Tungsten is one of the most important critical minerals you’ve probably never heard of. And in 2026, it’s becoming one of the most consequential commodities in the global supply-chain battle.

Unlike gold or silver, the market’s love for tungsten isn’t necessarily driven by monetary demand. Tungsten is an industrial necessity, a defence material, and an increasingly vital component of advanced manufacturing.

Unfortunately for those of us in the West where tungsten demand is on rise, China has a strangle-hold on tungsten production.

This doesn’t bode well for our increasing need for secure strategic mineral supplies. According to the IEA, tungsten prices have surged to roughly six times their earlier levels in the wake of severe supply-chain disruptions and China’s export restrictions. We’re over the proverbial barrel.

Why should we care about this particular barrel?

As I said before tungsten is important. It has the highest melting point of any pure metal and when used in the form of tungsten carbide, it possesses an unusual combination of heat resistance, hardness and density which makes it indispensable in industrial manufacturing, aerospace, defence and advanced technologies. So it’s vital we can get our hands on it.

Now for some good news, China isn’t the only country on the planet with tungsten. Significant deposits occur elsewhere including Australia, Canada, Europe and Central Asia.

The challenge is that a mineral deposit is not an operating mine, and an operating mine is not the same as a complete supply chain.

For that we’d need mining, concentration, chemical conversion, refining and tungsten carbide manufacturing. That all requires investment and specialized infrastructure. So there are opportunities outside China, but there are also significant development challenges that accompany them.

That brings us to Canada’s tungsten explorers.

The opportunity is real, but tungsten pricing projections point to different futures. Some with continued high commodity pricing, but more pointing toward a price normalization after new non-Chinese production comes online.

Knowing this, investors need to evaluate these companies on a moderate commodity price projection if they want to buttress themselves against potential market downturns.

Here are five Canadian-listed small-cap explorers with tungsten exposure you might want to keep on your radar:

Fireweed Metals (FWZ.V)

Multiple strategic mineral exposure

Fireweed Metals isn’t simply a speculative junior chasing a new discovery. It already has substantial mineral resources in hand with exploration upside.

The company deals in tungsten, zinc and lead through a portfolio of large, Canadian mineral projects.

Three pillars uphold Fireweed’s value proposition: the strategic importance of tungsten, the scale of its Macpass zinc-lead-silver project and the possibility that government support and industry partnerships could help the junior explorer bridge the gap between mineral discovery and commercial production.

Fireweed’s strongest near-term catalyst is its Mactung project which straddles the Yukon-Northwest Territories boundary within the traditional territories of the Kaska Dena Nation and the First Nation of Na-cho Nyäk Dun and in the Sahtu Settlement Area.

Adjacent to Fireweed’s Macpass project, Mactung has seen extensive drilling, engineering, metallurgy, geotechnical and environmental studies since its discovery in 1962.

All this work has culminated in a Feasibility Study in 2009 and positive Yukon-based mine project assessment in 2014.

The project contains an indicated resource of 41.5 Mt @ 0.73% WO₃ and an inferred resource of 12.2 Mt @ 0.59% WO₃. Fireweed boasts Mactung is the world’s largest high-grade tungsten deposit.

Since North America has lacked primary tungsten mine production since 2015, the strategic importance of a resource of this scale is difficult to ignore.

Fireweed isn’t alone in this optimism. In December 2024, the company announced government funding commitments totaling up to approximately C$35.4 million:

• US$15.8 million coming from the U.S. Department of Defense under the Defense Production Act of 1950 to advance Mactung.
• Up to C$12.9 million coming from Canada’s Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund for road and power infrastructure planning, subject to applicable conditions.

We spoke about Macpass at the top of this section and we should touch on it again as it represents a second major source of potential value.

Macpass contains large zinc-lead-silver resources, with additional exposure to gallium and germanium. Those last two metals are important to advanced electronics and semiconductor supply chains.

Fireweed produced some encouraging results at Macpass when it announced results from its drilling at Tom South with a 64 metre true-width intersection of 8.35% ZnEq including 43 metres of 10.53% ZnEq and 27 metres of 12.85% ZnEq.

Impressive grades and widths for sure. The intersection also suggests that Tom South may contain substantial additional mineralization beyond what has already been defined.

Mineral occurrences of gallium and germanium is just icing on the cake with the potential to add more economic value if those minerals are defined. However, recoverability, processing costs and commercial payability will ultimately determine whether either metal can contribute meaningfully to project revenues.

