You enrolled in Quebec because the PEQ was the fast track to permanent residence, then you watched it die on November 19, 2025. You rebuilt your whole plan around the PSTQ and the Arrima portal. Now you are hearing the PEQ is “back,” and no one will tell you plainly whether that includes you. This guide is the 2026 decision map for Arrima profile Quebec PSTQ how to apply international student questions, and it starts by resolving the one thing you cannot find anywhere else: a single yes-or-no fork that tells you which route is actually yours.
The fork is one question, and you will reach it in two minutes: did you meet PEQ eligibility as of November 19, 2025? If yes, the temporary PEQ window is likely your faster route. If no, PSTQ via Arrima is your path, and the rest of this article walks it step by step in English, even though the portal is French-only. Every dated fact below is stamped, so you can spot which older blog advice is now stale and stop being jerked around by conflicting news.
This article is educational and not legal advice. Immigration rules change and individual cases differ. Consult a licensed professional for advice specific to your situation.
PEQ Was Gone, Now It Is Back: The Full 2026 Timeline in Plain English
Four dates define everything. Write them down, because almost every argument you have seen online comes from a source that stopped at one of them.
- November 29, 2024: The PSTQ took effect, replacing the old PRTQ. This is when Arrima became the main door for skilled workers, scored by points rather than first-come first-served.
- November 19, 2025: Quebec permanently closed the PEQ. On this date, the old “just graduate and apply” fast track ended.
- July 2, 2026: Quebec reopened the PEQ, but only temporarily. The program window runs July 2, 2026 to July 2, 2028.
- October 31, 2026: The end of the first intake, which opened July 2, 2026. This is a hard front-end deadline if the reopened PEQ is your route.
Two details make the reopening very different from the PEQ you originally counted on. First, there is no cap and no draw. It is criteria-based, so if you qualify and apply correctly inside the window, you are not competing for a limited number of spots the way you are in an Arrima draw. Second, and this is the part that decides your whole plan, the reopened PEQ is frozen to a past snapshot. It is limited to people who met PEQ eligibility as of November 19, 2025. It is not a fresh door for everyone. It is a narrow bridge for those who already qualified on the day it closed.
One more stale fact to bury: Quebec rescinded the old 6-month PEQ processing commitment in June 2026. If any guide promises you a guaranteed 6-month decision, that source is out of date. There is no guaranteed processing time anymore, for either route.
This timeline is exactly why blogs disagree. A guide written in early 2025 says “PEQ is your automatic fast track, just apply.” A guide written in December 2025 says “PEQ is dead forever, PSTQ is your only option.” Both are now stale. The only reliable move is to check the date on any source you read, then map it onto these four dates. Do that, and the confusion collapses into a single question.
The One Question That Decides Your Path: Did You Meet PEQ Eligibility as of November 19, 2025?
This is the fork. Everything else in this article is downstream of your answer.
Branch A: Yes, you met PEQ graduate-stream or worker-stream eligibility as of November 19, 2025. The temporary PEQ window is your faster, criteria-based route with no draw. Your job is to confirm eligibility, assemble the graduate-stream documents, and apply in the first intake before October 31, 2026.
Branch B: No, you did not meet PEQ eligibility on that date. The PSTQ through Arrima is your path, and the rest of this guide walks it: the profile, the declaration of interest, the score you need, and the two-government timeline.
To tell which branch you are in, check yourself against the PEQ graduate-stream criteria as they stood on November 19, 2025:
- You hold an eligible Quebec credential: a bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate, a technical DEC, or a DEP of at least 1,800 hours.
- You studied in Quebec for at least half of the program.
- You obtained the credential within the previous 3 years.
- You have French at NCLC 5 in reading and writing and NCLC 7 in speaking and listening.
- You completed at least 75 percent of your courses in French, a rule in force since November 23, 2024.
If you can honestly check every box as of November 19, 2025, you are in Branch A. If even one was not true on that date, the reopening does not rescue you, and you are in Branch B.
