What the Residency Match Data Actually Says

The 2026 NRMP Main Residency Match, held on 20 March 2026, registered 53,373 applicants against 44,344 offered positions across 6,809 certified program tracks, and 38,354 people matched to a PGY-1 post. Inside those totals, international medical graduates are reported as two separate groups, and the difference between them is the single most useful fact in this guide.

The NRMP describes the US-citizen IMG rate of 70 percent as the highest on record, on a trend that has been rising since 2022 even as the number of such applicants has fallen — down 377 from the previous year. It describes the non-US-citizen rate of 56.4 percent as the lowest level observed in five years, from a group that grew by 479.

Two lines moving in opposite directions, in the same match, for people who may well have attended the same school.

If you are a US citizen who studies medicine in Europe, you return as a US citizen international medical graduate. That is the 4,210-applicant group, and the number attached to it in 2026 is 70 percent — the best it has ever been.

This is worth stating plainly because the internet mostly quotes the other number. A great deal of discussion about "IMG match rates" cites figures in the fifties without saying that the figure belongs to non-citizens, most of whom need a visa. That is not the population an American graduate joins.

Three caveats keep it honest.

Seventy percent is not ninety-four. US MD seniors match far higher. A European degree is a real route with real odds, not an equivalent one.

It is an average across all specialties. The NRMP's own reporting stresses wide variation by specialty, and the competitive ones take very few international graduates. A 70 percent chance at *something* is not a 70 percent chance at the specialty you want.

It describes people who reached the Match. Everyone in that 4,210 had already obtained ECFMG certification and passed the USMLE sequence. The attrition before that point is not in this number. The stages are set out in practising medicine in the US.

A Canadian citizen who graduates in Europe and applies to US residency is a non-US-citizen international graduate who requires visa sponsorship. In 2026 that group matched at 54.4 percent, which the NRMP notes is a five-year low, against a peak of 59.1 percent in 2023.

The comparison inside the same cohort is the striking part. Foreign-born graduates who did not need sponsorship — US permanent residents — matched at 67.9 percent, a five-year high. Same category of degree, same match, a 13.5-point gap that tracks immigration status rather than education.

So for a Canadian the decision has an extra variable in it that no school can improve: the visa. Programs must be willing and able to sponsor, which many are not, and that filter applies before anyone reads your file.

The NRMP itself frames this as policy-sensitive, noting that broader policy conditions could shape future outcomes for these candidates. Which is the fair warning to take from it: this is the number most likely to move for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

Canadians who want to come home apply through CaRMS, not the NRMP, and the shape of that system is different.

In the 2026 R-1 match, 931 international medical graduates matched — up from 851 in 2025 and 671 in 2024, a real and sustained increase. In the same match, 2,988 Canadian medical graduates matched, and 87 current-year Canadian graduates went unmatched after both iterations, a rate of 2.9 percent. There were 4,103 positions in total and 3,922 were filled, the highest ever.

CaRMS's published release gives matched counts rather than a match rate for international graduates, so we are not going to compute one. What the counts do show is the proportion: Canadian graduates take roughly three-quarters of the matched positions.

The bigger constraint is eligibility, which is set before the match. CaRMS requires an international applicant to be a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident of Canada, to hold a degree from a school listed with the World Directory of Medical Schools and recognized in Canada, and to have written and passed both the National Assessment Collaboration (NAC) Examination and the Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Exam Part I.

And then it fragments. CaRMS states that not all applicants are eligible to apply to all residency programs, as eligibility can differ from one province to another — with British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec requiring completion of specific assessment programs before an international applicant can participate at all. So "can I get back into Canada?" is really a question about a province. More in returning to Canada.

Match outcomes are not something a school can promise. School-level eligibility evidence is something you can check, and it is the part where choosing badly is genuinely irreversible.

All 141 English-taught medicine programs on this site, at 127 universities across 21 countries, currently carry:

That last row is the Canadian gate CaRMS refers to, and the two above it are the American one. They are school-level facts, verifiable now, years before any match — and they are the checks that a school failing would end the plan entirely.

What they are not is an outcome. A school-level pass means you are permitted to compete. The 70 and the 54.4 describe what happens afterwards.

One related myth worth discarding while you are here: the accreditation policy that supposedly locks graduates of non-accredited schools out of certification does not do what it is usually said to do. That is its own guide, and it is sourced from the body that runs the policy.

Use the number that matches your citizenship, not the scariest one you find. For an American the relevant 2026 figure is 70 percent. For a Canadian needing US sponsorship it is 54.4. Quoting the wrong one at yourself distorts the decision in both directions.

Read them as cohort statistics, not personal odds. These are what happened to thousands of people with different scores, specialties, experience and luck. Nobody's individual probability is the group average.

Re-check them annually. Both the 70 and the 54.4 are described by the NRMP as records or five-year extremes, which is exactly the kind of figure that moves. The NRMP publishes results each spring and CaRMS each April and May.

Treat any guarantee as disqualifying. No school, agent or website can promise you a residency post, and one that does is telling you something about itself. The verification method is in how to verify a school yourself.

None of this is legal or licensing advice. Certification, registration and licensure are decided by the bodies that issue them — ECFMG and Intealth, the Medical Council of Canada, and the provincial or state authority — on the rules in force when you apply, not the ones quoted here.