Immigrants in Calgary, Alberta | Annual Arrivals and Census Trends

In 2025, Calgary was the destination for 23,545 new immigrants.

Source: IRCC

• In 2025, 51,590 new permanent residents were admitted to Alberta, 45.6% of them landed in Calgary.
• From 2020 to 2025, Calgary was the destination for 135,425 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 Calgary in Recent Years

Since 2020 immigration has played a key role in the expansion of Calgary and the surrounding Alberta region with the Calgary metropolitan area emerging as an important hub for newcomers across Canada. Pandemic related limits caused a drop in permanent resident inflows during 2020 but arrivals recovered quickly afterward as federal immigration goals rose and Calgary drew growing numbers of economic class migrants along with skilled professionals and family members.

Immigrants represent roughly one third of the metropolitan population and the region absorbed a solid portion of recent arrivals to Canada in the early 2020s. Newcomers have settled widely across the city including neighborhoods near downtown and outer areas while overall growth has been fueled strongly by international migration. Housing demands and recent federal moves to adjust immigration volumes have affected patterns yet migration continues as the main engine behind Calgarys rapid population increases.

Foreign-born people in Calgary (2011 Census)

In 2011, a total of 313,880 immigrants resided in Calgary.

• In 2011, Calgary had the fourth largest immigrant population among Canada’s Census Metro Areas (CMAs).
• In 2011, a total of 313,880 immigrants accounted for 26.2% of Calgary’s population, and they represented 8.8% of Alberta’s population.
• In 2011, Filipino, Indian and Chinese were the largest immigrant groups in Calgary. Other top immigration countries were the United Kingdom, Viet Nam, United States, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Germany, Poland, South Korea, Colombia, Romania, Netherlands and Lebanon. All together represented 65% of the immigrant population in Calgary.

Italy, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Iran and Russia were also in the top 20 sources of immigration to Calgary.

In Calgary, the immigrant population grew 59% from 197,410 in 2001 to 313,880 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.