Consider a Brazilian student in Montreal who enrolled expecting PEQ eligibility. She started her master’s when the PEQ still felt like a promise, then watched it close mid-degree. Her honest fear was simple: the rules changed after she already enrolled. When the reopening was confirmed, her first question was whether the “eligible as of November 19, 2025” snapshot rescued her or left her on the PSTQ draws. She graduated in early 2026, months after the cutoff date, so on November 19, 2025 she had no eligible Quebec credential yet. That single fact puts her in Branch B. It stung, but it also ended the whiplash. She stopped refreshing news articles about the reopening and started building her Arrima profile, because she finally knew which route was hers.
Run the same test on your own facts. The answer is not a matter of opinion or which blog you trust. It is a date and a checklist.
How Arrima Actually Works: Creating Your Profile and Submitting the Declaration of Interest
If you are in Branch B, this is the section you came for, and it is the one almost no competitor writes in plain English. The Arrima platform is French-only. There is no official English interface. That does not stop you, but it means you should prepare your answers in advance and treat the portal like a translation exercise, not a live improvisation.
A practical way anglophone students navigate it: open Arrima in a browser with a full-page translation tool switched on so field labels render in English, keep the original French label visible for anything ambiguous, and draft every answer in English first, then enter the French equivalents for names of programs, employers, and credentials exactly as they appear on your official documents. Never guess a French job title. Match it to the official French occupation name so your TEER classification is correct.
The declaration of interest goes by several names you will see used interchangeably: the EOI, the declaration d’interet, or the DI. They are the same thing. The mechanics that trip people up:
- The 90-day window. Once you start, you have 90 days to complete and submit the declaration. Miss it and the profile is deleted, and you start over. Do not open the profile until your documents and French answers are ready.
- The 12-month validity. A submitted declaration stays in the pool for 12 months. If you are not invited in that time, it expires and you resubmit. Set a calendar reminder for month 11 so it never lapses without a decision from you.
- Scoring and ranking. MIFI scores your profile on the Grille de selection and ranks it against everyone else in the pool.
- The draws. The Ministere de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Integration (MIFI) runs periodic invitation rounds. There is no guaranteed invitation and no published guaranteed cutoff. A high score improves your odds; it does not buy a ticket.
The honest read: this is why so many grads say “my profile is just sitting in Arrima with no movement.” A declaration in the pool is not an application. It is a candidacy, waiting for a draw that may or may not reach your score. Protecting the 90-day window and the 12-month validity is entirely within your control. The draw is not. Plan your effort around the parts you control.
The Score You Actually Need: PSTQ Points and How a Fresh Quebec Grad Stacks Up
The Grille de selection is a points system with a 1,400-point maximum, split into three buckets:
- Up to 520 points for human capital: age, French proficiency, education, and work experience.
- Up to 700 points for labour market needs: the demand for your stream and occupation, plus points for a Quebec education.
- Up to 180 points for adaptation factors.
Two things jump out for a fresh Quebec grad. First, a Quebec diploma directly earns points in the labour-market bucket. Second, French is scored twice, in human capital and again through stream requirements, so a strong French score compounds. That is exactly how a recent Quebec graduate with solid French climbs the ranking despite thin work experience.
PSTQ has four streams, and which one you fall into changes both your points and your French bar:
- Stream 1, highly qualified: TEER 0, 1, or 2 occupations. Requires French oral level 7 plus written level 5. Most degree-holding grads aim here.
- Stream 2, intermediate and manual: TEER 3, 4, or 5 occupations. Requires French oral level 5.
- Stream 3, regulated professions: requires recognition by a Quebec professional order (for example nursing or engineering).
- Stream 4, exceptional talent.
Now the part other guides avoid: the honest competitiveness read. The 2026 draws show wide, stream- and occupation-specific cutoffs, not one universal number. Stream 1 cutoffs have generally landed in the 700 to 780-plus range. Other rounds issued invitations far lower. A July 3, 2026 round issued roughly 501 ITAs, with a minimum around 475 for Stream 3 TEER 4/5 and up to 726 for priority occupations, while Stream 2 took a large share of that round. The lesson is not “aim for 780” or “480 is enough.” It is that your target depends on your stream and occupation, and a lower-TEER occupation in demand can be invited at a score that would never clear Stream 1.
