September 2026 Visa Bulletin: What’s Locked Before Sep 30

September 2026 Visa Bulletin: The Last One of the Fiscal Year — and the State Department Has Already Told Us Which Way It Leans

The September Visa Bulletin is the one that matters most, and it is the one almost nobody reads properly. It closes Fiscal Year 2026. Whatever it says on employment-based categories decides whether tens of thousands of pending green card cases get approved by 30 September or wait for the queue to reopen on 1 October.

The September bulletin has not been published yet — the State Department usually releases each month’s edition in the second week of the preceding month. But you do not have to guess blindly. The August 2026 Visa Bulletin already carries three separate warnings about what is coming, and it names them in its own numbered sections.

Here is what is already decided, what the department has flagged, and what you should be doing in the next three weeks.

Quick answer: The September 2026 Visa Bulletin will be the final bulletin of Fiscal Year 2026, which ends on 30 September 2026. EB-2 India and EB-5 Unreserved India are already unavailable. The State Department has warned that EB-1 India may become unavailable and that EB-2 more broadly may retrogress or close before the fiscal year ends.

What the August Bulletin Already Locked In

These are the employment-based Final Action Dates in effect right now. A “C” means the category is current and numbers are available to everyone qualified; a “U” means numbers are not authorised for issuance at all.

Employment-based	All other countries	China	India	Philippines
EB-1	Current	1 Jul 2023	15 Oct 2022	Current
EB-2	Current	1 Sep 2021	Unavailable	Current
EB-3	1 Sep 2024	1 Jan 2022	1 Jan 2014	1 Aug 2023
Other Workers	1 Apr 2022	1 May 2019	1 Jan 2014	1 Dec 2021
EB-4	15 Oct 2022	15 Oct 2022	15 Oct 2022	15 Oct 2022
EB-5 Unreserved	Current	1 Dec 2016	Unavailable	Current

Three things jump out.

EB-2 India and EB-5 Unreserved India are shut. Not backlogged — closed. The State Department confirmed that EB-2 India hit its annual FY 2026 limit and is unavailable for immigrant visa issuance and adjustment approval through 30 September, with numbers resetting when the new fiscal year opens on 1 October.

EB-3 for the rest of the world is no longer current. It sits at 1 September 2024. That is unusual, and it tells you the pressure is not confined to India and China any more.

EB-3 India is at 1 January 2014. A priority date filed twelve and a half years ago.

The Part Nobody Explains: Why the Dates Moved Forward at All

If you followed the bulletins through spring 2026, you saw categories advancing and, in some cases, going current. Plenty of coverage framed that as good news. The bulletin itself gives a much less comfortable explanation, and it is worth reading carefully because it is the key to everything the September edition will do.

In Section D, the State Department says immigrant visa issuance rates for nationals of certain countries have decreased as a result of actions including Presidential Proclamation 10949, Presidential Proclamation 10998, and updated immigrant visa processing guidance. To use the FY 2026 numbers that would otherwise go unused, the department advanced dates for filing and final action dates across various categories in recent months.

Read that again. The forward movement was not created by extra visas. It was created by numbers freed up when some nationalities stopped being able to use theirs, redistributed to applicants from elsewhere.

And the department says what happens next: as additional demand materialises, or as those administration actions change, retrogression may be necessary, and categories may become unavailable before the fiscal year ends if annual, category, or pro-rated per-country limits are reached.

That is the causal chain almost no summary spells out. The advancement pulled demand forward. Pulled-forward demand consumes numbers faster. Faster consumption triggers the exact retrogression the department is now warning about.

The Two Named Warnings

The August bulletin does not stop at a general caution. It devotes two lettered sections to specific categories.

EB-1 India. Section E states that high demand and number use by applicants chargeable to India in EB-1 may require making the category unavailable in the coming weeks if India’s pro-rated limit is reached before the fiscal year ends. “Coming weeks,” in a bulletin published in mid-July, points squarely at September.

EB-2 across the board. Section F states that demand and increased number use in EB-2 may make it necessary to retrogress the final action date or make the category unavailable in the coming months to keep usage within the FY 2026 annual limit. Note that this section is not country-specific. It covers EB-2 generally — including the “all other countries” column that currently reads Current.

