The Visa Bulletin is a rationing document. Congress sets a worldwide level of at least 226,000 family preference visas a year and 140,000 employment visas, sets each country's share at 7 percent of the combined total, and leaves the State Department to decide each month whose turn it is. The September 2026 bulletin puts the worldwide employment level for fiscal 2026 at 186,317 and the per-country limit at 28,862, and names the four countries whose demand exceeds that share: mainland China, India, Mexico and the Philippines.
The place in the queue is the priority date. For a family case it is the date USCIS properly received the I-130; for an employment case it is the date the Department of Labor accepted the labor certification, or, where none is required, the date USCIS accepted the I-140. Immediate relatives of citizens, meaning spouses, unmarried children under 21 and parents, are outside the system entirely: a visa is always available to them and the bulletin does not apply.
The two charts
Each bulletin contains two charts for family cases and two for employment cases. The Final Action Dates chart shows the priority dates for which a visa number can actually be issued or a green card approved that month. The Dates for Filing chart shows earlier-stage dates: applicants with priority dates before that cut-off may assemble and submit their application even though no number is yet available to approve it.
The mechanics are stated in the bulletin's own notes. Consular posts report documentarily qualified applicants to the Department and USCIS reports adjustment applicants; the September allocations were made in priority-date order for demand received by August 10. Where the demand in a category or country exceeds what can be allocated, the category is oversubscribed and the final action date is the priority date of the first applicant who could not be reached. A "C" means the category is current and any priority date qualifies. A "U" means numbers are not authorized for issuance at all.
Which chart USCIS accepts
The Dates for Filing chart matters for adjustment of status only if USCIS says so. Under its filing-charts rule, USCIS decides each month, within a week of the bulletin, whether more visas are available for the fiscal year than there are known applicants. If yes, adjustment applicants may use Dates for Filing; if not, they must use Final Action Dates. There is a further wrinkle: if a category is current on the Final Action chart, or the final action cut-off is later than the filing cut-off, applicants in that category may file under the Final Action chart regardless.
For September 2026 the answer is split. Family preference applicants use Dates for Filing; employment applicants use Final Action Dates. That single sentence on the USCIS page determines who may file an I-485 this month. The consular side runs on the State Department's own instructions through the National Visa Center and is unaffected by the USCIS designation.
What the September 2026 numbers say
The spouse-of-resident category, F2A, illustrates the gap between the charts. Its Final Action Date for September is August 22, 2026 for every country except Mexico, which stands at August 22, 2025. Its Date for Filing is "C" everywhere. Because USCIS chose the filing chart for family cases, any spouse or minor child of a permanent resident with a properly filed I-130 may file the I-485 now, and an approval will follow once the priority date clears the final action cut-off. The reason F2A moves faster than its neighbors is structural: it takes 77 percent of the second preference, and three quarters of that is exempt from the per-country limit.
The sibling category, F4, tells the opposite story. For most countries the Final Action Date is October 22, 2011; for India it is November 1, 2006; for the Philippines August 22, 2007; for Mexico April 8, 2001. A citizen who filed for a brother in Mexico in the spring of 2001 is still waiting. Even so, the worldwide F4 date jumped from September 1, 2009 in the August bulletin to October 22, 2011 in September, and F3 from May 15, 2012 to October 22, 2014, movements of more than two years in a single month.
On the employment side, EB-2 is current for the world, September 1, 2021 for China, and "U" for India: no numbers at all this month. EB-3 stands at September 1, 2024 worldwide, January 1, 2022 for China, and January 1, 2014 for India. The employment Dates for Filing chart is more generous, with EB-2 India at January 15, 2015, but USCIS is not accepting that chart for employment cases in September, so the generosity is theoretical.
The bulletin explains the summer's rapid advances in its own words. Immigrant visa issuance to nationals of certain countries fell because of the travel-ban proclamations and the immigrant visa processing pause, so the Department advanced dates across categories to use fiscal 2026's numbers on other applicants. It then warns that "retrogression may be necessary in the upcoming months" and that categories "may become 'Unavailable' prior to the end of the fiscal year." Separate notes flag EB-1 India, EB-2 and the unreserved EB-5 category as candidates. The 75-country pause was itself vacated on August 21, 2026 by a federal court in New York in CLINIC v. Rubio and, per the State Department, is no longer in effect, which returns that demand to the pool.
The October 2026 bulletin, the first of fiscal 2027, had not been published as of this writing. The Department's recorded line at 202-663-1541 is normally updated in the middle of the month with the following month's dates, and October 1 brings a fresh year's supply. The current charts are on the Visa Bulletin tracker.
Chargeability and the spouse's birthplace
A visa is charged to a country, and the country is almost always the applicant's country of birth, not citizenship or residence. An Indian-born engineer who became a Canadian citizen is charged to India.
The exception is cross-chargeability, set out in the USCIS Policy Manual. A principal applicant may charge the visa to a derivative spouse's country of birth, and a derivative spouse may charge to the principal's; derivative children may use either parent's country. Parents may never use a child's. The device is used where one spouse's country is backlogged and the other's is current: the Indian-born EB-2 beneficiary married to a spouse born in Brazil can adjust under the worldwide "C" rather than India's "U". Both spouses must be eligible to adjust, and when the principal borrows the spouse's country, both are treated as principal applicants, one conferring the immigrant classification and the other the favorable chargeability.
What retrogression does to a pending case
Retrogression is a cut-off moving backwards, or a category going from a date to "U". USCIS says it typically occurs toward the end of the fiscal year, when a category or country approaches its annual limit. The rule that makes it painful is the visa-availability requirement: under the Policy Manual, a visa must be available both when the I-485 is filed and when it is approved. An application filed lawfully under a current chart can therefore become unapprovable months later without anything changing in the applicant's own file.
The application is not denied. The Policy Manual directs officers to retain such a case, pre-process it, and adjudicate it "up to the point of final approval," completing the interview and security checks, then hold it. The USCIS retrogression page says the case "must be held in abeyance until a visa once again becomes available," at the National Benefits Center for interviewed cases. When a number returns, an officer completes a final review, refreshes expired security checks and may issue a request for evidence before approving.
While it waits, the application keeps its benefits. A person who properly filed the I-485 before the date retrogressed can generally apply for employment authorization on Form I-765 and for advance parole on Form I-131. The ability to file the I-485 under a Dates for Filing chart is precisely what makes this valuable: an F2A spouse who files in September 2026 under the current filing chart will have a work permit and travel document long before the final action date reaches their priority date, and if the date retrogresses in the meantime the application simply waits.
What to do
- Find the priority date on the I-797 receipt and the country of birth of every applicant, including the spouse. That pair is the whole question.
- Read both charts each month, then read the USCIS designation. A current Date for Filing means nothing for adjustment until USCIS says the filing chart applies.
- File the I-485 the first month the applicable chart allows it. Filing locks in the ability to seek the work permit and advance parole, and a later retrogression holds the case rather than ending it.
- Check cross-chargeability before assuming the wait. A spouse born elsewhere may move an EB-2 India case to "current".
- Keep the address current with USCIS. A held case still generates requests for evidence and interview notices, and a missed notice is a denial.
- Do not plan around the last weeks of a fiscal year. The September bulletin says in terms that categories may go unavailable before October 1.
The bulletin is published once a month, and each edition can undo the last. The application, once filed, survives the arithmetic.