For context on how tight the overall room is: Quebec’s 2026 economic-immigration target sits around 29,000 to 32,900, inside a compressed overall permanent-immigration target of roughly 45,000. Fewer spots means draws stay selective, which is one more reason to maximize the points you control, especially French.
To convert your language-test bands into Arrima points and see where each stream’s threshold sits, work through the IELTS-to-Arrima conversion and PSTQ stream thresholds guide. For the full stream-by-stream mechanics, our companion PSTQ via Arrima survival guide for international graduates is the deeper dive; this article owns the current PEQ-vs-PSTQ decision, and that one owns the stream detail.
The French Level 7 Bar and the 75%-in-French Rule: What It Really Takes If You Studied in English
French is where most anglophone grads feel the floor drop out, so let us state it plainly for both routes.
For PSTQ Stream 1, you need oral French at level 7, which maps to roughly B2, plus written level 5. For the reopened PEQ graduate stream, you need NCLC 5 in reading and writing and NCLC 7 in speaking and listening, and you must have completed 75 percent of your courses in French, a rule in force since November 23, 2024.
The pain point is real: an oral level 7 speaking bar feels out of reach when you studied partly in English. Two facts should steady you. Level 7 speaking is high-intermediate, not fluency, and it is reachable with structured practice. And it is a bar you clear once, then it stops moving. A realistic path for a motivated grad already at a lower-intermediate level is several hundred hours of focused study, spread over roughly 6 to 12 months of consistent effort, with speaking practice front-loaded because it is the slowest skill to move.
One clarification that saves people from a costly mistake: your classes do not count as proof, no matter how many you took in French. You must sit an approved test and hit the NCLC levels. The accepted options are the Echelle quebecoise for the Quebec scale, or TEF Canada or TCF Canada for the federal scale. Book the test only when your practice tests consistently land at or above the level you need, because a retake costs time you may not have inside your window.
For a concrete study plan with hour estimates and free Montreal programs, follow the A2-to-B2 French plan for PSTQ. It turns “get to level 7” into a weekly schedule you can actually run.
The Two-Government Timeline: From EOI to CSQ to Federal PR (and Why Quebec Does Not Use Express Entry)
Quebec immigration runs on two governments, and understanding the handoff kills a lot of confusion. Under the Canada-Quebec Accord, Quebec selects its own economic immigrants first. When you are selected, Quebec issues a CSQ, the Quebec selection certificate. Only then do you apply to IRCC for federal permanent residence. So yes, the way you have seen it phrased on forums is correct: CSQ first, then PR through IRCC.
The critical distinction: Quebec does not use federal Express Entry. Express Entry is the federal system for the rest of Canada. If your plan is a Quebec route, whether PSTQ via Arrima or the reopened PEQ, Express Entry is not part of it. This is why a Quebec grad and an Ontario grad can be doing completely different things and both be right.
A realistic end-to-end timeline, with the honest caveat that Quebec no longer publishes a guaranteed processing time:
- EOI in the Arrima pool, then invitation: variable, depends entirely on draws reaching your score.
- Invitation to CSQ: roughly 6 to 12 months after you apply for selection.
- CSQ to IRCC permanent residence: roughly 12 to 15 months.
Add it up and the two-stage process runs well over a year end to end, on top of however long you wait for an invitation. That length is exactly what drives the frustrated question so many grads reach: should I leave Quebec and do Express Entry instead?
This is a genuine crossroads, not an abstract comparison. Picture the grad who checks processing times obsessively, opens the draw results the morning they publish, and keeps a spreadsheet comparing “stay in Quebec on PSTQ” against “move provinces and enter the federal pool.” Staying keeps your Quebec ties, your Quebec-education points, and any French investment you have already made, but it locks you into the slower two-government path and the no-guarantee draws. Pivoting to Express Entry may open a faster or more predictable federal route for some occupations, but it usually means leaving Quebec, rebuilding your provincial ties elsewhere, and re-scoring under an entirely different system. There is no single right answer. It turns on your occupation, your French level, your appetite for waiting, and how rooted you already are in Quebec.
If part of your calculation is whether Quebec is even still the right province after the PEQ changes, weigh it with the 2026 Quebec-versus-Ontario ROI verdict before you commit to either path.
