FY2026 Year End: Why a Bigger FY2027 Pool May Not Move India EB-2
FY2026 ends on September 30. The August inventory report is out, USCIS has published ten months of processing data, and DOS has released monthly issuance through February. That is enough to set down what the year has done so far, rather than what it was expected to do.
Four things stand out. Most of the pending queue has a priority date that is already current. Only a small share of it gets decided in the final two months. Whether the last of this year's numbers get used comes down to a September surge that has not happened yet. And the family numbers going unused this year set up a materially larger employment pool for FY2027, though not in the way most people assume.
Sources: USCIS Pending Applications for Employment-Based Preference Categories (August 5, 2026); USCIS Report to Congress on Service-Wide Forms (through July 2026); DOS Monthly Immigrant Visa Issuance Statistics (October 2025 through February 2026); DOS Annual Numerical Limits FY2026; INA 201(c), 201(d), 202(a)(5)(A), 203(b). Not legal advice.
1. What is pending, and how much of it is already eligible for a visa number
| Category | Pending | Date is current | Date not yet current |
|---|---|---|---|
| EB-1 | 59,307 | 43,140 | 16,167 |
| EB-2 | 76,791 | 46,981 | 29,810 |
| EB-3 | 55,965 | 35,888 | 20,077 |
| EB-3 Other Workers | 7,535 | 5,149 | 2,386 |
| EB-5 (all) | 22,879 | 21,989 | 890 |
| Total | 222,477 | 153,147 | 69,330 |
About 69 percent of the pending employment queue has a priority date that is already current. Those people are waiting on USCIS to decide the case, not on the visa bulletin to reach them. The concentration matters: Rest of World holds 106,124 of those 153,147 cases. India holds 16,225 and China 20,630.
One clarification, because the official wording invites a misreading. USCIS marks these cases as having a visa "available", but that means the priority date is current, not that a visa number is set aside for them. Numbers are consumed when a case is approved, and the annual limit still applies. So there are 153,147 cases eligible to receive a number, not 153,147 numbers waiting to be used. Section 3 works through what that difference means for the rest of this year.
The extremes inside that. Rest of World EB-1 (30,778) and EB-2 (41,966) are 100 percent current, because those categories carry no cutoff at all. India EB-2 is zero of 27,981, which is what an Unavailable category looks like from the inside.
2. Do Rest of World cases get decided in August and September?
Some, not most. USCIS has approved employment I-485s at about 11,301 per month across the nine reported months of FY2026. Two months of that is roughly 22,600 decisions, and Rest of World holds 69.3 percent of the eligible pile, so on a proportional split it collects about 15,700 of them.
Against 106,124 eligible Rest of World cases, that leaves roughly 90,000 still pending on October 1.
| Rest of World, date is current | Today | Still pending Oct 1 |
|---|---|---|
| EB-2 | 41,966 | ~35,800 |
| EB-1 | 30,778 | ~26,200 |
| EB-3 | 25,516 | ~21,800 |
| EB-3 Other Workers | 4,120 | ~3,500 |
| EB-5 (all) | 3,744 | ~3,200 |
One caution on September. In September 2025 employment approvals collapsed to 2,662 for the month, because FY2025 had run out of numbers. FY2026 still has numbers left, so that particular collapse should not repeat, though the interview pause works against the consular half.
Those roughly 90,000 cases roll into FY2027. The cases roll. The visa numbers do not.
3. Will the numbers actually get used?
FY2026 has 186,317 employment numbers (140,000 by statute plus 46,317 that fell up from unused FY2025 family numbers). Counting adjustment approvals and consular issuance, roughly 145,000 to 147,000 had been used through July, which leaves about 39,000 to 41,000 for August and September.
Whether that gets used comes down to how fast USCIS can move in the final weeks, and the honest answer is that it could go either way.
