Immigrants in Edmonton, Alberta | Annual Arrivals and Census Trends

In 2025, Edmonton was the destination for 18,970 new immigrants.

Source: IRCC

• In 2025, 51,590 new permanent residents were admitted to Alberta, 36.8% of them landed in Edmonton.
• From 2020 to 2025, Edmonton was the destination for 105,190 new immigrants.
• The immigration data highlights a stable trend pre-pandemic levels, a sharp decline in 2020, a rebound leading up to 2024, and decline by 2025.

Immigrants in Edmonton in Recent Years

Since 2020 immigration has driven significant growth in Edmonton and the broader Alberta region with the Edmonton metropolitan area standing out as a key destination for newcomers to Canada. Pandemic restrictions led to a sharp decline in permanent resident arrivals that year but inflows rebounded strongly afterward as national targets increased and Edmonton attracted rising numbers of economic immigrants skilled workers and family reunifications.

Immigrants make up about 26 percent of the metropolitan population and the region received around 5.6 percent of new permanent residents to Canada in the early 2020s period. Newcomers have settled across various neighborhoods from central districts to growing suburbs while international migration has served as the primary force behind the citys rapid population expansion. Housing challenges and recent federal adjustments to immigration levels have started to influence trends yet migration remains central to Edmontons ongoing demographic increases.

Foreign-born people in Edmonton (2011 Census)

In 2011, 232,195 immigrants resided in Edmonton, Alberta.

In 2011, Edmonton had the sixth largest immigrant population after Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary and Ottawa-Gatineau (CMAs).

In 2011, 232,195 immigrants accounted for 20.4% of Edmonton’s population, and they represented 6.5%of Alberta’s population.

In 2011, Filipino, Indian and Chinese were the largest immigrant groups in Edmonton. Other top immigration countries were the United Kingdom, Viet Nam, United States, Germany, Poland, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Netherlands, Lebanon, Italy, Ukraine and South Korea. All together represented 64% of Edmonton’s immigrant population.

Somalia, El Salvador, Fiji, Ethiopia and Portugal were also in the top sources of immigration to Edmonton.

In Edmonton, the immigrant population grew 40.5% from 165,235 in 2001 to 232,195 in 2011.

Note:

We would like to point out that we used data from the National Household Survey (NHS) knowing that its quality is still under criticism because this survey was conducted on a voluntary basis, so its validity, reliability and comparability with other instruments, such as population censuses, have become an issue. In fact, before the first release of the NHS results, Statistics Canada issued warnings and cautions when using the NHS data, so use this data cautiously.

From 2005 to 2015, Edmonton was the destination of choice for 113,536 new permanent residents.