Alberta is Calling: what it was, and what is actually open now

What is Alberta is Calling?

Alberta is Calling is a Government of Alberta advertising campaign that placed ads in other Canadian provinces, urging skilled workers already living in Canada to relocate to Alberta. It was marketing, not law: it created no visa, no work permit and no immigration stream, and at no point did answering the ads give anyone a right to enter or remain in Canada.

The pitch was a fair one. Alberta sells itself on jobs, no provincial sales tax and housing that is cheaper than in Ontario or British Columbia. The only money attached was the Moving Bonus, for people who moved between 1 May and 31 December 2024. The province's standing information page for people relocating from elsewhere in Canada is Moving to Alberta from within Canada on alberta.ca, and it outlives the campaign.

Alberta grew fast while the campaign ran. Statistics Canada's current quarterly estimates (table 17-10-0009-01, read 12 October 2026) put Alberta's population growth at 201,563 between 1 January 2023 and 1 January 2024, and at 176,242 between 1 January 2024 and 1 January 2025, with more people moving to Alberta from other provinces than leaving it in both years (table 17-10-0045-01). Whether the ads caused that growth or simply rode it is a genuinely open question, and this page does not take a side.

Is the Alberta is Calling bonus still open?

No. The Alberta is Calling bonus stopped accepting new applications at 4pm Mountain Time on 15 March 2026, the application portal was closed on that date, and the alberta.ca page that hosted it returned a page-not-found error when we checked it on 12 October 2026. The application guidelines remain published on the province's open government portal as Alberta is Calling: Moving Bonus application guidelines, which is a record of a closed programme rather than a live application route.

The programme was also never as large as the advertising implied. It was capped at 2,000 recipients and assessed first come, first served, which at $5,000 each is $10 million in total if every place had been claimed. The guidelines also allowed the portal to close early, without notice, once all program funds were allocated.

Who qualified for the moving to Alberta bonus, and what did it pay?

The moving to Alberta bonus paid $5,000 as a one-time refundable tax credit to a skilled tradesperson who moved to Alberta between 1 May and 31 December 2024, was 18 or over, held Canadian citizenship or permanent residence, and was working full time in an eligible occupation when they applied. Applications opened on 1 May 2025, a full year after the arrival window began, because the province needed applicants to have filed an Alberta tax return first.

That last point is what most summaries got wrong. This was a tax credit claimed after the fact by someone who had already uprooted their life at their own expense, not a relocation grant paid up front to help with the move. You had to have lived in Alberta for twelve consecutive months and received your 2024 notice of assessment from the Canada Revenue Agency before you could apply at all.

What is the Alberta Affordability Grant?

The Alberta Affordability Grant is monthly operational funding paid to licensed childcare programmes so they can lower the fees they charge families, and it is not a payment to individuals and not connected to moving to the province. It goes to eligible preschools, daycares and approved family day homes caring for children up to kindergarten age, and families feel it as a capped fee rather than as a cheque.

The numbers are worth knowing if you are costing out a move with young children, because childcare is one of the few line items where Alberta is unambiguously cheaper than most of the country. Daycares and family day homes receiving affordability funding charge a flat monthly parent fee of $326.25 for full-time care, defined as a child registered for 100 or more hours a month, and $230 for part-time care of 50 to 99 hours a month. Preschools receiving the funding can get up to $100 per enrolled child per month to reduce parent fees. Those figures are published on the Affordability Grant page on alberta.ca and were read there on 12 October 2026.

The confusion is understandable. The word grant sits next to the word affordability, Alberta has run several unrelated affordability payments over the years, and search results mix all of them together. If you have arrived at this page hoping the Alberta Affordability Grant is a cash top-up for moving, it is not. It is a subsidy paid to your future daycare.

Is there a move to Alberta incentive open in October 2026?

There is no general Government of Alberta move to Alberta incentive open in October 2026, and no replacement for the Moving Bonus has been announced. What exists instead is a set of smaller, more specific things, each attached to a job, a community or an immigration stream rather than to the act of moving itself.

• Employer relocation packages: Many Alberta employers in construction, health care and aviation fund relocation directly as part of the offer, and this is now the most common way a move to Alberta actually gets paid for.
• Rural community incentives: Individual Alberta towns and counties run their own attraction programmes, which change often and are administered locally rather than by the province, so check with the specific municipality rather than with alberta.ca.
• Rural Renewal Stream endorsement: A designated Alberta community can endorse you for the AAIP Rural Renewal Stream, which is not money but is worth considerably more than $5,000 if permanent residence is your goal.
• The Affordability Grant: Alberta's capped childcare fees apply to any family using a participating licensed programme once you live here, with no application by the parent.
• Credential recognition support: Alberta funds fast-tracked foreign credential recognition in several regulated occupations, which shortens the gap between arriving and earning at your trained level.

What Alberta is Calling never covered: the immigration side

Alberta is Calling never granted immigration status, never issued a work permit and never fast-tracked a permanent residence application, because the province has no power to do any of those things on its own. Provinces nominate; Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada decides. That division of labour is the single most important thing to understand about Alberta immigration, and the campaign's advertising deliberately said nothing about it because its audience was already in Canada.

If you are outside Canada, or inside Canada on a temporary permit, the campaign was never yours to answer. Your route runs through a federal programme such as Express Entry, a work permit, or Alberta's own nominee programme. The last of those is where an Alberta connection genuinely counts, and it is the part of the story that survived the campaign.

