# US Visa Bulletin September 2026: EB-2 and EB-5 India go unavailable > State Department's September 2026 bulletin: EB-2 India and EB-5 unreserved India are both marked Unavailable before FY2026 closes on 30 September. - Published: 2026-08-24 - Author: VisaGyan (VisaGyan) - Canonical: https://visagyan.in/us-visa-bulletin-september-2026-india - Official sources: - https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin/2026/visa-bulletin-for-september-2026.html - https://www.murthy.com/2026/08/22/september-2026-visa-bulletin/ --- The State Department's Visa Bulletin for September 2026 marks two employment-based green card categories for India — EB-2 and the EB-5 unreserved investor category — as **Unavailable**, meaning no further visa numbers go out in either this fiscal year. The count resets on 1 October 2026, the first day of fiscal year 2027. ## What "Unavailable" actually means The bulletin's own definition is blunt: "'U' means unauthorized, i.e., numbers are not authorized for issuance." Congress caps employment-based immigrant visas worldwide at 186,317 for the fiscal year, with each country's per-country share set at 7% — 28,862 numbers. Once demand for a category and country exhausts that year's allocation, the State Department stops issuing numbers outright rather than pushing the cutoff date further back, and the category shows "U" until the new fiscal year begins. ## Where India's other employment categories stand EB-1 (priority workers) sits at a final action date of 15 October 2022. EB-3 (skilled workers and professionals) and its Other Workers sub-category are both at 1 January 2014. EB-4 (certain special immigrants) is at 15 December 2022. Applicants whose priority date falls before the relevant cutoff can still have a visa number issued in September; everyone else waits. EB-5 set-aside categories — rural, high-unemployment and infrastructure investments — stay "Current" for India, unaffected by the unreserved category's shutdown. ## Why this is not unusual, and what changes on 1 October India's EB-2 and EB-3 have run oversubscribed for years, so a category going fully unavailable in the fiscal year's final month is a familiar pattern. The EB-5 unreserved category is the less routine part: it rarely exhausts its India allocation before year-end. Both reset when fiscal year 2027 opens — the October 2026 bulletin will carry fresh annual numbers, and USCIS separately confirms each month which chart, Final Action Dates or Dates for Filing, applicants may use for adjustment-of-status filings. ## This does not touch the tourist visa None of this affects the B1/B2 visitor visa that most Indian travellers apply for — that category has no annual numerical cap of this kind. For the visa most readers actually need, see our guide on [US visa fees from India](/us-visa-fees-from-india). *VisaGyan is an independent journal, not affiliated with the US government. Check travel.state.gov's Visa Bulletin directly before relying on any date here.*