How to Read the Visa Bulletin Charts Each Month

Quick answer: The Visa Bulletin has two charts per category — "Final Action Dates" and "Dates for Filing" — and you read your row by matching your visa category (like F1, F2A, or EB-2) with your country of birth, then comparing the date listed to your priority date. If your priority date is earlier than the date shown, your case can move forward that month. The U.S. Department of State publishes a new bulletin around the middle of each month at travel.state.gov.

Key takeaways

• The Visa Bulletin has two separate tables — Final Action Dates and Dates for Filing — and USCIS decides each month which one applies to adjustment of status applicants, according to the Department of State.
• Your row is determined by two things only: your visa category (family or employment-based) and your country of birth, not your country of current residence.
• A "C" in a bulletin box means the category is current (no waiting list); a "U" means unavailable that month, per the Department of State's published chart key.
• Priority dates only move forward when your date is earlier than the cutoff date listed — if your date matches or comes after the cutoff, you wait for the next bulletin.

What Is the Visa Bulletin, Exactly?

The Visa Bulletin is a monthly chart published by the U.S. Department of State that tells immigrants with a pending family or employment-based petition when they're eligible to take the next step toward a green card. It exists because Congress caps how many green cards can be issued each year in most categories, and by country, according to the Department of State. When more people apply than there are visas available, a waiting list forms — and the bulletin tracks where that list stands.

Each bulletin covers the upcoming month. So the bulletin released in mid-September 2026 applies to October 2026 filings and decisions. If you've seen mentions of the October 2026 visa bulletin, that's simply the chart governing what happens in USCIS offices and consulates that month.

There are two main groups the bulletin covers:

• Family-sponsored preferences — categories like F1 (adult unmarried children of citizens), F2A (spouses and minor children of green card holders), F3, and F4.
• Employment-based preferences — EB-1, EB-2, EB-3, EB-4, and EB-5, covering various work and investment-based green card paths.

Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens (spouses, unmarried children under 21, and parents) aren't on the bulletin at all — that category has no annual cap, so there's no waiting list to track.

What's the Difference Between the Two Charts?

The Final Action Dates chart tells you when your green card can actually be approved; the Dates for Filing chart tells you when you can submit your application to start the process. Every monthly bulletin publishes both, and USCIS announces separately which chart applicants can use for filing Form I-485 (Adjustment of Status) that month, according to USCIS's own visa availability announcements.

Here's the distinction in practice:

Why would USCIS let people file before they're truly eligible for approval? Filing early under the Dates for Filing chart lets applicants get an Employment Authorization Document (Form I-765) and travel permission (advance parole) while they wait — even though the green card itself won't be approved until their priority date clears under Final Action Dates.

Don't skip this: Always check the USCIS website's "Adjustment of Status Filing Charts" page before you file, because USCIS — not the Department of State — decides monthly which of the two charts applies to I-485 filings. Filing under the wrong chart, or filing when neither applies to your category, can result in a rejected application.

How Do I Find My Row on the Chart?

Find the row that matches your visa category on the left side, then follow it across to the column for your country of birth. Most bulletin tables list categories down the left column (F1, F2A, F2B, F3, F4 for family; EB-1 through EB-5 for employment) and countries across the top — usually "All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed," plus separate columns for China, India, Mexico, and the Philippines, since those four countries routinely have longer backlogs.

A worked example: say you're the beneficiary of an approved I-130 petition in the F4 category (sibling of a U.S. citizen), and you were born in India. Your priority date — the date your petition was filed, found on your I-797 receipt notice — is March 12, 2010. To check your status:

• Locate the F4 row on the current bulletin.
• Move across to the "India" column (not "All Chargeability Areas," since India has its own listed date).
• Compare the date shown there to your priority date.
• If the chart shows a date later than March 12, 2010 — say, June 1, 2010 — your priority date is "current" and you can move forward.
• If the chart shows an earlier date than yours, you keep waiting for a future bulletin.

A few chart symbols trip people up:

• A date (like "01JUN10") is the cutoff — only petitions filed before that date are current.
• "C" means current — there's no backlog, and anyone approved in that category can proceed regardless of priority date.
• "U" means unavailable — no visas are being issued in that category that month, per the Department of State's bulletin key.

