Canadian Passport Fees 2026: The Full Cost Breakdown

Fees inside Canada

Passport fees in Canada depend on one variable: how long the passport is valid for. On March 31, 2026 the fees increased, and they are adjusted annually from now on under the Service Fees Act. These are the amounts currently published by IRCC.

Note that the fee is the same whether you apply for a new passport or renew one. Renewal is a cheaper process — no guarantor, no references, no citizenship documents — but it is not a cheaper product. Nor does the fee change with how you apply: mail, online and in person all cost the same base amount, though in-person service can attract separate pick-up charges.

The 10-year passport is not always the obvious choice on price alone. It costs about a third more than the five-year passport while lasting twice as long, which is why people who expect their details to change — a name change is the usual example — sometimes take the five-year option.

Fees outside Canada

Applicants living outside Canada pay more, because the fee includes a consular services component that funds assistance from Canadian offices abroad. The difference is substantial.

Someone moving abroad with a valid passport should therefore think about validity before they leave. Renewing a passport before a move can avoid paying the higher overseas fee, provided the renewal conditions are met and provided the new passport will still have usable validity after the move.

A certificate of identity and a refugee travel document are not passports. They are travel documents for people who are not Canadian citizens, and they carry their own validity periods and fee schedule. The adult certificate of identity is the most expensive document on the list.

Additional service fees

Beyond the passport fee itself, several services carry their own charge. These are the ones that actually come up.

Urgent pick-up roughly doubled in cost at the March 31, 2026 adjustment, and emergency weekend or statutory holiday service rose even more sharply. Those two services are the ones worth planning around rather than paying for: a passport applied for in good time avoids both.

Express pick-up is the cheapest way to jump the queue and is available in the 2 to 9 business day window. A few locations are slower than the headline range — Kelowna and Pointe-Claire take 4 to 9 business days and Charlottetown 3 to 9 — so ask at the counter if the difference matters to your travel date.

Replacing a lost or stolen passport

If a passport is lost or stolen while it is still valid, the replacement costs the normal passport fee plus an extra CAN$45. You must also submit a PPTC 203 declaration describing how the passport was lost or stolen.

If the passport had already expired when it went missing, the extra CAN$45 does not apply and no special declaration is needed. In that case the process is an ordinary renewal or an ordinary new application, whichever your circumstances call for.

A damaged passport is treated differently again. Damage requires the PPTC 203 declaration but the replacement fee rules follow the ordinary route. The distinction matters because people often report a damaged passport assuming it is covered by the lost-passport rules, and are surprised by the paperwork.

How to pay, and how not to lose the fee

IRCC accepts payment by credit card, by debit card in some channels, and by other methods depending on how you are applying. The important points are practical rather than technical.

• Pay in the currency and method the channel asks for; applications from abroad that are paid in the wrong currency or form are returned.
• Keep the receipt. The receipt number is how you check the status of the application, and for pick-up service it shows the date the passport will be ready.
• Do not send cash by mail.
• Do not pay extra “to speed things up” through any unofficial service; only IRCC sets and charges passport fees.

Never pay an intermediary for a passport. Legitimate third parties can assist with paperwork or submit an application on your behalf, but they cannot make IRCC process faster, and any claim to be able to do so is a signal to walk away.

The received-date rule for mailed applications

Fees change annually, and that creates a rule that catches people out. For applications sent by mail, the fee that applies is the one in force on the day IRCC receives the application, not the day you mailed it.

In practice this means an application mailed just before a fee change, and received just after, must carry the new fee. An application received with the old amount is treated as an application with insufficient fees. The safest habit is to confirm the current fee immediately before sending, rather than a week earlier when the form was printed.

This rule also explains why the March 31, 2026 increase produced a transition period: mailed applications received around that date were handled according to which fee had been paid, which is why IRCC published transitional guidance alongside the new amounts.

Why passport fees keep rising

The March 31, 2026 increase was the first since 2013, and it will not be the last. Under the Service Fees Act the passport fee is now indexed and adjusted annually, which means a small increase can be expected each year rather than a large one every decade.

The practical implication is that any fee figure you read, including the ones on this page, has a publication date attached to it. The figures here are current as of October 2026 and reflect the March 31, 2026 adjustment. Before you pay, confirm the amount on the IRCC fee pages.

Indexation also applies to the extra service fees, which is why urgent pick-up and weekend service rose so sharply in 2026: they started from a lower base and were adjusted in the same exercise.

Automatic refunds when the standard is missed

Since April 1, 2026, a complete passport application that takes longer than 30 business days to process entitles the applicant to a refund of the application fee and the consular services fee — automatically. You do not have to ask.

Three qualifications matter. First, the 30-day clock only starts when IRCC has everything: the form, the photos, all supporting documents and the fees. Second, it excludes mailing time, extra review time for complex applications, and any hold while IRCC collects more information. Third, the application must have completed processing on or after April 1, 2026.

Urgent and express services carry a separate refund route: if IRCC misses the urgent or express timeline, the fee for that service is refunded under the Financial Administration Act. Some document types and administrative fees are excluded from the refund programme altogether, including emergency travel documents and observation or special-stamp fees.

What a passport costs per year

Choosing between five and ten years is a pricing decision as well as a convenience one. Dividing each fee by its validity gives a per-year cost that makes the trade-off obvious.

On that basis the ten-year passport is clearly better value, at roughly two thirds of the per-year cost of the five-year option. The calculation only holds, however, if your details stay the same for the whole period. A passport cannot be amended, so anyone expecting a name change within the decade may prefer the shorter passport rather than paying twice.

A second cost that is easy to forget is service. If you buy pick-up, urgent handling or weekend service, that charge is separate from the passport fee and is not refundable simply because you chose to pay for speed. The per-year comparison above excludes those charges deliberately, because timing is a different decision from price.

Understanding the pick-up and service fees

Pick-up fees are the part of the fee schedule that confuses most people, because they are separate from the passport fee and they do not buy a faster decision — they buy a faster handover once the passport is ready. The service standard attached to each one is what you are actually paying for.

Standard pick-up is worth knowing about because it removes the mailing wait entirely. If you are already planning to visit a passport office, paying CAN$20 to collect the passport there avoids the roughly five business days that mailing adds, and it means you know exactly when the document is in your hands.

Urgent and weekend service are the expensive options, and both require evidence that you need to travel: a ticket, an itinerary showing payment, or a written explanation of the need. Paying the fee does not guarantee the service, because an incomplete application or a security concern can still slow the file down. Treat the extra charge as buying a queue position, not an outcome.

Fee mistakes that cost a whole application

These are the failures that return a file rather than merely slowing it.

1. Paying the old amount after a fee change. Check the current fee immediately before submitting.
2. Assuming the overseas fee does not apply. If you live outside Canada, the higher fee with the consular component applies.
3. Forgetting the CAN$45. A replacement for a lost or stolen passport that was still valid costs the passport fee plus CAN$45.
4. Paying for urgent service you cannot evidence. Urgent and express handling requires proof of travel need, so the fee does not guarantee the service.
5. Paying a third party to speed up processing. Nobody can speed up IRCC; that is what the refund programme exists to enforce.

The thread running through all of them is that the fee is not just a price, it is part of the application’s correctness. A file with the wrong amount is an incorrect file.

Frequently Asked Questions