Online passport renewal now available to all eligible Canadians without daily cap

Canada is removing the waiting list for online passport renewal. Immigration Minister Lena Diab announced Tuesday that the daily cap of 2,000 applications has been lifted, opening the service to all eligible adults in Canada. The government expects up to two million additional applications could now qualify.

Online renewal has technically existed for a couple of years but has been severely bottlenecked. Now eligible Canadians won't have to wait for an application spot to become available — they can apply whenever convenient.

However, eligibility remains tightly restricted. You qualify only if you have a home and mailing address in Canada, were older than 16 when your current passport was issued, had that passport issued within the past 15 years, and your passport is either expired or set to expire within the next six months. If your passport has more than six months left, online renewal isn't available yet. You also need to not require the passport for at least the next 20 business days plus mailing time, and the gender identifier on your new passport must match your current one (unless you carry an "X" observation sticker). Anyone who reported a passport lost or stolen and later found it cannot use online renewal unless the old passport has already been formally returned to the government.

Online renewal still requires a professional digital photo from a commercial photographer — phone selfies don't work. Processing follows the same 20-business-day standard as mail-in or in-person simplified renewals, with a government guarantee that fees are refunded if processing exceeds 30 days. One real advantage: applicants can track their application's progress in real time, something people mailing in paperwork cannot do. If you need a passport sooner than 20 business days, in-person service remains the faster option. The moment you submit an online renewal, your current passport is cancelled and stops being valid.