Why Did My Priority Date Not Move This Month — or Move Backward?

Priority dates don't move at a steady pace, and they can retrogress (move backward) when demand outpaces the annual visa supply. This happens most often in employment-based categories for applicants born in China and India, and periodically in family categories too, according to patterns the Department of State has documented in its monthly bulletins over the years.

A few reasons movement can stall or reverse:

• Annual cap reached. Once a country hits its per-year allocation in a category, the Department of State can hold or retrogress the date until the next fiscal year (which starts October 1).
• Fiscal year-end crunch. Dates often freeze or jump backward in July, August, and September as the State Department manages the final visa numbers for the year, then may jump forward again in October.
• Higher-than-expected demand. If more petitions were filed and approved in a category than the Department of State anticipated, the cutoff date may need to retreat to stay within the legal cap.

If your date doesn't move, it's not a reflection of anything about your individual case — it's a supply-and-demand mechanism working exactly as designed. That said, waiting months for a date to move without any visibility into your underlying case status is genuinely stressful, and it's a different kind of waiting than watching for a status update from USCIS itself.

How Does This Connect to My USCIS Case Status?

The Visa Bulletin only controls timing eligibility — it doesn't tell you anything about what's happening inside your actual case file. Once your priority date is current and you've filed or are eligible to file your I-485, your case moves through USCIS's internal processing steps, which show up as status updates separate from the bulletin entirely.

Those two tracks run side by side, and it's easy to confuse them:

• The bulletin tells you when you're allowed to move forward.
• Your USCIS case status tells you where your specific application actually is — whether it's case is being actively reviewed by USCIS, whether a request for additional evidence was sent, or whether your case was approved.

This is where a lot of people get stuck refreshing the USCIS website every day, trying to catch a change the moment it happens — and it's exactly the gap MyCheck was built to close. The app checks USCIS's official case status system roughly every ten minutes and sends a push or email notification the moment your status changes, so you're not the one doing the checking. It also translates each cryptic status message into plain language, which matters a lot when you're staring at something like "RFE response received, no update" and trying to figure out if that's good news or a red flag.

What Should I Track Every Month, Realistically?

Build a short monthly habit around the bulletin instead of checking it daily — the numbers only update once a month, so daily refreshing just adds stress without new information. Here's a simple checklist to run through when the new bulletin drops, usually in the second week of each month:

• Confirm the bulletin release date on travel.state.gov (it typically posts a few weeks before the month it covers).
• Find your category and country row on both the Final Action Dates and Dates for Filing charts.
• Check the USCIS website for that month's announcement on which chart applies to adjustment of status filings.
• Compare your priority date to the current cutoff and note whether it moved, held, or retrogressed.
• Watch for the October bulletin specifically, since fiscal year-end shifts often bring the year's biggest movement.
• Update your own records if your date becomes current, and gather any documents you'll need to file or respond quickly.

Keeping a simple record of your priority date alongside your case status — rather than trying to hold both in your head — makes the whole waiting period feel more manageable.

Where Is My Row Actually Going?

Reading this month's chart tells you where your row is today. What it can't show you is the pattern — whether the date has been creeping forward, sitting still for months, or retrogressing. For that you need the same row across several bulletins side by side.

These pages do that for the rows people track most, built from the archived bulletins rather than from anyone's forecast:

• EB-2 India and EB-3 India
• EB-2 China and EB-3 China
• EB-2 Rest of World and EB-3 Rest of World
• F2A Rest of World, F4 India and F4 Mexico

Every month links back to the bulletin it came from, and the full archive of past bulletins is at /visa-bulletin. Movement is history, not a prediction — a row that has moved forward for six months can still hold or go backwards in the seventh.

Waiting on the bulletin is only half the picture; once your case is filed, MyCheck also tracks your USCIS case status automatically, builds an AI-generated checklist specific to your visa type, and explains every status update in plain English so you're never left guessing what a change actually means. If you're navigating the immigration process to the USA right now, you don't have to track the bulletin and your case status separately in your head — download the app and let it do the watching for you.