FY2027 Reset
October 1 Is Three Months Away. Here Is What the FY2027 Reset Actually Means for EB-2 India, EB-3, and Everyone Watching Priority Dates.
EB-2 India has been unavailable since May. EB-5 Unreserved India hit zero in July. The fiscal year ends September 30 and October 1 brings 140,000 fresh visa numbers — but the reset does not work the way most people in the queue assume it does.
October 1 is the biggest date in the green card calendar
The U.S. government runs its immigration visa numbers on a fiscal year that ends September 30. On October 1, the clock resets. Congress authorizes approximately 140,000 employment-based green cards for the new fiscal year, and the per-country allocations that got consumed, frozen, or declared unavailable in FY2026 start fresh.
For anyone who has been watching the July 2026 Visa Bulletin show EB-2 India as U — unavailable, no numbers, not applicable — October 1 is the date everything changes. The Department of State will publish the October Visa Bulletin around mid-September. That bulletin will show a cutoff date for EB-2 India again. USCIS will resume approving I-485 applications for Indian-born EB-2 applicants whose priority dates fall before that cutoff.
The caveat is that October 1 brings fresh numbers and October 1 brings fast approvals are not the same thing. The distinction matters, and it is the thing most people in the queue currently get wrong.
What FY2026 actually drained
Three months before the fiscal year closes, it is worth knowing exactly what hit unavailability and what is still running.
EB-2 India went unavailable in late May 2026 when the Department of State announced that all FY2026 immigrant visa numbers for Indian-born EB-2 applicants had been used. USCIS followed immediately, stopping I-485 approvals in that category for the rest of the fiscal year. Any pending I-485 application under EB-2 India is frozen — USCIS will not abandon it, but it will not approve it until October 1.
EB-5 Unreserved India also hit unavailable by the July 2026 bulletin. EB-1 India has not gone unavailable but has been moving cautiously — the July 2026 bulletin placed the EB-1 India Final Action Date at October 22, 2022. With high demand from senior executives and workers with extraordinary ability, EB-1 India remains under real pressure through the end of FY2026.
How the per-country math works
The statutory limit is 7 percent: no single country of birth can receive more than 7 percent of the annual employment-based visa total. With 140,000 employment-based visas authorized annually, that ceiling is roughly 9,800 per country per year — spread across all five EB categories combined.
India's demand in EB-2 alone vastly exceeds 9,800. India-born workers hold an estimated 70 percent or more of all pending EB-2 I-140 petitions. The queue is so deep that under current consumption rates, many people with priority dates in 2015 or 2016 are still waiting. The per-country cap does not expand because demand is high; demand stacks behind a fixed ceiling while the applicant pool grows every year.
In practice, EB-2 India has received between roughly 2,000 and 4,000 green card approvals annually in recent years, depending on how many numbers were used in early fiscal year months before demand compressed the dates. FY2027 will offer a similar number — not a number that can rapidly clear a backlog measured in hundreds of thousands of pending cases.
What the October reset actually looks like
The October visa bulletin does not start from where EB-2 India was in the September bulletin. It starts from wherever the Department of State decides is an appropriate cutoff given projected FY2027 demand and available numbers.
Historically, October bulletins for heavily backlogged categories like EB-2 India have shown modest movement from the previous September cutoff — sometimes a few months forward, occasionally unchanged. They do not reset to January 1, 2012 or wherever the queue technically starts. DOS uses the Dates for Filing and Final Action Date system to manage the flow, and in October, there is often an expectation that USCIS may allow Chart B for employment-based filings — which would let applicants with earlier priority dates file I-485 before their Final Action Date becomes current.
Whether Chart B reopens for EB-2 India in October depends on how aggressively the State Department reads projected FY2027 demand. After three consecutive months of Final Action Dates only in the employment-based categories from May through July 2026, the pressure for USCIS to allow Chart B again in October is real. But it is not guaranteed.
What people get wrong about this
The most common misreading on the forums right now is that October 1 is a release valve — that the backpressure of FY2026 unavailability will produce a burst of approvals on or shortly after October 1.
That is not how it works. USCIS adjudicates I-485 applications in priority date order. The cases at the front of the EB-2 India queue — those with 2012 or 2013 priority dates — are already pending and will move first. Cases from 2014, 2015, or later are not going to jump the queue because the fiscal year changed.
What changes on October 1 is that USCIS can approve cases again in this category. The rate at which those approvals happen depends on the DOS cutoff date, the number of visa numbers available in the first months of FY2027, and USCIS's own processing backlogs. People whose I-485 has been pending since the category was current before it went unavailable will likely see movement relatively quickly after October 1. People whose priority dates have never been current should track the October bulletin before drawing conclusions about their personal timeline.
EB-3 India and the rest of the world
EB-3 India has been grinding forward in small increments. The July 2026 Final Action Date is January 1, 2014 — moved from December 15, 2013 in June. That is less than a three-week advance in a single month. At that pace, an EB-3 India applicant with a 2018 priority date is looking at many more years before their date becomes current.
For EB-3 worldwide — applicants born outside India, China, and the Philippines — the July 2026 bulletin advanced the date to August 1, 2024, up from June 1, 2024 in June. Two months of forward movement in one bulletin. For most countries, EB-3 is moving at a reasonable clip right now. With Final Action Dates only for employment categories since May, a priority date before August 1, 2024 qualifies for I-485 filing today.
EB-3 China moved to December 22, 2021 in July, up from August 1, 2021 in June. China EB-3 is also in positive movement but significantly behind the worldwide date. Neither India nor China EB-3 is expected to see dramatic October acceleration — their demand dynamics are too deep for an annual reset to meaningfully clear.
Two bulletins before the countdown starts
The August bulletin drops around July 20. The September bulletin drops around August 20. These two bulletins are the last data points for FY2026 before the fiscal year closes.
For EB-2 India, there is nothing new to monitor until October — the category is unavailable for the rest of FY2026 and no bulletin between now and September 30 will show a date for it. What to watch is whether EB-1 India retrogresses or goes unavailable before the close. If EB-1 India also hits unavailable before September 30, the October reset will matter for EB-1 India applicants as well.
For Philippines EB-3, the next two bulletins are critical. The July bulletin held the date at August 1, 2023 for the second straight month while repeating a warning about potential retrogression. Whether August and September move that date backward — or hold it and let the category quietly go unavailable — will shape what Philippines EB-3 looks like when the October bulletin restores the allocations.
If your I-485 is pending in a frozen category
USCIS's position on pending I-485 applications in unavailable categories is consistent with prior fiscal-year practice: the application stays open. No abandonment, no denial, no requirement to refile. The case sits at the stage it reached when the numbers ran out, and the clock restarts when new numbers become available October 1.
What this means in practice: keep your EAD and Advance Parole current. These can be renewed even when the underlying category is unavailable. A pending I-485 gives you access to combo card renewals — Form I-765 for work authorization and Form I-131 for travel — regardless of whether the category is currently available. Do not let these expire. If they lapse during the unavailability period and you need to travel or stay employed, you will need a nonimmigrant status like H-1B to bridge the gap.
This article is informational only and does not constitute legal advice. Your individual circumstances — priority date, petition approval, I-485 pending status, current nonimmigrant status — determine what applies to you. Consult a licensed immigration attorney before making any filing decisions.