Forbes ranked Canada's best employers for 2026 & these 11 Montreal companies made the cut

If you work for a big company in Montreal, there's a decent chance your employer, or one down the street, just landed on a new list worth knowing about. Forbes released its latest edition of its Canada's Best Employers For Company Culture ranking this month, and once again, Quebec workplaces made a strong showing.

For this year's ranking, Forbes teamed up with Statista to survey more than 37,000 Canadians working at companies with at least 500 employees, asking them to rate their own employer on things like fairness, inclusion, recognition, collaboration, and career growth. The results were combined into a final list of 200 organizations across the country.

Université Laval held onto its title as Canada's best employer for culture, a repeat win from last year. Right behind it, Université de Sherbrooke jumped from #5 to #2, putting two Quebec universities at the very top of the entire ranking.

Twenty-one Quebec-based companies made the full list this year. Locally, 11 of them are headquartered right here in Montreal.

Montreal companies named among Canada's best for culture:

1. Business Development Bank of Canada (#19) – Banking and financial services
2. National Bank of Canada (#36) – Banking and financial services
3. CGI (#43) – Business services and supplies
4. BMO Financial Group (#48) – Banking and financial services
5. Transat A.T. (#53) – Transportation and logistics
6. Hydro-Québec (#57) – Utilities
7. Concordia University (#76) – Education
8. Ubisoft (#89) – Media and advertising
9. Inditex (#94) – Clothing, shoes, and sports equipment
10. McGill University (#126) – Education
11. CHU Sainte-Justine (#191) – Healthcare and social services

That's down slightly from the 13 Montreal companies that made last year's inaugural list. A few names are new to the local lineup this year, including CGI, Ubisoft, and Inditex, while others that appeared in 2025, including Jewish General Hospital, UQAM, CHUM, and Bell Canada, didn't make the cut this time.

There's also plenty of movement among the companies that returned. Business Development Bank of Canada jumped from #52 last year to #19 this year, and National Bank of Canada climbed from #185 all the way to #36. BDC is now Montreal's top-ranked entry on the list. Concordia University held that title last year at #10, but it's since dropped all the way down to #76.

Elsewhere in the province, several other familiar Quebec names also cracked the ranking, including Desjardins (#175) in Lévis, Cascades (#118) in Kingsey Falls, CIMA+ (#98) and St-Hubert (#196) in Laval, and Beneva (#61) and CHU de Québec (#197) in Quebec City.

You can check out the full ranking and methodology on Forbes' official list.