Canada Passport Stamping Time in October 2026: The September Speed-Up
All summer 2026, getting a stamped Canadian visa back from VFS India took about three weeks, and it barely moved. Then, in September, it dropped to about two weeks, at all ten VFS centres in the same fortnight.
These figures come from Blue Dart's public tracking of about 52,000 Canadian visa passports that VFS India sent back between July and October 2026. Blue Dart keeps records for about 90 days, so the story starts with passports handed in during July. The wait is counted from the day you hand your passport in at VFS (the date at the start of your tracking ID) to the day VFS sends it back by Blue Dart.
Three weeks, every week, all summer
From early July to the end of August, the wait was remarkably steady. Whichever week you handed in, half the passports came back within 21 to 23 days, and 9 in 10 within about 25.
| Handed in (week of) | Passports | Half back within | 9 in 10 back within |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 July | 2,902 | 22 days | 24 days |
| 13 July | 3,670 | 22 days | 24 days |
| 10 August | 3,836 | 22 days | 26 days |
| 17 August | 4,092 | 23 days | 25 days |
| 24 August | 3,354 | 22 days | 23 days |
| 31 August | 3,906 | 18 days | 20 days |
| 7 September | 3,453 | 14 days | 14 days |
| 14 September | 2,645 | 14 days | 15 days |
The week of 21 September is left out on purpose: some of its slower passports are still not back, so it would look faster than it really is.
What happened in September
The change shows up first in the dispatch days. On 16 September VFS sent back 2,453 Canadian passports in a single day, most of them handed in during late August. On 21 September it sent 2,650. Those two batches cleared the summer queue. From 22 September onwards, the passports going out had typically been away 13 or 14 days instead of 22.
The slow tail shrank even more than the middle. In August, 1 in 10 passports took longer than about 25 days. For September hand-ins, nearly everything was back within 15.
It happened at every centre at once
The drop wasn't one busy centre catching up. Every centre went from about 22 days to about 14 (busiest centres first):
| VFS centre | August hand-ins | 1–19 September hand-ins |
|---|---|---|
| Jalandhar | 22 days | 14 days |
| Ahmedabad | 22 days | 14 days |
| Chandigarh | 22 days | 14 days |
| New Delhi | 21 days | 13 days |
| Bengaluru | 22 days | 14 days |
| Mumbai | 22 days | 14 days |
| Hyderabad | 22 days | 14 days |
| Chennai | 22 days | 14 days |
| Pune | 22 days | 14 days |
| Kolkata | 22 days | 14 days |
When every centre moves together, the change is almost certainly at the visa office that stamps the passports, not at VFS. We can't see why it sped up: IRCC doesn't publish anything about this step. More staff, a cleared backlog or fewer applications after the summer peak would all look the same in this data.
Early October: holding, with a wobble
It hasn't gone back to three weeks. The first October batches carried passports that had waited between 11 and 17 days, mostly 14 or 15, much the same as late September. One week of data isn't a trend; the live tracker shows whether the wait is rising or falling each morning.
What this means if you are handing in now
- Plan on about two and a half weeks, not one. Recent hand-ins are taking about 14 to 17 days to be sent back, and Blue Dart then delivers half of them the same or next day, 9 in 10 within 3 days.
- Don't book a fixed flight before your passport is dispatched. The summer showed how a three-week wait can hold for months, and nothing guarantees September's pace will last.
- Your centre matters less than you'd think. All ten centres are within a few days of each other; check the comparison for this week's numbers before travelling to a farther one.
- If your hand-in date is "mostly back" and yours isn't, you are probably in the slow tenth. That usually means extra checking at the visa office, and IRCC's web form is the place to ask, not VFS.
The numbers on this site update every morning from Tuesday to Saturday. Find your centre and your hand-in date on the tracker to see how many passports from your day are already on their way.