Worldwide EB-2 and EB-3 Priority Dates Retrogress on October 1, 2026: What the October Visa Bulletin Changes for Texas Green Card Applicants

What Changed, and When

On September 29, 2026 the U.S. Department of State published the Visa Bulletin for October 2026, the monthly notice that sets which priority dates are reached in the employment-based and family-sponsored immigrant visa categories. It governs the month beginning October 1, 2026, which is also the first month of federal fiscal year 2027.

In the employment-based categories, the bulletin moves several cutoff dates backward for all chargeability areas except China and India — the column that covers Mexico, the Philippines and most other countries of birth:

• EB-2, professionals with advanced degrees and persons of exceptional ability. The final action date goes from Current in September to January 1, 2025. The date for filing goes from Current to March 15, 2026.
• EB-3, skilled workers and professionals. The final action date goes from September 1, 2024 to May 15, 2024. The date for filing goes from Current to August 1, 2024.
• EB-3 Other Workers. The final action date goes from April 1, 2022 to January 1, 2022, and the date for filing from August 1, 2022 to June 1, 2022.

The bulletin states the reason in its own words: some employment-based categories for the rest of the world have retrogressed, and those retrogressions are described as necessary to keep visa issuances within the fiscal year 2027 quarterly and annual limits.

Several categories moved the other way in the same bulletin:

• India EB-2 returns from unavailable with a final action date of November 1, 2013. The category had been listed as unavailable in September.
• India EB-1 shows a final action date of February 1, 2023, and a date for filing of July 1, 2024.
• China EB-1 shows a final action date of July 1, 2023 and a date for filing of July 1, 2024.
• China EB-2 advances to a final action date of October 1, 2021, with the date for filing moving from January 1, 2022 to January 1, 2023.
• China EB-3 shows the largest single jump in the bulletin on the filing chart, from January 8, 2022 to April 1, 2024.

On the family-sponsored side the October chart is steadier. The F-2A category, spouses and unmarried children under 21 of lawful permanent residents, shows a final action date of September 22, 2026 for all areas, a month forward from September’s August 22, 2026, and its date for filing remains Current.

Which chart applies to an adjustment of status filing is a separate decision, and USCIS makes it each month. For October 2026, USCIS has indicated that the Dates for Filing chart applies. The agency publishes that determination on its adjustment of status filing charts page, which is the authoritative word for any given month.

Who in Texas This Reaches

A Visa Bulletin is a national document, but the employment-based categories it moves are concentrated in exactly the industries Texas has the most of.

• Employer-sponsored professionals across the state’s largest employers. EB-2 and EB-3 are the ordinary paths for a worker sponsored through a labor certification: engineers and geoscientists in Houston’s energy sector, physicians, nurses, researchers and technicians across the Texas Medical Center and hospital systems statewide, semiconductor and software staff in Austin, and telecommunications, aviation and logistics staff across Dallas–Fort Worth.
• Families in the middle of an adjustment of status case. Anyone with a pending or planned Form I-485 in EB-2 or EB-3 chargeable to the all-areas column is measured against the new dates from October 1.
• Households where a child is close to 21. This is the group for whom a chart movement can matter most, for the reason set out in the next section.
• Applicants chargeable to Mexico and the Philippines. Both follow the all-areas column in EB-2 and EB-3, so both retrogress with it. Texas has the largest Mexican-born population of any state.
• Applicants chargeable to China and India. For these two countries the October bulletin is largely forward movement, and India EB-2 reopening after a month listed as unavailable is a change in the opposite direction from the worldwide columns.
• Texas geographically, not just the big four metros. Employer-sponsored cases sit in Lubbock and Amarillo hospital systems, in Midland and Odessa engineering firms, in Rio Grande Valley and El Paso clinics and universities, and in Waco, Tyler and Corpus Christi. USCIS runs a service center in the Dallas area and field offices in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso and Harlingen.

What This Changes Legally

Retrogression stops approvals, not filings, and it does not cancel a petition. A priority date that was reached in September and is not reached in October does not disappear, and an approved Form I-140 is not undone by a chart. What changes is whether an immigrant visa number is available in the month, which is what an approval requires.

A pending adjustment application carries benefits of its own while it waits. An applicant with a properly filed Form I-485 pending may be eligible to apply for employment authorization under 8 C.F.R. § 274a.12(c)(9) and for advance parole, and once an adjustment application has been pending 180 days or more, the job-change provision at INA § 204(j), 8 U.S.C. § 1154(j), allows the underlying petition to remain valid for a new position in the same or a similar occupational classification. This is why the chart that governs filing, and not only the chart that governs approval, matters to a household.

