February 2026 Visa Bulletin: A Valentine To EB-3

Foreign nationals and their sponsoring US employers eagerly await the monthly release of the US Department of State (DOS) Visa Bulletin, to confirm when they will be eligible to apply for permanent residence in the US: the ultimate goal of a green card and a path to US citizenship. Updates announced in the February 2026 Visa Bulletin indicate steady advancement of visa processing queues over time and gradual relief from visa availability backlogs, especially in the employment-based third preference (EB-3) categories.

The DOS sets the number of permanent resident “spots” available in a given fiscal year for most employer-sponsored and some family-sponsored cases, allocated based on the foreign national's “priority date” (the date on which a petition was filed on their behalf) in both the category of employment-based sponsorship (graduate degreed professional, skilled worker) or family-based sponsorship (spouse of permanent resident, adult son or daughter or sibling of US citizen) and the foreign national's country of birth. When the number of sponsored foreign nationals exceeds the number of permanent resident spots available in each category, the DOS establishes processing queues to manage the backlog. The monthly Visa Bulletin indicates the queues for priority dates in each category. Since May 2023, the Visa Bulletin has been in “retrogression” (backlogged) in the employment-based categories through which most sponsored foreign nationals qualify (EB-2 and EB-3), resulting in delays in most foreign nationals' ability to apply for permanent residence in the US or to obtain immigrant visas abroad, even if the underlying sponsorship case has been approved.

The Visa Bulletins issued in the first four months of the 2026 fiscal year (October 2025 through January 2026) provided additional relief from retrogression by advancing priority dates and thereby reducing the projected wait times for immigrant visas abroad by over a year in certain categories. In the February 2026 Visa Bulletin, priority date advancement reduced those wait times even further – by 1.5 to 3 months – in most EB-3 categories (Mexico, Philippines, and Rest of World) for those waiting to be able to obtain immigrant visas abroad, and for those waiting to adjust status to permanent residence in the United States. This significant advancement in most EB-3 categories means many more sponsored employees' priority dates will become current in February 2026, including those whose cases were filed after EB-3 retrogression began in May 2023.

The February 2026 Visa Bulletin is a Valentine to U.S. employers that stayed firm in their commitment to sponsored employees. Because the popular EB-3 category encompasses a wide range of sponsored professions – from software developers to teachers to engineers to registered nurses – there is good reason to expect that its processing queues will continue to retrogress and advance over the years. U.S. employers are urged to continue sponsoring foreign nationals and trust the process, because the best (employer-employee) relationships can and do stand the test of time.

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