May 2026 Visa Bulletin (Unreserved updates)
April 14, 2026 11 Comments
The May 2026 Visa Bulletin has been published, with new signals for EB-5 Unreserved but no news yet for EB-5 Set-Aside categories. I put the updates in context.
EB-5 Set-Aside Categories
Rural, High Unemployment, and Infrastructure remain “Current” in the May bulletin, and there’s no note warning of set-aside retrogression coming soon.
I had been anxiously awaiting the May bulletin, because May is historically a time to reassess status. As I previously pointed out, EB-5 Visa Bulletin retrogression hit China and Vietnam for the first time in a May. I’ll hold my breath again for the June bulletin, and then begin to give up hope of maximized set-aside visa issuance this year. Department of State should have enough qualified visa applicants in Rural at least, based on the pace of I-526E approvals. But it looks as if they have not ramped up visa processing sufficiently to be on track to issue all the 4,000+ Rural, 2,000+ High Unemployment, and 400+ Infrastructure visas available in FY2026.
Needless to say, silence in the May 2026 Visa Bulletin doesn’t mean no crowds for set-aside visas. There are probably over 15,000 set-aside investors currently heading toward visas, shortly to be joined by spouses and children. Visa Bulletin stoplights are predictably in their future, once they can get past I-526E processing — considering that most years have just about 3,200 set-aside visas available to give.
EB-5 Unreserved India
The May 2026 Visa Bulletin keeps the India Unreserved dates at May 1, 2022 for final action and May 1, 2025 for filing, but also includes a warning note:
E. VISA AVAILABILITY IN THE EMPLOYMENT-BASED FIFTH PREFERENCE (EB-5) UNRESERVED CATEGORIES FOR INDIA Sufficient demand and increased number use by India in the EB-5 unreserved visa categories may make it necessary to retrogress the final action date or make the category unavailable to hold number use within the maximum allowed under the FY 2026 annual limit. This situation will be continually monitored, and any necessary adjustments will be made accordingly.
What we can conclude from the note:
- DOS has almost finished issuing all the FY2026 visas available to allocate to India Unreserved. (This is good news so far as it goes. With only a fixed number of visas available for the year, it’s nice to know that DOS issued them earlier rather than later in the year.)
- When India Unreserved gets a retrogressed Final Action Date or a “U” for “Unavailable” in a coming visa bulletin, that functions as a “sold out” sign, indicating all the FY2026 allocable to India Unreserved have been issued. (The retrogressed date will be set sufficiently far back to prevent any more applicants from moving forward — functioning as a “stop” signal, but not otherwise implying anything about the status of applicants with later dates. The date will predictably advance again when FY2027 visa supply becomes available in October 2026.)
- DOS sees more India Unreserved applicants with priority dates before May 1, 2022 than there are FY2026 visas available to allocate. (This is no surprise. As I pointed out in my post on the January 2026 Visa Bulletin, India Unreserved had 721 pre-RIA India applicants with pending I-485 at the start of FY2026, and likely more than 700 applicants awaiting consular processing at NVC as well. With those numbers, and considering the 7% country cap, we could never have expected all pending pre-May 2022 India Unreserved applicants to get visas in FY2026.)
EB-5 Unreserved China
The May 2026 Visa Bulletin moved the China Unreserved dates from September 1 to September 22, 2016 for Final Action, and from October 1, 2016 to March 1, 2017 for Filing. These are impressive leaps forward, in context of number of potential applicants in those priority date ranges. Applicant priority dates originate with investors filing I-526, so I look at historical data for number of I-526 filed.
| Priority Date | I-526 filed by China-born petitioners |
| Jul – Sep 2016 (with the demand surge likely concentrated in September 2016 prior to a legislative deadline) | 5,334 |
| Oct – Dec 2016 | 3,310 |
| Jan – Mar 2017 | 1,172 |
With thousands of China-born investors presumably accompanied by thousands of spouses and children to seek visas, the crowd in these dates could only be moving along so well thanks to thousands of visas on the table. Unlike India Unreserved, which has a fairly fixed annual visa supply (constrained by the country cap and recent priority dates), the China Unreserved visa allocation can vary widely depending on Rest of World usage. If consulates around the world are struggling to schedule EB-5 interviews for a variety of reasons, the China allocation can be swollen by unused visas. And although Department of State STILL hasn’t published FY2026 numerical visa limits, it’s also possible that EB is getting many extra rollover visas this year (considering that family-based visa issuance may have fallen 30,000+ below quota in FY25, judging by monthly visa issuance reports). In all, good news for the China Unreserved backlog.
Adjustment of Status
Through April, USCIS has allowed using Dates for Filing to determine eligibility to file I-485. However, starting in May 2026, USCIS states that Final Action Dates will start to control I-485 filing. As the AOS page explains: “If USCIS determines there are more immigrant visas available for a fiscal year than there are known applicants for such visas, we will state on this page that you may use the Dates for Filing chart.Otherwise, we will indicate on this page that you must use the Final Action Dates chart to determine when you may file your adjustment of status application.”
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EB-5 Updates 
Not sure whether it gets approved this cycle – 2021 PD India
We got our card in hand mid Feb 2026 with March 2022 PD India (Pre-RIA). I would highly recommend doing a service request for “Case outside normal processing time” and also reaching out to your congressman. We did both immediately after we were current. Not sure which one got the ball rolling but we had an RFE for medical almost immediately after trying the above two methods.
EB5 Investor, Which service center was processed your 485? My priority was Nov 2019 and still waiting for conditional card. Sent multiple service requests and also inquiry through congressman.