The chart that lets a family file is no longer the chart that freezes a child’s age. This is the part of the October bulletin with the sharpest individual consequence, and it comes from a rule change more than a year old rather than from the bulletin itself. Under the Child Status Protection Act, a child’s age for green card purposes is calculated from the date a visa “becomes available,” less the time the petition was pending. From February 14, 2023 USCIS used whichever chart was in use that month for filing, which often meant the more generous Dates for Filing chart. Policy Alert PA-2025-15, issued August 8, 2025 and effective August 15, 2025, changed that to the Final Action Dates chart only. The practical effect in October 2026 is that an all-areas EB-2 family may be able to file under a date for filing of March 15, 2026 while the final action date sits at January 1, 2025 — and it is the January 1, 2025 column that the age calculation now looks to. In September, the all-areas EB-2 final action date was Current.

The 2023 policy was not withdrawn for everyone. USCIS states that it continues to apply the February 14, 2023 policy to applicants whose adjustment of status applications were pending with the agency before August 15, 2025, and that where an applicant demonstrates extraordinary circumstances for not having applied during the period of the former policy, the agency will calculate age under that former policy. Whether a particular household falls inside either of those is a documents question, not a general one.

A long wait can interact with nonimmigrant status. For a worker in H-1B status, extensions beyond the six-year limit rest on the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act — section 106(a), where a labor certification or immigrant petition has been pending 365 days or more, and section 104(c), which provides for three-year extensions where an immigrant petition is approved but a visa number is not available in the applicant’s category. A category that retrogresses lengthens the period in which those provisions are the thing holding status together.

The bulletin is monthly, and it moves in both directions. A date that retrogressed at the start of a fiscal year can advance again later in the same year as demand data changes. The October bulletin is the current word and not a permanent one.

This page reports the facts and takes no position on the bulletin, the agencies involved, any official, any party or any candidate.

What Kind of Option Might Apply

Nothing on this page is legal advice, and nothing here says that any particular person is or is not eligible to file, or that any particular child is or is not protected. That turns on approval notices, priority dates, birthdates and filing history that a lawyer has to read. What an experienced Texas immigration attorney can review includes:

• Which column a case is actually chargeable to — country of birth rather than citizenship, and whether cross-chargeability through a spouse changes the answer.
• Whether the October chart opens a filing window for a household that was not open before, and what a filing in that window would and would not accomplish while approval waits.
• How the Child Status Protection Act calculation runs on a specific set of dates under the policy in force, including whether the February 2023 policy still reaches the case because the application was pending before August 15, 2025.
• What the extraordinary-circumstances provision requires and whether a household’s own history could support it.
• Employment authorization and travel documents for a pending adjustment application, and how renewal timing interacts with a longer wait.
• Nonimmigrant status while the category is backed up — H-1B extensions under the provisions described above, dependent status, and what a job change does to a pending case.
• Whether a different immigrant category or a different basis fits the same facts, which is a question that comes up whenever a category retrogresses.
• Consular processing compared with adjustment of status for a household with a choice, since the two routes sit differently against a moving chart.

Many families who read a retrogression headline find that their own situation is steadier than the headline suggested once someone walks the dates with them, and options often exist that are not obvious from the chart alone. The purpose of talking to a lawyer early is to learn which situation you are actually in.

Why Acting Quickly Can Matter

The October chart is in force from October 1 through October 31, 2026, and a new bulletin replaces it for November. Where a chart opens a filing window, that window is measured in weeks, and the documents a filing needs — medical examinations, translations, civil records from abroad, employer letters — take time that a calendar does not give back.

Where a child’s age is part of the case, the dates are fixed by a birthday that no one can move, and the calculation now depends on a column that changed this month. It is best to talk to a lawyer while there is room in the schedule rather than after a month has closed, and a question that takes one conversation in early October can take a motion and many months later.

Sources

1. U.S. Department of State, Visa Bulletin for October 2026 — the final action dates, dates for filing, and the statement that rest-of-world employment retrogressions are necessary to stay within fiscal year 2027 limits (primary source).
2. U.S. Department of State, Visa Bulletin for September 2026 — the September figures the October dates are compared against.
3. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Adjustment of Status Filing Charts from the Visa Bulletin — the agency page that states which chart applies each month.
4. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Policy Manual, Volume 7, Part A, Chapter 7: Child Status Protection Act — the age calculation and the chart used for visa availability.
5. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Policy Alert PA-2025-15, “Child Status Protection Act Age Calculation”, issued August 8, 2025, effective August 15, 2025 — the change to the Final Action Dates chart and the transition provisions.
6. 8 C.F.R. § 274a.12 — employment authorization categories, including paragraph (c)(9) for an applicant with a pending adjustment application.
7. INA § 204(j), 8 U.S.C. § 1154(j) — the 180-day job-change provision for a pending adjustment application.
8. “October 2026 Visa Bulletin Issued: Dates for Filing EB Cut-Off Dates Will Apply as FY 2027 Begins” — independent confirmation of the USCIS chart determination and the rest-of-world retrogressions.
9. “October 2026 Visa Bulletin Released” — second independent account of the chart determination, the China and India advancements and the worldwide retrogressions.
10. “USCIS to Use Final Action Dates Chart for Calculating Child Status Protection Act Age” — the August 15, 2025 effective date and the transition provisions described in plain terms.