How to Read the US Visa Bulletin - F1, F2A, F2B, F3 and F4 Queues

The Visa Bulletin is a monthly table from the US State Department showing whose place in line for an immigrant visa has come up. For relatives of US citizens and green card holders in the F1-F4 categories, it's the key document in the whole process - an approved I-130 petition can wait years for its date. Below - how family queues work, what separates the bulletin's two tables, how to find your own date, how long the wait is as of September 2026, and why dates jumped so sharply over the past year.

What the Visa Bulletin Is and Who Needs It

The number of family-sponsored immigrant visas issued each year is capped by law at 226,000 worldwide. On top of that, natives of any single country can't receive more than 7% of all family and employment visas combined - for fiscal year 2026, that's 28,862. Demand outruns supply, so a queue forms, and the State Department publishes each month how far it has reached by filing date.

The bulletin matters to anyone in a numerically limited category - family F1, F2A, F2B, F3, F4, employment EB-1 through EB-5, and Diversity Visa lottery winners. Parents, spouses, and children under 21 of US citizens don't need it - their IR visas carry no cap.

The bulletin for the coming month comes out early - the September 2026 issue, for example, is dated August 10. Every issue is on the State Department's Visa Bulletin page. The October bulletin opens a new US fiscal year, and new annual limits take effect on October 1.

Family Categories F1-F4 - Who Is in Which Queue

The whole F2 category gets 114,200 visas a year. A spouse and unmarried children under 21 immigrate together with the principal applicant, sharing the same priority date. All these categories, with filing help, are on the F1, F2A, F2B, F3 and F4 visas page.

Priority Date - When Your Queue Starts Counting

Your place in line is set by the priority date. For family categories, that's the day USCIS received a properly filed I-130 petition. It's printed on the receipt or approval notice (Form I-797), on the Priority Date line. A petition rejected for improper filing gets no priority date at all.

An approved I-130 in a family category is an entry into the queue, not the end of it. A petition can sit approved for years while the priority date hasn't "come up" yet in the bulletin, and no visa is issued until it does. USCIS reported that as of June 30, 2026, 947,865 approved family petitions were still waiting for an available visa - and that figure counts only principal applicants, not spouses or children.

Final Action Dates and Dates for Filing - Two Tables

Every bulletin carries two tables for family categories, and this is where most confusion starts.

• Final Action Dates (Table A) - a visa or green card can actually be issued once a priority date is earlier than the date shown.
• Dates for Filing (Table B) - preparation can begin. This table is what NVC uses to invite DS-260 forms and documents, and in some months USCIS allows filing Form I-485 inside the US against it.

Dates are written day-month-year - 22JAN20 means January 22, 2020. The letter C (current) means there's no backlog at all, and numbers are available to everyone regardless of priority date. The letter U (unauthorized) means no numbers are being issued in that category.

Which table USCIS applies to domestic filings is announced every month on the Adjustment of Status Filing Charts page. In September 2026, family categories go by Dates for Filing. But a green card can only be approved once the Final Action Dates table catches up, so plenty of people file I-485 and then wait.

How to Read the Bulletin - a Worked Example

A green card holder filed a petition for an adult daughter, born in Brazil, in March 2019. Category F2B, priority date March 1, 2019.

1. Open the bulletin for the month you need and find the Family-Sponsored Preferences section.
2. Pick a table. For consular processing, Final Action Dates tells you whether a visa will be issued, and Dates for Filing tells you whether documents can be submitted to NVC.
3. Find the F2B row and the column for country of birth. Brazil, like most countries, falls under "All Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed." Separate columns currently exist only for China, India, Mexico, and the Philippines.
4. Compare the dates. In the September 2026 bulletin, that cell reads 22AUG19 - August 22, 2019. The daughter's date is earlier, so her turn has come.

The queue is set by country of birth, not citizenship. Someone born in India generally stands in the Indian queue no matter what passport they hold. There are exceptions - a spouse can follow the other spouse's country of birth if they're immigrating together, and a child follows a parent's.

How Long the Wait Is - Dates for September 2026

The September 2026 bulletin, All Chargeability column:

Visas are currently going to unmarried adult children of citizens whose petitions were filed about six and a half years ago, adult children of green card holders (F2B) about seven years ago, married children of citizens about twelve years ago, and siblings about fifteen years ago. Spouses and children of green card holders (F2A) have almost no wait at all. None of this is a forecast - it's simply where the dates stand today.

Dates jumped unusually fast over the past year. In September 2025, the Final Action Date for F4 was January 1, 2008, and for F3 it was August 1, 2011 - meaning the queue moved forward three to four years in twelve months. The State Department itself attributes this, in the bulletin's own notes, to reduced visa issuance following several proclamations and a pause in processing, and warns that dates could retrogress if demand rises again.

Dates change every month, and October opens a new fiscal year with new annual limits. Check the current bulletin before filing anything, not this table.

Years of waiting can't be calculated just from the number of pending petitions. The annual limit also covers spouses and children, who aren't counted in USCIS's published figures, plus the per-country cap and the redistribution of unused numbers.

When Your Category Changes

Years of waiting change people's lives, and the category can change with them. The priority date is usually kept when a petition converts.

• The petitioner becomes a citizen. A spouse and children under 21 in F2A convert to IR visas with no queue at all, and the child's age is locked in on the date of the parent's naturalization. An adult unmarried child in F2B automatically converts to F1. If F1 has a longer wait for their country, they can decline the conversion in writing and stay in F2B.
• The child gets married. A citizen's child moves from F1 to F3, a longer queue. A green card holder's child in F2B loses eligibility entirely - there's no category for married children of green card holders. If the parent became a citizen before the wedding, F3 still applies.
• Divorce. An F3 petition reverts to F1 if the child is 21 or older, or to IR if younger.

For the switch to IR visas and visas for citizens' children and parents, see the IR visas page and the article how to bring parents and children to the US.

The child turns 21 while waiting

For F categories, a child's age is calculated under a formula from the Child Status Protection Act. Take the age on the date a visa became available and subtract the time the petition spent pending at USCIS. USCIS gives its own example - 21 years 4 months minus 6 months of processing leaves 20 years 10 months, and the child stays a child. Two more conditions apply - staying unmarried, and taking a step toward the visa (filing I-485, submitting DS-260, or paying the immigrant visa fee) within a year of the visa becoming available.

There's a trap here as of September 2026. Visa availability for this formula is always measured against the Final Action Dates table, even in a month when USCIS is accepting I-485 filings under Dates for Filing. Filing under Dates for Filing doesn't lock in the child's age. If the formula still puts the child at 21 or older, the F2A petition converts to F2B and keeps the original date. A miscalculation here costs years - have it checked before filing.

Country of Birth and the 2026 Restrictions

Most people fall into the same "All Chargeability Areas" queue by country of birth. In 2026, State Department restrictions also shifted some of these dates.

From January 21 to August 21, 2026, the State Department paused issuing immigrant visas to nationals of 75 countries. Filing documents and attending interviews were still allowed, but visas weren't issued. A court lifted the pause on August 21, and on September 10 the government filed an appeal asking to stay that ruling. Separately, since January 1, 2026, Presidential Proclamation 10998 restricts entry for citizens of 39 countries.

If a year passes with no response to NVC after being notified that a visa is available, the State Department terminates the petition's registration, and the queue slot is gone. The whole path from petition to entry, along with other ways to move to the US, is covered in 6 lawful ways to immigrate to the US.