SURREY, B.C. - Surrey is now home to a medical school. The first 48 students of the SFU Stephens Family School of Medicine began their studies in August in an interim space at the SFU Surrey campus, and the school’s permanent home, a roughly $520-million building in the heart of Surrey City Centre, is moving through City approvals this fall ahead of construction expected to start late this year.
The school is British Columbia’s second medical school and the first new medical school in Western Canada in nearly 60 years. For a city that has spent years lobbying for more doctors, and where families routinely wait for a family physician, it is the largest health-care investment in Surrey’s history.
Already open, in the middle of downtown
The inaugural cohort of 48 students started orientation on August 5, 2026, at the SFU Surrey campus on 102 Avenue, steps from Surrey Central SkyTrain station. The program is a three-year, year-round doctor of medicine degree, a year shorter than the traditional four-year program, with students beginning clinical training in their second month and eligible for residencies as early as 2029. Cohorts will grow in phases to 120 students a year by 2035.
The school received preliminary accreditation from the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools in October 2025, the step that allowed it to open applications. Its founding dean is Dr. David Price, and its newest initiative, announced October 23, 2026, is an Indigenous Pathways Acceleration Hub, funded by a $100,000 Robbins-Ollivier Award for Excellence in Equity, aimed at supporting Indigenous students into medicine.
The permanent home: Centre Block
The school’s permanent home will be the Centre Block development at 10270 University Drive, next to the existing SFU Surrey campus. The school will occupy eight floors of a 12-storey building, with classrooms, clinical-skills spaces, research labs and offices, along with two features aimed squarely at Surrey residents: an outpatient clinic and a child care centre with 49 spaces.
The anticipated capital cost is approximately $520 million, shared between the Province and SFU, and the Province has committed a further $41.1 million a year in ongoing operating funding. A development permit application for the first phase is before the City of Surrey this fall. The City said in February that excavation tendering was set for spring 2026 and that it and SFU were moving toward breaking ground in late 2026, with the permanent school ready for students in fall 2030. Announcing the location in October 2025, then-mayor Brenda Locke called the school “a transformative investment in Surrey’s downtown and a cornerstone of the Centre Block development.”
Why it matters to Surrey
The partners behind the school are the Province, SFU, the City of Surrey, the First Nations Health Authority, Fraser Health and the Divisions of Family Practice. Fraser Health, which runs Surrey Memorial Hospital and health services across the city, is supporting clinical preceptors and faculty development and hosting student placements, which means Surrey patients will increasingly be treated by students training to become doctors.
The theory behind building a medical school in Surrey is simple: doctors tend to practise near where they train. Surrey is one of the fastest-growing cities in B.C., and its neighbourhoods, from Newton and Fleetwood to Cloverdale and South Surrey, have felt the family-doctor shortage as directly as anywhere in the province. A school that recruits from the region, trains in Fraser Health facilities and graduates its first doctors into residencies by 2029 is the region’s long-term answer, even if the payoff arrives over years, not months.
For downtown, the effect is more immediate. A 12-storey institutional anchor beside Surrey Central station, with hundreds of students, faculty and clinic patients arriving daily, adds the kind of year-round foot traffic that City Centre businesses and the surrounding condo towers have been promised since the campus district was first drawn.
Source: Government of British Columbia, August 5, 2026 (first cohort); B.C. government release, October 14, 2025 (permanent location and capital cost); City of Surrey, February 27, 2026 (Centre Block timeline); Simon Fraser University, October 23, 2026 (Indigenous Pathways Acceleration Hub).
