Refused a Canadian visa in Bangladesh? Find out why.

IRCC now sends the officer's decision note with most refusals: temporary-resident applications refused since 29 July 2025 (visitor visas, super and transit visas, visitor records, study and work permits and their extensions) and permanent-residence applications refused since 26 May 2026. It does not send them for eTAs, temporary resident permits or humanitarian and compassionate applications.

As of 24 September 2026, Bangladeshi citizens need a visitor visa (also called a temporary resident visa, or TRV) and a valid passport to visit Canada. Bangladesh is not one of the countries whose citizens can use an eTA, the online travel permit, instead of a visa. You also need a visa just to change planes in Canada: a transit visa if you will be in Canada 48 hours or less, or a visitor visa if longer. The exception: Bangladeshi citizens who are permanent residents of the United States (green card holders) need neither a visa nor an eTA.

IRCC lists three visa application centres (VACs) in Bangladesh, shown below. VACs are IRCC's official places to give your fingerprints and photo (biometrics), and you need an appointment. On 24 September 2026, IRCC's list gave no warning of limited services at any of the three. Check the centre's website, linked from IRCC's list, before you go.

Applications from Bangladesh to visit, study or work in Canada that were not approved (refused or withdrawn), worked out by us from IRCC open data. Visitor visas, study permits, work permits and extensions of stay are all counted together.

• 2024: IRCC processed 209,220 applications and approved 61,585. Not approved: 147,635 (70.6%), about 7 in 10.
• 2025: IRCC processed 91,340 applications and approved 37,700. Not approved: 53,640 (58.7%), about 6 in 10.
• January to July 2026: IRCC processed 56,815 applications and approved 30,415. Not approved: 26,400 (46.5%), a little under half.
• All countries together, 2025: 40.4% not approved, about 4 in 10.
• Fewer people applied: IRCC received 184,655 applications from Bangladesh in 2024 and 88,420 in 2025.

IRCC's paper application package for a visitor visa, for applicants in Bangladesh, includes an extra checklist, IMM 5890. It says: "If you are a resident of Bangladesh, you must provide the Family Information Form (IMM 5707) fully completed, dated and signed." It also asks for bank statements covering the past four months. If you apply online, IRCC gives you your own document checklist in its portal: follow that. IRCC warns that missing documents may lead to a refusal or delays, so go through the whole IMM 5890 checklist before you apply again.

IRCC's processing times for applications from Bangladesh, updated 22 September 2026: visitor visa (applying from outside Canada) 37 days, super visa (a long-stay visa for parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens and permanent residents) 55 days, study permit 5 weeks, work permit 10 weeks. IRCC says this includes the time to give your biometrics. These are IRCC's estimates, not a promise. They change often, so check IRCC's tool on the day you apply.

In figures IRCC prepared for the House of Commons immigration committee (February 2024), Bangladesh was one of the 10 countries of residence with the most new study-permit decisions (approved, refused or withdrawn) from January 2022 to January 2024. For people living in Bangladesh, IRCC approved 5,452 and refused 8,450 in 2023. In January 2024 alone it approved 244 and refused 1,103, so fewer than 1 in 5 were approved.

In a March 2025 briefing for Canada's new immigration minister, IRCC wrote that in summer 2024 it started to check applications from countries it sees as high-risk more closely, and that this led to more visa refusals. In the same point it wrote: "Application intake from key countries, including India, Bangladesh and Nigeria, has dropped as well." Intake means the number of applications received. The briefing does not list which countries it sees as high-risk.

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Our office hours are Mon–Sat, 10am–7pm IST. In Bangladesh that is 10:30am–7:30pm. Send a WhatsApp message any time and we reply in office hours.

We file within 24 hours of receiving your payment, documents and signed consent form (1 hour on Premium, during office hours). For a file without its application number there is no set hour, because it can need extra steps first. The law gives IRCC 30 days from receiving a request to reply, and lets it extend that by sending a notice.