Fireweed completed a C$61.5 million private placement back in April 2026 to fund further exploration and development which included institutional heavyweights:

• JX Advanced Metals – gathering approximately 5% ownership following the financing.
• Lundin Family Trusts – gathering approximately 22.9% ownership following the financing.

It should also be noted that the financing price of C$4.18 per share represented a 9% premium to the previous closing price, so the interest in this transaction was considerable.

Now, JX also secured certain investor rights, including provisions relating to a potential offtake. Remember these are rights, not an actual signed commercial offtake agreement, but knowing that an established advanced materials company with tungsten expertise wants to secure those rights, has to mean something.

Regardless, this equity transaction should help fuel additional assays at Macpass, feasibility studies at Mactung, metallurgical testing, infrastructure, permitting, etc. The feasibility study is of particular interest as it should give investors a clearer picture of whether Mactung’s geological quality can translate into favorable mine economics.

That said, there are risks investors should be aware of. Fireweed is dealing with developing remote infrastructure, capital intensity which could dilute value, tungsten price volatility, permitting and stakeholder engagement and long development timelines.

If Fireweed can keep risks at a minimum, finance without completely diluting its sharebase and tungsten remains materially important to North America’s mineral market, the junior explorer may provide shareholders with an appreciable growth opportunity. Do your due diligence before making any investment decisions.

Northcliff Resources (NCF.T)

Advanced stage opportunity

Unlike other juniors, Northcliff Resources is working toward a construction decision for its Sisson tungsten-molybdenum project in New Brunswick.

Sisson is approximately 100 kilometres northwest of Fredericton and is designed as a large open-pit mining operation.

Northcliff owns 88.5% of Sisson, with the remaining 11.5% held by a subsidiary of New Zealand’s Todd Corporation.

The project boasts some pretty good numbers with probable and proven reserves coming in at 276.8 Mt and a 27-year mine life based on the company’s 2026 feasibility study.

Now, the tungsten levels are considerably lower than Fireweed’s Mactung deposit, but Sisson offers a large, long-life, open-pit operation with established reserves, detailed engineering and advanced regulatory approvals.

So investors don’t have to wait for a discovery, they are instead exposed to the potential development of a major North American tungsten producer.

Northcliff’s 2026 feasibility for the entire Sisson project not just its attributable interest, lays out an attractive investment case with an after-tax NPV (8%) of C$6.92 billion, an after-tax IRR of 49.8%, an estimated payback of 1.6 years and an initial capex requirement of C$1.53 billion. The NPV compared to initial capex makes this projection pretty tasty.

It should be noted, however, that this attractiveness is heavily dependent on tungsten pricing as the company’s study uses tungsten concentrate price forecasts starting at US$1,520 per metric tonne unit (MTU) in 2030, rising to US$1,880 per MTU by 2040.

This means that if elevated tungsten pricing persists, Sisson could generate substantial cash flow. If prices normalize, the projected NPV and IRR could fall sharply.

Northcliff is well ahead in terms of regulatory approvals:

• New Brunswick environmental assessment approval in 2015.
• Federal environmental assessment approval in 2017.
• Federal mining effluent regulatory authorization in 2019.
• Fisheries Act authorization in 2020.

The company still has to fulfill outstanding conditions and secure additional construction and operating permits before they can throw a construction party, but they are well on their way.

Again, Northcliff isn’t the only one looking forward to development. The U.S. Department of Defense agreed to fund US$15 million and the Canadian government committed to fund C$8.2 million.

In November 2025, Sisson was also referred to Canada’s Major Projects Office (MPO) which is coordinating federal financing and regulatory assistance to help advance strategically important projects.

Todd Corporation’s involvement in Sisson and Northcliff signals the support of a longtime institutional shareholder.

That said, investors should consider the risks at Sisson.

We already discussed tungsten’s price volatility and how it could impact price assumptions made in the feasibility report.

Raising C$1.53 billion in capex is no small feat and securing the necessary funds could affect the eventual returns to existing shareholders.

Northcliff’s partnership interest of 88.5% doesn’t mean that shareholders collectively own 88.5% of the mine. Todd’s approximately 81% corporate ownership of Northcliff substantially reduces the indirect economic interest represented by the public float.

Environmental permitting is a gauntlet that many juniors fail to run successfully, never mind positively engaging with indigenous stakeholders.

I suppose the key here is Northcliff doesn’t have to find more resources. It just needs to finish clearing its regulatory hurdles, finance and build the mine. If it can do that and maintain good economics, it could have a strategically important producing asset on its hands and shareholders could share in that success. Do your due diligence before making any investment decisions.