Your Next Two Moves Starting Today
You have the fork. Here is how to turn it into action this week, calmly and concretely.
If you are in Branch A (temporary PEQ):
- Confirm, on paper, that you met PEQ graduate-stream or worker-stream eligibility as of November 19, 2025, checking each criterion against that date, not today.
- Assemble the graduate-stream documents: your eligible Quebec credential, proof you studied at least half the program in Quebec, evidence the credential was obtained within the previous 3 years, your NCLC 5/7 French results, and proof of the 75-percent-in-French requirement.
- Prepare to apply in the first intake, which closes October 31, 2026. This is a hard front-end deadline, so do not leave document-gathering to the last month.
If you are in Branch B (PSTQ via Arrima):
- Draft all your Arrima answers in English first, then translate them, before you ever open a profile. Match program, employer, and occupation names to their official French forms.
- Create the Arrima profile and start the declaration of interest, protecting the 90-day completion window and setting a month-11 reminder for the 12-month validity.
- Build your French score toward the level your stream needs (oral level 7 for Stream 1), and book an approved test only when practice results consistently clear it.
Whichever branch you are in, note the CAQ and study-permit stage sits earlier in the journey; if you are still at the study stage, you need both the CAQ and the study permit in the right order, but that is study-stage context, not part of the PR fork above.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happened to the PEQ and what replaces it?
Quebec permanently closed the PEQ on November 19, 2025. The PSTQ, effective November 29, 2024 and applied through Arrima, became the main skilled-worker route. Quebec then reopened the PEQ temporarily, with a program window of July 2, 2026 to July 2, 2028 and a first intake from July 2 to October 31, 2026, limited to people who met PEQ eligibility as of November 19, 2025.
How does the Arrima portal and PSTQ work for Quebec immigration?
You create an Arrima profile and submit a declaration of interest. You have 90 days to submit it or the profile is deleted, and a submitted declaration is valid for 12 months. MIFI scores and ranks profiles and runs periodic invitation draws with no guaranteed invitation and no published guaranteed cutoff. If invited, you apply for a CSQ, then apply to IRCC for federal PR.
Is the reopened PEQ actually coming back for me, or is that just talk?
It is confirmed. The program window is July 2, 2026 to July 2, 2028, with a first intake from July 2 to October 31, 2026. The catch is the eligibility freeze: it is limited to people who met PEQ eligibility as of November 19, 2025. If you did not qualify on that date, the reopening does not include you, and PSTQ via Arrima is your route.
Do I really need level 7 French if my program was in English?
For PSTQ Stream 1 you need oral French at level 7 (roughly B2) plus written level 5. For the reopened PEQ graduate stream you need NCLC 5 in reading and writing and NCLC 7 in speaking and listening, plus 75 percent of courses completed in French (since November 23, 2024). Classes do not count as proof. You must sit an approved test such as the Echelle quebecoise, TEF Canada, or TCF Canada and hit the NCLC levels.
Should I leave Quebec and do federal Express Entry instead?
Quebec does not use federal Express Entry. Under the Canada-Quebec Accord, Quebec issues a CSQ first, then you apply to IRCC. If the French bar or the no-guarantee draws feel out of reach, some grads pivot to another province and enter the federal Express Entry pool, but that usually means leaving Quebec and re-scoring under a different system. There is no single right answer; it depends on your occupation, French level, and ties to Quebec. Consult a licensed professional for advice specific to your situation.
Where to Go From Here
You now have the one thing the fragmented official pages and pre-2026 blogs cannot give you: a dated decision map that tells you whether the temporary PEQ window or PSTQ via Arrima is your route, and the English steps to work the portal if it is Arrima. For the full stream-by-stream mechanics and scoring detail, read our companion PSTQ via Arrima survival guide. Official program details live on Quebec’s skilled-worker immigration pages and federal processing on the IRCC website, both worth verifying against because they update the numbers as draws and intakes unfold.
The rules will keep moving through the July-to-October 2026 PEQ intake and the Arrima draws that follow. Subscribe to our newsletter for dated policy updates so you are always acting on current information, not recycled pre-abolition advice, and never miss a deadline that closes your window.
