When will your green card come?

How the calculation works, step by step

The first step is a comparison. Your priority date is set against the Final Action Date for your category and your country of birth in the October 2026 bulletin. If your date is earlier, the visa number exists today and the only wait left is the government's own processing. If it is later, you are in line, and the gap between the two dates becomes the number the rest of the calculation works on.

The second step is the forecast. For a person standing that far behind the cutoff, we go back through the same case over the last ten years and ask, for every starting month, how long the cutoff took to cover the same distance. Some starts closed the gap fast, some slowly, some never did within the archive. Those outcomes, counted with a survival method that treats unfinished waits honestly, give the 20th, 50th and 80th percentiles you see. Retrogressions are inside that history, so they slow the forecast exactly as much as they slowed real people.

The third step adds time and money: the range USCIS publishes for your field office, then the fees of your path. Each number on the result carries its source and its date. Nothing you type is sent anywhere; the whole calculation runs in your browser.

Why 294 bulletins change the answer

Most trackers look at the last six or twelve months and extend the line. That fails when a category swings. EB-2 India has gone backwards 19 times since December 2001; F3 Mexico 10 times. A straight line drawn after a good spring promises far too much, and one drawn after a step back promises far too little. Reading every bulletin since December 2001 lets the forecast see whole cycles: the end-of-year pushes in September, the pauses that follow in October, the corrections. The archive is on the Visa Bulletin history page, one screen, every month we could read.

We also grade ourselves. From October 2012 to October 2025, every month, we ran the forecast with only the bulletins known that month and compared it with what happened. For F2A, a person a year behind was forecast with a median error of 5 months. For F4 Philippines at the same distance, 4 months. For EB-2 India two years behind, the error was 21 months, which is why that case usually shows no date at all. Of 183 tested combinations of case and distance, 66 pass the publication rule. The full table is on the method page.

Two charts, and the one USCIS lets you use

Every bulletin since October 2015 prints two tables. Final Action Dates decide when a green card can be approved. Dates for Filing say who may hand in the paperwork early. For applicants already in the United States, USCIS chooses each month which table counts for Form I-485; for October 2026 it designated Dates for Filing for both family and employment cases (USCIS filing charts). Filing early matters in practice: with a pending I-485, the work permit costs $260 instead of $520, and the applicant waits inside the system rather than outside it. The calculator applies the right chart automatically. More in Final Action Dates or Dates for Filing.

Immediate relatives against the preference line

The spouse, parent or unmarried child under 21 of a U.S. citizen is an immediate relative. There is no annual cap and no cutoff: the wait is the time USCIS takes on Form I-130 and Form I-485, or the consulate's scheduling if the relative is abroad. Everyone else in the family system is a preference case with a yearly limit of 226,000 visas, shared by four categories. The difference is stark. The same marriage that gives a citizen's spouse a green card after processing alone can mean a queue for a permanent resident's spouse in F2A, whose cutoff now reads September 22, 2026. When a permanent resident naturalizes, a pending F2A spouse becomes an immediate relative and leaves the line; an F2B son or daughter converts to F1, which is not always faster, as the F2B to F1 guide shows with real dates.

Family queues by country: Mexico and the Philippines

No country may take more than 7 % of the preference visas in a year, about 25,620. Mexico and the Philippines exceed that share in family categories, so the bulletin gives them their own column, and the gap with the rest of the world is measured in years. A brother or sister of a U.S. citizen born in Mexico waits on an F4 cutoff of April 22, 2001; born in the Philippines, May 15, 2008; born almost anywhere else, October 22, 2011. F3 Mexico, married sons and daughters, sits at July 1, 2001.

Families from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras use the worldwide column in these categories. The best-known independent tracker has no family page by country at all; we keep a page for each country column that differs from it in at least a quarter of bulletins since 2015: F2B Mexico, F1 Mexico, F4 Philippines and the rest, linked from the Mexico page and the Philippines page.

Employment: India and China

The employment system has 140,000 visas a year and the same per-country cap. India and China hit it every year in EB-2 and EB-3. In October 2026, EB-2 India reads November 1, 2013 for approval and January 15, 2015 for filing, EB-3 India January 1, 2014, EB-2 China October 1, 2021, while EB-2 for the rest of the world is at January 1, 2025. In October 2015, the first month with two charts, the Indian EB-2 dates were May 1, 2005 and July 1, 2009: a decade of bulletins moved the line by less than a decade. Pages for EB-2 India and EB-2 China show every October since 2002 and our graded forecast for each.

USCIS time at your office, and what the range measures

A current priority date is not a green card. USCIS publishes, for each of its 90 field offices, a range for family-based Form I-485; the upper end is the time within which it says it completes 80% of cases. In the publication of September 17, 2026, Burlington, VT was the fastest with 8.5 to 12.5 months and Spokane, WA the slowest at 22.0 to 60.5 months. For naturalization, San Juan, PR led with an upper end of 11.0 months against 31.5 at San Jose, CA. Nationally, the report to Congress for August 2026 gives an average of 12.4 months for family I-485 and 12.7 for N-400. The range is a past measure, not a promise for a case filed today; the processing times section has every office and the date after which USCIS accepts an inquiry.

The 2026 fees in the same result

Fees changed with Form G-1055, edition 10/07/26. Form I-485 is $1,440 on paper, Form I-130 $675, and filing online saves a little on most forms. The calculator sums your path line by line:

Children under 14 filing with a parent pay a lower I-485 fee, and naturalization has a reduced $380 fee for lower incomes; the fee calculator handles both.

What this site does not do

It does not give legal advice, review a file or tell anyone when to file. It does not know your case: an approved waiver, cross-chargeability to a spouse's country, a child's protected age under the CSPA or an old priority date carried from a previous petition can change the result. It publishes no consulate interview wait, because the State Department does not release one we could verify. It is not affiliated with USCIS or the Department of State. For advice on a real case, see a licensed immigration attorney or a representative accredited by the Department of Justice (find one through EOIR), and watch for scams (USCIS guidance).