EB-1 India's August 2026 Final Action Date remains October 15, 2022, unchanged from July, and the Date for Filing chart for India stays at December 1, 2023; what changed is the warning language, which moves from July's "retrogression or unavailability may be necessary in the coming months" to August's "high demand may necessitate making the category unavailable in the coming weeks." [1][2][3]
That wording shift matters because it does more than restate the date. July sounded like a future possibility; August reads like a near-term operational warning. [2][3]
Filing Consequences
USCIS has said it will accept employment-based adjustment of status filings using the Final Action Dates chart for August, so the October 15, 2022 cutoff is the number that controls whether an applicant can file this month. [4]
EB-1 is not moving uniformly across the board. EB-1 China advances to July 1, 2023, while the other countries remain current, which keeps this from being a broad category-wide change. [5] The tighter FY2026 picture still matters, though: EB-2 India and EB-5 Unreserved India are already unavailable for the rest of the fiscal year, and the August bulletin also warns about possible worldwide retrogression for EB-2. [6]
EB-1 India has already moved hard this year, advancing to February 1, 2023 in January before retrogressing to December 15, 2022 in June and then to October 15, 2022 in July. [7][8] Against that backdrop, the August change from "coming months" to "coming weeks" is a real risk signal, not a guarantee of unavailability, but it is enough to treat the window as fragile before the fiscal year ends.
References
- United States: August 2026 Visa Bulletin - Modest Advancement for Several EB Categories; EB-1 India May Become Unavailable in Coming Weeks; USCIS to Accept Final Action Dates for EB Categories — Fragomen
- August 2026 Visa Bulletin — Murthy Law Firm — July 20, 2026
- August 2026 Visa Bulletin: EB-1 India May Become Unavailable in the Coming Weeks — Beyond Border
- Adjustment of Status Filing Charts from the Visa Bulletin — USCIS
- August 2026 Visa Bulletin Released — Erickson Immigration Group
- August 2026 Visa Bulletin — Immi-USA / VisaNation
- India EB1 Visa Bulletin Historical Data — VisaGrader
- June 2026 Visa Bulletin: Sharp Retrogression for India EB-1 and EB-2 Signals Mounting Pressure on Employment-Based Visa Numbers — Wolfsdorf / WR Immigration