May 2026 Visa Bulletin (Unreserved updates)

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.