The AAIP is the route that is open, and it still has room in 2026

The Alberta Advantage Immigration Program nominates people for permanent residence in Alberta, and it had 1,062 of its 6,603 nomination spaces still available when alberta.ca last updated the figure on 7 October 2026. That allocation is set with the federal government, it is the province's hard ceiling for the year, and it is the number that decides how competitive every stream feels.

Alberta has told applicants where it intends to spend the rest. For 2026 the AAIP says it will prioritise draws and nominations in health care, technology, construction, manufacturing, aviation, agriculture and communities designated under the Rural Renewal Stream, while noting that this is a statement of priorities rather than an exhaustive list. Full stream detail sits on our Alberta immigration guide, and the live cut-off scores sit on our AAIP draws tracker.

The pressure in those numbers is on the demand side, not the supply side. Alberta reported 34,478 candidates sitting in the Worker Expression of Interest pool on the same date, of whom 21,667 had named the Alberta Opportunity Stream. That is roughly 5.2 candidates in the pool for every nomination Alberta will issue all year, which is why cut-off scores move and why a targeted occupation matters more than a high score alone.

Recent draws show how differently the streams behave. On 2 October 2026 the Alberta Opportunity Stream invited 123 candidates at a minimum score of 54. On 22 September 2026 the Accelerated Tech Pathway invited 100 at a minimum of 59. On 9 September 2026 the Dedicated Health Care Pathway, Express Entry, invited 51 at a minimum of 60. Alberta states plainly that its draws are not regularly scheduled and that the expression of interest score is not the only factor it uses to select candidates, so nobody, including us, can tell you what the next round will require.

How the AAIP works, in four steps

The Alberta route runs in a fixed order, and skipping a step is the most common reason a hopeful Alberta file goes nowhere. Alberta introduced a Worker Expression of Interest fee on 7 April 2026, so the current amounts are worth confirming on alberta.ca before you submit anything.

1. 01

   Check the stream fits

   Alberta runs four worker streams and four entrepreneur streams, each with its own eligibility rules, and most worker pathways need a qualifying Alberta job offer. Alberta publishes an Eligibility Explorer tool, launched 17 June 2026, and our Alberta immigration guide walks through each stream in plain English.

2. 02

   Submit a Worker Expression of Interest

   You lodge an expression of interest scored out of 100 against Alberta's grid and it sits in the pool until the province draws. There were 34,478 candidates in that pool as at 7 October 2026, so the score you enter with matters. Estimate yours on our AAIP calculator first.

3. 03

   Receive an invitation and apply for nomination

   Alberta invites selected candidates to apply, and only then do you file the nomination application with the documents behind every claim you made. Alberta was assessing Alberta Opportunity Stream applications received on or before 13 July 2026 as at 7 October 2026 (a date Alberta says currently excludes applicants who received a work permit support letter under the Temporary public policy to facilitate work permits for prospective Provincial Nominee Program candidates), which is the most honest available guide to the wait.

4. 04

   Apply to IRCC for permanent residence

   A nomination is a provincial endorsement, not permanent residence. You file a separate federal application, and IRCC makes the final decision on admissibility and status. Our Alberta processing times page tracks where each stage currently sits.

What Alberta actually offers a mover now, in numbers

Strip away the campaign and the province's underlying case for itself has not changed, and it is published on alberta.ca rather than invented by us. These are the figures the province itself puts forward on its Opportunity Alberta pages, read on 12 October 2026, and they are the honest replacement for a $5,000 cheque.

One caveat from where we sit. Those provincial figures do not describe the Bow Valley. Canmore and Banff are among the most expensive places to live in Alberta, and the gap between the provincial average and a mountain-town rent is the first unpleasant surprise most people who move here experience. We have written honestly about that in moving to Canmore and about where the jobs actually are in jobs in Canmore and Banff. If cost is the deciding factor, look at the wider list of Alberta towns and cities before you commit to a postcode.

Where these figures come from, and how this page is kept current

Every number on this page is attributed in the sentence or the table caption that carries it. The AAIP allocation, stream-by-stream nominations, expression of interest pool and draw results come from the AAIP processing information page on alberta.ca, last updated by the province on 7 October 2026 and read by us on 13 October 2026. Stream structure comes from the AAIP programme page. Income and job vacancy figures come from Opportunity Alberta, and the childcare fee figures from the Affordability Grant page, both read on 12 October 2026.

Moving Bonus rules and dates, including the 15 March 2026 closure, come from the Government of Alberta application guidelines on open.alberta.ca (May 2025 edition). We verified on 12 October 2026 that alberta.ca no longer serves a Moving Bonus page. Population figures come from Statistics Canada tables 17-10-0009-01 and 17-10-0045-01, read 12 October 2026.

This page is reviewed whenever Alberta updates its AAIP processing figures, which has been roughly monthly through 2026, and immediately if the province announces any successor to the Moving Bonus. If you find a figure here that alberta.ca no longer supports, tell us and we will correct it.

Compliance note. Wild Mountain Immigration is a licensed RCIC practice based in Canmore, Alberta, led by Nicola Wightman, CICC R706497, working online with clients across Canada and abroad. This page is general information about Alberta is Calling and about Alberta immigration, not advice on your own file, and nothing here predicts or promises an outcome on any application. We do not advise on Quebec programmes, and we do not represent clients before the Immigration and Refugee Board or the courts. If we can help, a consultation with a licensed RCIC is free.

The short version, if you take nothing else from this page: Alberta is Calling was an advertising campaign for Canadians already in Canada, its $5,000 bonus closed on 15 March 2026, and the thing that still opens the door to Alberta is a nomination, not a cheque. Alberta had 1,062 of those nominations left for 2026 as at 7 October 2026. That is the number worth acting on.