Visa Bulletin release date and the fiscal year
Pick a date to see its federal fiscal year and the next bulletin due, then read how the yearly cycle moves the cutoffs.
Checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · Method and past error
Which fiscal year, and when is the next bulletin due?
Federal fiscal year
FY 2027
| Fiscal year runs | October 1, 2026 – September 30, 2027 |
| Next bulletin covers | November 2026 |
| Usually published | mid-October 2026 |
| New yearly numbers | just reset (October) |
The Visa Bulletin is a monthly notice from the U.S. Department of State, and each issue is posted during the month before the one it governs, usually somewhere around the middle of that month. The State Department does not publish a fixed release day, so no site can honestly promise the exact morning a new issue will appear. The bulletin follows the federal fiscal year, which runs from October 1 to September 30: a fresh supply of immigrant visa numbers becomes available every October 1, and that is why the October issue is the one where the most cutoffs jump. September sits at the other end of the same cycle, when the annual limits are nearly used up and categories stall, retrogress or become unavailable. Our archive holds every bulletin from December 2001 to 2026, and over the Octobers since 2016 an average of about 39 of the 55 cutoffs we track moved forward in the first bulletin of the year.
One bulletin, two months
Every Visa Bulletin carries a month in its title, and that month is the one it governs, not the one in which you read it. The issue titled for a given month is written during the previous month from the demand that consular posts and USCIS have reported, then posted on the State Department’s Visa Bulletin page. In practice that posting tends to land somewhere around the middle of the earlier month. The department does not commit to a day, and we do not print one: a guessed date would only send people refreshing a page for nothing. The cutoffs in a new issue take effect on the first day of its month.
USCIS then has its own step. Each month it tells adjustment applicants which of the two charts they may use to file Form I-485, on its filing charts page. A bulletin can show a generous Dates for Filing chart that USCIS does not accept that month, so the posting of the bulletin is only half of the news. The two charts explained.
Where the November 2026 bulletin stands
When we last read the archive, on October 13, 2026, the newest issue was the one for October 2026, and the bulletin for November 2026 had not been posted yet. We do not publish predicted cutoffs for it as if they were real. When it appears, the data on the current bulletin page and in the calculator is refreshed from the official text.
People searching for an upcoming issue are often really asking whether their date will move. The honest answer sits in the history of the category, not in a rumor about the next posting. Our forecasts show a range for each case and publish how far the past forecasts missed.
The federal fiscal year behind every cutoff
Immigrant visa numbers are counted on the federal fiscal year, which runs from October 1 to September 30. USCIS explains that a new supply of numbers becomes available when the new fiscal year begins on October 1. Fiscal year 2027 therefore began on October 1, 2026, and the bulletin for October 2026 was the first one of that year.
This calendar shapes the whole year. The State Department has to keep issuances within quarterly as well as annual limits, so a cutoff reflects not only the size of the queue but also how many numbers the current quarter can still absorb. The October 2026 bulletin illustrates the cautious side: it says some rest-of-world employment categories retrogressed to stay within the new year’s limits, and EB-2 for the rest of the world moved 608 days backward in that single issue.
Every September and October since 2016
The table counts, for each year, how many of the 55 Final Action cutoffs we follow (eleven preference categories across five chargeability columns) moved forward, moved back or stayed put compared with the previous issue. It is built from the archived bulletins, not from memory.
| Fiscal year start | September: forward | September: back | September: unchanged | October: forward | October: back | October: unchanged |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 34 | 0 | 21 | 55 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017 | 34 | 6 | 15 | 50 | 0 | 5 |
| 2018 | 26 | 19 | 10 | 52 | 0 | 3 |
| 2019 | 34 | 4 | 11 | 49 | 1 | 5 |
| 2020 | 42 | 0 | 13 | 34 | 0 | 21 |
| 2021 | 48 | 0 | 7 | 27 | 0 | 28 |
| 2022 | 24 | 0 | 31 | 32 | 3 | 20 |
| 2023 | 11 | 0 | 44 | 37 | 0 | 18 |
| 2024 | 6 | 5 | 44 | 26 | 1 | 28 |
| 2025 | 9 | 0 | 41 | 45 | 0 | 5 |
| 2026 | 32 | 0 | 21 | 27 | 7 | 21 |
Two patterns stand out. October is the month of movement: on average about 39 cutoffs advanced in the October issue, against about 27 in September. September is the month of standstill and sudden drops. The September 2018 issue pulled back 19 cutoffs at once, and in September 2023, 44 of the 55 did not move at all. The October 2026 issue pushed 27 forward and 7 back, a reminder that the reset does not lift every line.
Why September is the tense month
By late summer, the numbers for a category are either nearly used up or clearly not going to be. USCIS describes retrogression as something that generally happens when the annual limit for a category or country has been reached or is expected to run out soon. A bulletin can then hold a date, pull it back, or mark a category as unavailable for the rest of the year. Applicants whose dates were current in August sometimes find themselves outside the cutoff for a few weeks until October brings the next allocation. How retrogression works.
The opposite can also happen. In 11 of the 11 Septembers in the table, more cutoffs moved forward than back. A September advance is a statement about the closing year, though, not a promise about the next one.
Fiscal year labels in the archive
The State Department files its bulletins by fiscal year, not by calendar year. The issue for October 2026 sits in a folder named 2027 on the department’s servers, just as the issues for November and December 2025 sit in the 2026 folder. The text follows the same logic: the October 2026 issue speaks of FY 2027 numbers and FY 2027 limits. When you search the archive for an older autumn bulletin, look one year ahead of the calendar date. The mini calculator above does that conversion for any date you enter.
The label also explains a common confusion about annual totals. A statement that a category used its numbers for a given year refers to the twelve bulletins from October to September, so a cutoff that held all summer and jumped in October did not speed up in the middle of a year: a new year simply started. The table above reads the same way, with each September closing one fiscal year and the following October opening the next.
Reading a new issue quickly
- Find your preference category row and your chargeability column, which is usually your country of birth.
- Read the Final Action Date first: it decides when a green card can be approved or an immigrant visa issued.
- Read the Dates for Filing next, then check the USCIS filing charts page to learn which chart applies to an I-485 that month.
- Compare with the previous issue on the bulletin history, which keeps every cutoff since December 2001.
- Read the notes at the end of the bulletin, where the State Department explains retrogressions and warns about the months ahead.
The release of a bulletin changes the queue, not the speed of a USCIS office or a consulate. Processing times for forms are a separate set of figures, published separately and covered on our processing-time pages.