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Breadcrumbs
<gcds-breadcrumbs>

Also called: breadcrumb trail.

Breadcrumbs is a path to the current page from each preceding level of the site's hierarchy.

  • Required on Canada.ca

  • GitHub
  • Figma

Breadcrumbs component preview

On this page

Coding and accessibility for breadcrumbs

  • Maintain the Canada.ca link as the default first breadcrumbs link for most websites and pages.
  • Opt to replace the Canada.ca link with the homepage link on transactional pages and stand alone websites or products. To remove the Canada.ca link at the head of the breadcrumbs, set the hide-canada-link attribute to true.

Tip: For a process that does not have a traditional landing page, link to the starting page of the process.

Place breadcrumbs before the <main> element

Place breadcrumbs at the top of a page, before the <main> element. This way a skip-to-content link can work to let a person skip all navigation links, including breadcrumbs.

Add a new breadcrumbs link to the breadcrumbs component by using the <gcds-breadcrumbs-item> component. The link can be added through the href property.

Examples Explore the different ways you can configure the component. Each example shows a working implementation and ready-to-copy code.

In this section

Essential attributes These attributes are needed for the component to function correctly.

The href attribute defines the destination URL for a gcds-breadcrumbs-item and is required for the breadcrumb item to function as a link.

<gcds-breadcrumbs>
  <gcds-breadcrumbs-item href="#">Home page</gcds-breadcrumbs-item>
  <gcds-breadcrumbs-item href="#">Parent page link</gcds-breadcrumbs-item>
</gcds-breadcrumbs>

Optional attributes These attributes allow you to customize or extend the component’s behaviour and presentation.

The hide-canada-link attribute controls whether the default canada.ca link is displayed in the breadcrumbs. By default, it is set to false, which means the canada.ca link appears as the first breadcrumb item.

<gcds-breadcrumbs>
  <gcds-breadcrumbs-item href="#">Home page</gcds-breadcrumbs-item>
  <gcds-breadcrumbs-item href="#">Parent page link</gcds-breadcrumbs-item>
</gcds-breadcrumbs>

When set to true, the default canada.ca link is hidden, and only the breadcrumb items provided are displayed.

<gcds-breadcrumbs hide-canada-link>
  <gcds-breadcrumbs-item href="#">Home page</gcds-breadcrumbs-item>
  <gcds-breadcrumbs-item href="#">Parent page link</gcds-breadcrumbs-item>
</gcds-breadcrumbs>

Slots The default slot allows you to inject custom content into the component’s primary content area, and named slots, into specific areas.

default

The default slot is for adding gcds-breadcrumbs-item subcomponents. The default slot of the breadcrumbs item is for adding the item's text.

<gcds-breadcrumbs hide-canada-link>
  <gcds-breadcrumbs-item href="#">Home page</gcds-breadcrumbs-item>
  <gcds-breadcrumbs-item href="#">Parent page link</gcds-breadcrumbs-item>
</gcds-breadcrumbs>

Code builder

Generate an instance of the component you need by selecting its code properties.

  1. Explore by choosing different code values to generate the instance you want.

  2. Get the code and pull it into your environment.

  3. Add any copy you need to the component (like text for a label).

Note: The code builder uses English for all code elements, which follows standard practice.

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2026-05-20