American Tungsten Corp. (TUNG.V)

Restarting an old mine

American Tungsten is approaching the tungsten problem from the other side as the junior explorer is attempting to resurrect a past producing mine, Ima, located in Idaho.

The Ima mine is located in Lemhi County, east-central Idaho and spans 22 patented mine claims. It has seen significant past production. Between 1945 and 1957, Ima produced approximately 199,449 MTUs of tungsten trioxide.

That’s roughly equivalent to 1,994 tonnes of WO₃ content.

The property has also had exploration carried out for tungsten and molybdenum by several operators between 1960 and 2010.

Now, being a past producer doesn’t guarantee current prospectivity, but American Tungsten has worked to update Ima’s mineral value. In August 2026, the junior explorer announced a new NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate for Ima, followed by the filing of its technical report on October 5, 2026.

This MRE defined an underground indicated of 316,000 t @ 0.55% WO₃, an underground inferred of 2.178 Mt @ 0.55% WO₃, a surface tailings indicated of 267,000 t @ 0.15% WO₃ and an underground contained WO₃ of 13,680 t.

The resource also indicates silver, with approximately 404,000 ounces in the underground indicated category and 1.85 million ounces in the underground inferred category. Surface tailings also contain an additional estimated 79,000 ounces of silver.

Silver could contribute to the mine economics, but recoverability rates, processing costs and commercial payability still have to be determined.

It should also be noted that the resource estimate uses a tungsten price assumption of US$1,300 per MTU for its underground cut-off grade calculation.

That means if tungsten prices decline significantly, the economic cut-off grade could rise, potentially reducing the amount of mineralization that qualifies as a resource and consequently shrinking the resource estimate.

Now, that MRE leans heavily into the inferred category, meaning American Tungsten has considerable work ahead to improve geological confidence, upgrade resources where possible and demonstrate that the deposit can be mined economically.

As such, the company has been conducting an extensive underground and surface drilling campaign and in September 2026, it announced that it had surpassed 30,000 feet of drilling since December 2025, which is equivalent to more than 9,100 metres.

This effort produced some encouraging tungsten and silver intersections including:

• AT26-39: 9.4 ft @ 0.802% WO₃
• AT26-48S: 10.6 ft @ 0.955% WO₃
• AT26-43: 14.8 ft @ 0.470% WO₃
• AT26-45: 5.0 ft @ 0.484% WO₃

Remember these are intervals, not necessarily true widths.

The drilling extended the known No. 5 through No. 7 vein array, confirmed the historical 41R vein and identified additional tungsten-bearing zones beyond previously mined areas.

Ima’s mineralized system remains open for further exploration, so American Tungsten could potentially expand its existing resource.

Another opportunity for American Tungsten at Ima is the company’s proposed two-phase development plan. First, evaluate processing the existing tailings as a potential lower-cost more-immediate path to revenue generation. Then move on to the underground mine restart itself.

American Tungsten added to its till to support these efforts. In March 2026, the company completed a C$40.0 million bought-deal financing with warrants creating a possibility of additional cash inflows, but also the possibility of shareholder dilution.

As of March 31, 2026, the explorer reported approximately C$51.1 million in cash.

The company also joined the U.S. Defense Industrial Base Consortium back in March 2025. This gives American Tungsten access to a framework intended to connect companies with U.S. defence supply chain initiatives.

Also, it has been separately disclosed that the company had received a letter of interest from the Export-Import Bank of the United States for potential financing of up to US$25.5 million.

It’s not a binding loan commitment, but it does open the door to potential financing support if the project meets EXIM’s lending requirements.

Okay, investors shouldn’t forget that there’s a lot of inferred here that needs to be moved over to the indicated column through further exploration. Project economics haven’t been demonstrated yet with a modern feasibility study. As always, volatile tungsten pricing. Will the deposit yield commercially viable product? How much will the mine restart cost? Will Ima get all of the necessary permits?

A standard slate of risks for sure. If American Tungsten can execute its redevelopment strategy, establish commercially viable production and avoid excessive shareholder dilution along the way, Ima could become an important contributor to North America’s tungsten supply chain. That could translate into meaningful upside for shareholders, but there’s still considerable work to do before the company gets there. Do your due diligence before making any investment decisions.

Fox Tungsten Ltd. (FOXT.V)

Early stage opportunity

Fox Tungsten offers investors exposure to a relatively small but high-grade tungsten resource in British Columbia with considerable exploration potential.

