your return, and an extension filed before your current status expires keeps you in implied status while it is pending, which a departure does not. Weigh both against your actual situation. What the numbers do settle is simpler: anybody telling you an extension is the quick option is working from figures they have not checked. Both figures come from the same IRCC feed, and both move, so check them on the day you decide rather than trusting a number from a forum.

A Canada visitor visa takes 29 days after biometrics, which is the same figure IRCC publishes for the application overall. That is not an evasion. IRCC reports one processing time per application type and does not publish a separate after-biometrics number at all, so any site quoting you a different figure for the period following your appointment has produced it from somewhere other than IRCC. The reason the two are the same is worth understanding: the published figure describes an application that was complete when it arrived, and an application is not complete until biometrics are in. Worth checking before you book anything. Temporary residence applicants give biometrics once every 10 years, so if you gave them for a study permit or an earlier visitor visa recently, you may not need to give them again at all.

Spousal sponsorship takes about 18 months when your spouse is outside Canada and about 26 months when they are already in Canada, on IRCC's figures for applications settling outside Quebec. IRCC publishes no separate figure for India and no visa office breakdown for sponsorship, which is not an omission. The application is decided on the sponsor's side in Canada rather than at a mission abroad, so where your spouse happens to be waiting does not change the queue they are waiting in. That also means an agent quoting you an India-specific sponsorship time is quoting something IRCC does not publish. The one family-class application that does carry an India figure is sponsoring a dependent child, at 7 months. IRCC last refreshed the sponsorship figures on 3 September 2026 and updates them monthly rather than weekly, so they move more slowly than the visitor numbers above.

Canada PR takes about six months through Express Entry and longer through every other route. IRCC publishes about 6 months for the Canadian Experience Class and about 7 months for the Federal Skilled Worker class, against about 13 months for a provincial nomination applied for outside Express Entry. None of these figures is split by country, so there is no India-specific PR number for anyone to quote you, and a consultant offering one has made it up. One thing the number hides matters more than the number itself. The clock starts when a complete application is received, which for Express Entry means after your invitation to apply has arrived. The months you spend building a profile, sitting a language test, waiting on a credential assessment and waiting for a draw all sit outside it, and together they are usually longer than the six.

The processing times on this page change because IRCC changes them. These figures are read directly from the three JSON feeds behind IRCC's own processing-times tool and regenerate whenever those move, rather than being typed in once and left. IRCC last refreshed the temporary residence figures on 16 September 2026 and the permanent residence ones on 3 September 2026, which run on separate cycles: the first updates roughly weekly, the second monthly. So a figure you read here in March and again in June will usually differ, and that is the number working correctly rather than a mistake. The corollary is the useful part. A site showing a processing time that has not moved in a year is showing you a number somebody wrote down and forgot, and planning a trip on it is planning on last year's queue.