The case for the numbers being used. The 11,301 monthly average understates what USCIS can do. In March 2026 it approved 20,885 employment I-485s in a single month, nearly double its own average. Two months at that pace is about 41,800, which would absorb the entire remaining pool. There is also no shortage of cases to work on, since 153,147 have current priority dates. And last year gives a hint about behaviour: September 2025 approvals fell to 2,662 immediately after 11,827 in August. That is the signature of a category running out of numbers, not of an agency running out of capacity, which suggests the system pushes until the supply is gone.
The case for some going unused. Two months at the recent average rather than the March peak is only about 22,600 adjustment approvals plus roughly 6,000 consular issuances, which would leave something in the region of 10,000 numbers unissued. The consular half is the weaker link, because issuance there has been running below last year and immigrant visa interviews are being rescheduled worldwide.
So the base case is that most of the pool gets used, and the risk is concentrated in the consular channel rather than in adjustment of status. We are not putting a confident number on the shortfall, because it depends on a September surge that has not happened yet and that we cannot observe until USCIS publishes the month.
This is where the two figures reconcile. There are 153,147 cases with current priority dates but only about 39,000 to 41,000 numbers left in FY2026. Even in the best case only that many can be approved before September 30. The rest are not losing something they held. They carry into FY2027 and draw on a fresh pool. That is the answer to the obvious objection: 153,147 eligible cases and 186,317 annual numbers are not in conflict, because eligibility is a queue and the limit is a flow.
Whatever does go unused does not carry into next year's employment limit. Under INA 201(c) it falls into next year's family limit. Employment numbers never bank for employment.
The traffic runs the other way too, and that is the channel that matters for FY2027. Under INA 201(d), family numbers unused this year are added to next year's employment limit. Family consular issuance has already dropped sharply. Immigrant visa applicants also reported receiving interview rescheduling notices worldwide from around August 24, and the State Department has said it is adjusting appointments around consular officer training sessions. No duration or scope has been published, so we have not assigned it a number, but the direction is lower issuance in the closing weeks.
| Family immigrant visas issued | Month |
|---|---|
| October 2025 | 16,424 |
| November 2025 | 14,487 |
| December 2025 | 15,766 |
| January 2026 | 12,551 |
| February 2026 | 7,720 |
February is the first full month under the January 21 processing restrictions, and it ran at roughly half the October to December pace. Projecting the rest of the year from those months, the family-to-employment fall-up into FY2027 lands somewhere between about 40,000 (restrictions lift and issuance returns to the autumn pace) and about 98,000 (issuance stays near February's level). Our working figure of about 81,000 sits inside that range. We are publishing it as a range because the seven months that would settle it have not been released.
So FY2027 opens with 140,000 by statute plus roughly 40,000 to 98,000, for a pool somewhere near 180,000 to 238,000, against 186,317 this year.
4. Where the FY2027 dates could land
Take the middle of that range and assume the fall-up comes in at 90,000. FY2027 then opens with a pool of 230,000. Here is what that buys, step by step.
Step one, split by category. Under INA 203(b), EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3 each take 28.6 percent of the pool, so each gets 65,780. EB-4 and EB-5 take 7.1 percent each.
Step two, the per country floor. No country may take more than 7 percent, which inside a category works out to 4,605. India, China, Mexico and the Philippines are each guaranteed that much, which leaves 47,362 for everyone else combined.
Step three, and this is the step that decides everything. If Rest of World does not use its 47,362, the leftover does not sit idle. Under INA 202(a)(5)(A) it goes to the oversubscribed countries, in priority date order, with no 7 percent cap. So the question for India and China is not how big the pool is. It is whether Rest of World can absorb its own share.
| Category | ROW demand | ROW share | Spills over | India gets | China gets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EB-1 | 34,830 | 47,362 | 12,532 | 15,034 | 6,707 |
| EB-2 | 53,522 | 47,362 | 0 | 4,605 | 4,605 |
| EB-3 | 41,345 | 47,362 | 6,017 | 10,621 | 4,605 |
Rest of World demand is its pending I-485 count plus its FY2025 consular issuance in that category. Leftover numbers are split between India and China in proportion to how many of their cases are waiting on a number.