The company’s flagship Fox project is located approximately 75 kilometres northeast of 100 Mile House in BC’s South Cariboo region. The property hosts a mineralized system extending approximately 12 kilometres by 5 kilometres, with multiple near-surface high-grade zones.

The existing NI 43-101 resource estimate at Fox includes 582,400 tonnes indicated @ 0.826% WO₃ with ~4,805 t contained WO₃, as well as 565,400 tonnes inferred @ 1.231% WO₃ with ~6,958 t contained WO₃.

Those grades are impressive, especially the inferred resource averaging more than 1.2% WO₃. For comparison, Fireweed’s Mactung deposit has indicated and inferred grades of approximately 0.73% and 0.59% respectively.

However, Fox’s resource is much smaller, and the higher-grade inferred material has a lower level of geological confidence.

Luckily, Fox is not limited to its current defined resource zones. If the explorer is able to increase the resource size, continuity and favorable economics, that will change the story significantly.

As it happens, the company has identified multiple tungsten-bearing zones, with mineralization open along strike and at depth.

There has already been an encouraging result. During its 2025 program Fox Tungsten intersected 1.18 metres grading 6.83% WO₃ at the RC Zone. Another incredibly high-grade intersection, but the relatively narrow interval doesn’t by itself establish a commercially mineable deposit.

Fox Tungsten continued its exploration efforts in 2026, launching its largest exploration program to date at Fox and Silverboss for 20,000 metres total depth.

The first assay results have rolled in with several promising intersections:

• F26-003: 2.1 metres @ 1.43% WO₃
• F26-005: 8.8 metres @ 0.33% WO₃
• F26-006: 1.2 metres @ 1.97% WO₃
• F26-012: 7.9 metres @ 0.48% WO₃ including 0.4 metres @ 9.63% WO₃
• F26-020: 0.6 metres @ 2.35% WO₃

Again, these are downhole intervals, not true widths.

It is also important to remember that these results are only from the first 18 holes of the 2026 program. Approximately 52 holes had been completed by October 7, 2026, with drilling expected to continue into late October.

Alright, repeated high-grades and more assays to come, but what really matters commercially is how efficiently that tungsten can be recovered and sold.

Fox Tungsten completed some preliminary metallurgical testing to rough out an idea with 76% preliminary tungsten recovery at a concentrate grade of 68% WO3.

Encouraging. Tungsten concentrates typically need to meet demanding specifications. Producing a concentrate grading 68% WO3 suggests that Fox’s mineralization may be suitable for conventional processing.

Of course, additional testing is necessary to establish whether those recoveries can be consistently achieved across the deposit and at commercial scale.

With infrastructure so necessary for development, the Fox project benefits from being located in a relatively accessible part of the province. The project is situated close to road and electrical infrastructure, including a power line on the property.

In September 2026, Fox also announced that it had provincial authorizations to construct a new access trail through a designated Wildlife Habitat Area. This new trail is intended to improve equipment access, reduce reliance on helicopters and lower exploration logistics costs.

Fox Tungsten was also able to extend its Multi-Year Area Based exploration permit through March 31, 2031.

Fox is also showing its commitment to the community because as part of the access authorization, the explorer committed approximately C$300,000 over five years to support regional caribou monitoring.

The company added to its coffers in 2026 raising approximately C$12.7 million to support its exploration activities. As of its September 30 presentation, Fox reported approximately C$13.4 million in cash.

I won’t dwell on this long, but earlier I mentioned Silverboss. Fox Tungsten also owns the Silverboss molybdenum-copper-gold-silver project adjacent to the former Boss Mountain molybdenum mine.

Silverboss adds some additional exploration opportunity, but Fox remains fundamentally a tungsten investment.

Fox is targeting an updated mineral resource estimate and PEA in the second quarter of 2027. This will act as a catalyst to Fox’s story, but it is preliminary and may incorporate inferred resources. It would not carry the same confidence as a feasibility study or establish mineral reserves.

So risks to consider:

• Existing resource remains relatively small.
• Uncertain mineralization continuity beyond currently defined resource zones.
• No published economics.
• Volatile tungsten pricing.
• Preliminary recoveries need to be validated.
• Need for further permitting.
• Financing and further dilution

If Fox Tungsten can execute, establish an economically sized deposit with sufficient grade and develop that asset into a producing mine, investors could see their portfolio reflect that effort. Do your due diligence before making any investment decisions.

