The Visa Bulletin: Your Priority Date Might Be Moving. Are You Ready?
By Amber Davis, Principal Attorney at Waypoint Immigration USA, and Kate Luther
Update September 30, 2026: The October Visa Bulletin was released on the 29th. Stay tuned for more about the shifts we’re seeing.
Spend anytime talking about immigration, and the Visa Bulletin will quickly come up.
This bulletin is published monthly by the U.S. Department of State (DOS) to track and share the availability of immigrant visa numbers in various family- and employment-based categories. The month of September is especially important because the U.S. government operates on a fiscal year that runs from October to September, making this the last month of the 2026 fiscal year.
Here’s what that could mean for you:
Movement Can Create Opportunity
As the fiscal year winds down, the DOS is focused on any remaining slots for immigrant visas. These slots are distributed among the different categories and countries each year, so availability will depend greatly on demand. But it will almost always create some movement.
That means you could see your priority date advance (again, depending on your visa category and country of origin), or you could see it retrogress (meaning it moves backward) if the demand exceeds the number of visas still available. This kind of back-and-forth happens throughout the rest of the year too, but every year retrogression tends to happen over the summer and advances tend to accelerate in October.
You also might see other categories become “unavailable” as the remaining slots are used up, like we saw in May when the EB-2 allotment for India ran out.
There is no guarantee that your priority date will see a positive shift of course, but it is always worth watching in case an opportunity opens up. And if your priority date retrogresses, just know that things are about to change again.
Annual Caps Will Reset
All of the annual caps on employment-based immigrant visas will “reset” on October 1st. When that happens, USCIS will have new allocations to work with across the board, so you may see some additional movement here too.
This doesn’t mean that all the categories will become current; they won’t. But you are likely to see some movement and with an additional 46,317 employment-based immigrant visas rolling over from 2026 (announced in August), USCIS will have a slightly larger number of slots to work with.
Just remember that 1) a new fiscal year doesn’t automatically erase the backlog and 2) bulletin movement can be hard to predict. Priority dates are influenced by a few different factors, including demand and availability, but also per-country caps, category preference, and administrative fiscal year pacing.
Understanding the different dynamics at play can help you navigate the volatility of our current immigration landscape.
Readiness is Your Best Strategy
Everything shifts on October 1st. And as we move into this new fiscal year, we want to remind you that “being prepared” is always your best strategy.
Having your case ready to go can give you a real advantage if your priority date shifts and you’re presented with an opportunity to file. Gathering up documents can take time, requesting records can take even longer. If your priority date becomes current, you need to be able to move.
Quickly.
Because there’s no guarantee it will stay that way. And once the window closes, there’s no guarantee when it will open again.
Having an experienced immigration attorney can help you achieve this level of readiness and take advantage of any opportunities that might arise. If you’d like to talk about your case, explore your options, or take the next step, we can help.
Book your consultation with a Waypoint attorney today.
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