Green card priority dates explained
Your priority date is set the day a petition is filed, not the day you apply. What sets it in family and employment cases, what "current" means, and why retrogression happens.
Topic
Visa Bulletin
Monthly priority dates for family and employment green cards.
The State Department publishes the Visa Bulletin around the middle of each month for the month that follows, and it decides who may act on a green card application. It carries two sets of dates for each category and country: Final Action Dates, which decide when a case can be approved, and Dates for Filing, which decide when an application can be submitted.
Which of the two applies is not the State Department’s decision. USCIS announces, each month, whether adjustment of status filings may use the Dates for Filing chart or must use Final Action Dates, and that announcement can differ between the family and employment categories in the same month.
Movement is not steady and it is not always forward. A category can retrogress when demand exceeds supply, and the start of a fiscal year on October 1 resets the annual limits that drive it. The pages here track the monthly charts and what actually moved.
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Everything filed under Visa Bulletin
How to read the Visa Bulletin
The bulletin is a table of cut-off dates, not a queue position. What each chart means, which one applies to you this month, and how to find your own line.
October 2026 Visa Bulletin: what resets Oct. 1
The first bulletin of fiscal year 2027 is not out yet. Here is what the new year’s visa supply changes, what the State Department said to expect for India’s EB-2 and EB-5 queues, and what to check the day the charts appear.
September 2026 Visa Bulletin: which chart
The two charts diverge again this month. Family-sponsored applicants get the earlier filing window; employment-based applicants must meet the stricter date.