Toronto to Introduce New Area Code 942 as Existing Codes Near Exhaustion

Toronto residents aiming to obtain a 647 or 437 area code may need to act swiftly, as a new area code is set to be introduced. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced on Wednesday that starting from April 26, 2025, Toronto will have a new overlay code, 942.

The decision to introduce the new area code comes in response to the projected exhaustion of existing 416, 437, and 647 phone numbers. A 2022 CRTC report originally estimated that these area codes would be depleted by January 2024, but the revised prediction indicates that they will now be exhausted by April 2025.

In light of this, the CRTC believes that implementing another distributed overlay area code is the most logical approach for providing further relief in Toronto, given that two overlay area codes (437 and 647) already exist alongside the original 416 code.

The last time Toronto witnessed the introduction of a new area code was in 2011 with the addition of 437. Prior to that, the 647 area code was introduced in 2001. The initial area codes introduced in southern Ontario were 416 and 613, way back in 1947.