Step four, turn visas into dates. Walk each country's pending I-485s in priority date order until the visas run out.
| Category | Date now | Visas | Date after FY2027 |
|---|---|---|---|
| India EB-1 | Oct 15 2022 | 15,034 | Sep 2023 |
| India EB-2 | Unavailable | 4,605 | Nov 2013 |
| India EB-3 | Jan 1 2014 | 10,621 | Sep 2014 |
| China EB-1 | Jul 1 2023 | 6,707 | Current |
| China EB-2 | Sep 1 2021 | 4,605 | Current |
| China EB-3 | Jan 1 2022 | 4,605 | Current |
Why India EB-2 would move so little even at 90,000
Rest of World EB-2 alone wants about 53,500 numbers and its share of the category is 47,362. It is oversubscribed against its own allocation, so nothing spills to India, and India collects the 7 percent floor and no more.
Rest of World EB-1 is the opposite. It wants about 34,800 against the same 47,362, so roughly 12,500 flow onward. That is the entire reason India EB-1 moves nearly a year while India EB-2 moves about two months.
For scale on that two months: India EB-2's last printed final action date before it went Unavailable was September 1 2013, and it had reached July 15 2014 in April and May of 2026 before retrogressing. A November 2013 landing is a modest advance on where it stopped, and still short of where it briefly stood earlier this year.
Does this method reproduce reality?
It is worth checking the arithmetic against what actually happened rather than trusting it. Realized number use for India in recent years:
| India | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | Model above |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EB-1 | 21,437 | 16,604 | 8,809 | 15,034 |
| EB-2 | 59,431 | 4,301 | 3,916 | 4,605 |
| EB-3 | 12,571 | 4,765 | 3,643 | 10,621 |
EB-2 lands close to the FY2023 and FY2024 actuals. EB-1 and EB-3 land between the FY2022 windfall and the FY2024 low, which is what a larger than normal pool should produce.
FY2022 is the cautionary column. India EB-2 took 59,431 that year, and no arithmetic about pool size explains it. That happened because Rest of World could not use its numbers during the consular shutdown, so almost the whole category spilled. Today Rest of World has 106,124 cases holding numbers and is filing steadily, so that condition is absent. A large pool is not the same thing as a large spillover.
If Rest of World underperforms
The single biggest uncertainty is that Rest of World demand estimate. If it comes in 20 percent below the figures above, more spills onward and the picture changes materially:
| India | Visas | Date |
|---|---|---|
| EB-1 | 20,831 | Current |
| EB-2 | 8,870 | Mar 2014 |
| EB-3 | 18,890 | Current |
Even in that case India EB-2 gains four months rather than years. The 2013 and 2014 priority date months are dense, so each additional visa buys very little date movement.
Limits on all of the above. This walk is an illustration built from the statute and the published inventory so the steps can be checked. It is not how the Estimator on the site computes its own figures, and the two can differ. It is scenario arithmetic at one assumed fall-up, not a forecast, and the fall-up itself is a range. It counts filed I-485s only, so consular applicants and approved I-140 holders who have not filed sit on top of these counts and would slow every date shown. And India's filed queue stops at January 2015, the current filing cutoff, so no method can project past that point from filed cases alone.
What to do with this
If your priority date is already current, the bulletin is not your constraint. Processing capacity is, and about 90,000 eligible Rest of World cases carry into FY2027 alongside you. Being current is also not permanent. A category can retrogress, and several did during FY2026.
If you are in India EB-1 or China EB-1, EB-2 or EB-3, FY2027 is a year to watch closely. Those queues are small enough that a pool near 230,000 plausibly finishes them.
If you are in India EB-2, the honest expectation is a few months of date movement, not years, even on a strong pool, because Rest of World EB-2 now wants more than its own share and nothing spills onward. India EB-3 sits in between and depends on how much Rest of World EB-3 leaves behind.
You can run your own category and priority date through the Green Card Estimator. Estimates are approximate and built from the published government data cited above.
This article is informational and is not legal advice. Immigration outcomes depend on individual circumstances. Consult a licensed immigration attorney about your case.