Rackla Metals (RAK.V)

Historically explored opportunity

Rackla Metals comes to the table with a library of historical exploration data at its flagship Lentung tungsten project located in the Northwest Territories.

Lentung, previously known as Lened, is situated in the Tombstone Gold-Tungsten Belt of the western Northwest Territories.

The property covers approximately 19,600 hectares roughly 60 kilometres by road north of the past-producing Cantung tungsten mine and 127 kilometres south of Fireweed’s Mactung deposit.

Lentung has had its share of historical exploration. Between 1977 and 1982 Union Carbide Exploration Corporation extensively explored the property with 26,900 metres diamond drilling over 178 holes indicating 15 tungsten occurrences and revealing a 15 kilometre mineralized trend.

Union Carbide went far enough in their work that it prepared an internal feasibility study contemplating an open-pit tungsten mine. The historical explorer envisioned a processing operation handling approximately 325 tonnes per day, with an average mill feed grade of 1.14% WO₃, estimated tungsten recovery of 80%, and a concentrate grading 65% WO₃.

Now those are some impressive historical assumptions, but the historical resource and feasibility work are not current NI 43-101 estimates or studies. Just a place to start from.

When tungsten prices declined in the early 80s, Union Carbide withdrew its mine-permit application and the project saw little work over the following decades.

Rackla is building on this historic treasure trove of data with modern exploration and on October 13, 2026, Rackla published assay results from its first four modern diamond drill holes at Lentung:

• DDH26L-001: 20.35 metres @ 1.72% WO₃
• DDH26L-002: 17.95 metres @ 2.28% WO₃
• DDH26L-003: 17.90 metres @ 1.67% WO₃
• DDH26L-004: 20.50 metres @ 0.90% WO₃

These are downhole intervals, not true widths.

These are still significant tungsten grades over meaningful drill lengths. This doesn’t automatically make Rackla’s deposit superior to Fox or Mactung. It is however very encouraging.

Rackla reported that its modern drilling correlates well with the historical Union Carbide geological interpretation.

At C$54 million, Rackla has a modest market cap and if drilling supports a substantial modern resource, that could really move the needle on Rackla’s market value. On the other hand, if it doesn’t, it could deal a real blow to share price.

So Rackla is using historical data, modern geological modeling, geophysical surveys and drilling to identify extensions and additional mineralized bodies to create upside beyond the historical deposit.

On September 17, the company described an airborne magnetic and radiometric survey intended to build upon an earlier drone survey that identified correlations between magnetic anomalies and known tungsten mineralization.

Rackla is particularly interested in near-surface mineralization that might support an open-pit mining scenario.

The junior explorer brought in C$7.09 million in financing so far in 2026 between a private placement and flow-through PP. That provides necessary exploration funding, but issuing new shares has already diluted existing shareholders, and outstanding warrants could lead to further dilution.

Let’s move over to the regulatory side. Rackla obtained a five-year Type A Land Use Permit from the Sahtu Land and Water Board in May 2026. This permit authorizes exploration activities including drilling, a 49-person camp and work on existing access routes.

Rackla has also been engaging stakeholders, reporting consultation with Sahtu Dene, Dehcho First Nations and local communities. An important move because any future mine development will depend on both this engagement and regulatory approvals.

However, the explorer announced an important operational setback today. Rackla had attempted reverse circulation drilling as a relatively low-cost method of testing near-surface mineralization. Unfortunately, significant ground water inflows raised concerns about sample quality and geological reliability.

As a result, the company discontinued the reverse circulation portion of its 2026 program and demobilized that drill rig.

No, this doesn’t invalidate the promising drill results, but Rackla had intended to use reverse circulation drilling for approximately 6,000 metres of its 10,000-metre program.

Whether Rackla replaces those planned metres with more expensive diamond drilling or scales back its program, the setback could affect exploration costs, metres completed and timing. We have yet to see how this will play out.

So risks to consider are no current NI 43-101 resource, feasibility assumptions are historical, as always, tungsten price volatility, remoteness of the project, possibility of more drilling setbacks, financing and dilution, and again, permitting and Indigenous engagement.

Rackla has a long path ahead of them, but at least they have a map they can build on. If they can establish a modern, commercially viable resource and bring it through development without diluting the hell out of their share base, investors could see a significant amount of value upside.

So there’s five Canadian-listed junior tungsten stocks worth looking at. Please remember to always do your due diligence and speak with an investment professional before making any changes to your portfolio. Good luck to all!

 

–Gaalen Engen