Forgot to mention, India born.
Thanks for your guidance @EB5 Investor. I am keep sending online case inquiries, but see no update. I am currently working on a congressional inquiry, will see if it does any magic before retrogression.
For someone who is from Rest-of-world, not born in China, India, Vietnam, Philippines, etc., which category is best to invest in to get fast processing?
Rural, HUA or Infrastructure?
Since TEAs are so popular, wouldn’t there be too many investors in there already? Wouldn’t this delay investors from RoW from getting visas?
For relative I-526 processing speed, the best choice is a Rural project (because only Rural has “priority processing”) with I-956F approval (because I-526E can only be processed after the I-956F is approved). However, “speed” is relative. Processing delays are likely across categories and countries due to sheer number of people in process and sluggish USCIS activity. At last report in September 2025, USCIS had over 9,000 I-526E pending, and was processing fewer than 500 I-526E per month. That’s just the USCIS processing constraint. If every set-aside investor had to take a set-aside visa, then Rest of World investors would also face the visa number quota constraint. ROW applicants in the pipeline exceed maximum annual visas in the Rural and and HUA categories at least, and probably in the Infrastructure category. However, I’m working on the assumption that set-aside investors can also access Unreserved visas (68% of the EB-5 pool), and ROW demand has historically never gotten close to exceeding maximum visas available to ROW across EB-5. So I expect ROW applicants to have the option to avoid visa number delays, though still subject to processing-specific delays.
Thanks for your reply. In regards to:
“If every set-aside investor had to take a set-aside visa, then Rest of World investors would also face the visa number quota constraint. ROW applicants in the pipeline exceed maximum annual visas in the Rural and HUA categories at least, and probably in the Infrastructure category.”
So, even if there were zero investors from China and India, ROW set-aside investors would face delays because of other ROW set-aside investors, if they have to take set-aside visas. Correct?
Am I correct to assume that Infrastructure is likely the least congested with investors?
In regards to:
“ROW demand has historically never gotten close to exceeding maximum visas available to ROW across EB-5”
This seems to contradict your above statement. Am I wrong?
The key factor on whether ROW face visa quota constraint seems to be whether ROW can access Unreserved visas. What evidence is there that they can?
Rural projects are supposedly the highest risk. What percentage of them have failed resulting in investors losing money, that you might have heard?
See how many of these questions you still have after reading this article: https://blog.lucidtext.com/2026/03/05/eb-5-set-aside-visa-backlog-and-outlook-update-as-of-march-2026-set-aside-backlog-size-unreserved-visa-availability-infrastructure-visa-bulletin-outlook/ and looking at the data collected https://blog.lucidtext.com/eb-5-timing/. Or you’re welcome to book a time to just talk through these issues, which get complicated and time-consuming to explain (https://go.oncehub.com/LucidMeetings).
I booked a time for this afternoon at https://go.oncehub.com/LucidMeetings , but I did get instructions on how to pay. I will want to discuss about the following:
Your chart at the following link shows that ROW Rural investors need to wait longer than a year (1.4 x) to get a visa. Correct?:
https://blog.lucidtext.com/2026/03/05/eb-5-set-aside-visa-backlog-and-outlook-update-as-of-march-2026-set-aside-backlog-size-unreserved-visa-availability-infrastructure-visa-bulletin-outlook/#jp-carousel-17462
This assumes that China and India are limited to 7% each of the TEA (Rural, HU, Infrastructure) visas, which are limited to 32% of the 10,000 total visas per year. 7% X 32% X 10,000 = 224 visas.
I was concerned that China and India would be using up so many of the visas that it would impact ROW. But if they are limited to 224 visas each per year, then this shouldn’t be a problem for ROW.
I watched 11:30-22:11 in your February 2026 webinar for Carolyn Lee (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y0Ea6u8eiw). Carolyn seemed to give her opinion, based on what State department did during pre-RIA, existing RIA framework and logic. But she did not give proof that current set-aside investors will be able to access unreserved visas. Did I miss it?
Your chart shows that qualified Chinese and Indian investors face multi-decade wait times. Does this apply to conditional green cards? There are Indian investors on Telegram and WhatsApp who have stated that they received I-526E approval in less than a year. My understanding is that it should take less than a year after I-526E approval to get the conditional green card.
EB-5 is extremely complicated because most of the information I come across deals with or accommodating investors from China and India. It’s hard to discern which part affects me and which do not. So, it seems that Rural projects are the way to go.
A lawyer said that 30-40% of rural projects fail resulting in 30-40% of investors losing all of their money. Have you heard of this?
I heard that Rural projects are the highest risk. But EB5AN regional center offers repayment guarantees from the developer. Doesn’t this reduce the risk to be lower than all the other categories? What about pledges of equity and secured loans? Don’t these significantly reduce risk?
I heard that HUA will take 2-3 years to adjudicate even for me from ROW. Do you agree?
Carolyn said that I should choose a visa bucket during the NVC process. Which bucket should I choose? What’s the point of choosing a Rural or HUA project if I can change the category during the NVC process?
Carolyn said that investors tried to tick the unreserved category during the NVC process but it didn’t work. She said that USCIS hasn’t allowed this choice. So, doesn’t this mean that set-aside investors cannot access unreserved visas?
I heard that CanAm and CMB are the only regional centers that have audits to prove that they have repaid capital. I heard that only 10% of all investors have had their capital repaid. Does this sound accurate?
Do you have any opinion on regional centers, categories of projects and lawyers?
Thank you for booking the consultation! I look forward to discussing these good questions.