Prediction methodology

How the release-timing model works

This page explains the forecasting logic behind the October 2026 release estimate and the official source data used to build it.

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BackForecast page

Current model

Backtested business-day forecast

Each forecast uses the latest 8 official releases from the same release month only.
Candidate dates are business days only, so Saturdays and Sundays cannot rank.
The main signal is a business-day-index kernel with sigma 1.75.
Blend weights: 70% business-day index, 20% ordinal weekday pattern, 10% recency.
Conditioning removes already-passed business days in the active release month and renormalizes the remaining probability mass.

Backtest

Rolling holdout results

24 eligible same-month holdout targets were used in the rolling evaluation.
Top-3 hit rate: 42%.
Top-1 hit rate: 13%.
Mean absolute business-day error: 2.8.
Mean log loss: 2.61.

Official sources

Government data only

Release timestamps for October 2026 come from the official Department of State Visa Bulletin archive and each issue's official PDF metadata. Filing-chart companion links come from USCIS.