Immigration counsel reading the same bulletin have flagged the same three pressure points: EB-1 India, EB-2 China, and EB-3 Philippines.

Why the Old “Spillover” Rescue No Longer Works

For years, Indian applicants in EB-2 and EB-3 benefited from a quiet mechanism: unused numbers from countries that did not exhaust their allocation fell down into oversubscribed categories, producing sudden leaps in priority dates.

That dynamic has changed. Global employment-based demand has surged, and countries that historically underused their allocations are now consuming their full share, which means rest-of-world demand is absorbing nearly all available employment-based numbers.

The arithmetic behind it is fixed by statute. The worldwide employment-based level for FY 2026 is at least 140,000, the per-country limit is 7% of the combined family and employment totals — 25,620 — and the dependent area limit is 2%, or 7,320. When every country uses its 7%, there is nothing left to fall down.

Practitioners tracking this expect Indian EB-2 and EB-3 applicants to face continued severe backlogs and periodic retrogression unless Congress raises employment-based quotas or recaptures unused numbers.

What Happens on 1 October

The reset is real, but it is narrower than the optimism around it suggests. Annual numerical limits start over at the beginning of FY 2027, which means categories marked unavailable become available again — but at whatever date the department sets, against whatever demand has piled up.

On the specific question of EB-2 India, the State Department has indicated it expects the final action date to move to 15 July 2014 or earlier as of 1 October 2026. Useful to know, and worth treating as guidance rather than a guarantee; October dates are set against demand the department cannot fully see in advance.

Everything else about October is prediction. Several firms publish monthly forecasts, and they are honest that these are estimates rather than legal advice. Treat any confident claim about specific October cut-offs as speculation until the October bulletin is published.

The Diversity Visa Deadline Is Absolute

If you were selected in DV-2026, this section matters more to you than any employment-based table.

Entitlement to immigrant status in the DV category lasts only through the fiscal year for which you were selected. For DV-2026, that ends on 30 September 2026, and no DV visas may be issued to DV-2026 applicants after that date — including to accompanying spouses and children. The bulletin adds that availability through the very end of the year cannot be assumed, because numbers could run out before 30 September.

There is no rollover, no extension, and no fiscal-year reset for a DV-2026 selectee. The case ends.

The September DV rank cut-offs have already been published: Africa 101,250 (Algeria 85,000, Egypt 50,000), Asia 40,000 (Nepal 13,500), Europe 47,500, Oceania 3,000, and South America and the Caribbean 4,750. North America (Bahamas) is current. The DV-2026 annual limit itself was reduced to roughly 52,000 by NACARA and NDAA provisions.

What to Do in the Next Three Weeks

1. Check which chart applies to you. For August, USCIS required employment-based adjustment applicants to use the Final Action Dates chart, while family-sponsored applicants use Dates for Filing. This designation can change month to month, so verify it on the USCIS visa bulletin page each time rather than assuming.
2. If your category is current and you are documentarily ready, do not wait. A category that is current today can be marked unavailable in the next bulletin. That is precisely what Sections D, E and F are warning about.
3. DV-2026 selectees: escalate now. If your rank is below the September cut-off and your case is not scheduled, contact the consular post handling your case immediately. There is no month twelve.
4. EB-2 and EB-5 India applicants: use the pause productively. Nothing will be approved before 1 October regardless of what you do, so spend the window confirming your medical validity, civil documents and I-485 supporting evidence are current.
5. Watch for the September bulletin around the second week of August. Each bulletin is compiled against demand reported by roughly the middle of the prior month — the August edition counted demand received by 15 July.

Key Takeaways

• The September 2026 Visa Bulletin closes Fiscal Year 2026, which ends 30 September.
• EB-2 India and EB-5 Unreserved India are already unavailable for the rest of the fiscal year.
• The State Department has specifically warned that EB-1 India may go unavailable and that EB-2 may retrogress or close.
• Recent forward movement came from redistributing numbers freed up by reduced issuance to certain nationalities — not from additional visas.
• EB-3 for all other countries is no longer current, sitting at 1 September 2024.
• DV-2026 selectees have a hard cut-off of 30 September with no rollover.
• Numbers reset on 1 October, and EB-2 India is expected to move to around 15 July 2014.

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