How to Check Your Priority Date Status Against the Current Visa Bulletin

Your I-140 notice has the number that decides everything — here is exactly how to line it up against this month's cutoffs.

Your priority date is the one number that decides when you can move to the next stage of your green card case, and the only way to know where you stand is to compare it against the Final Action Date USCIS is currently using for your category and country of chargeability. As of the August 2026 Visa Bulletin, EB-3 is current for India before 2014-01-01 and for China before 2022-01-01, while EB-2 India is unavailable this month. Here is exactly how to find your own date, read the right chart, and repeat the check every month without guessing.

If you have not seen how priority dates work end to end, our Visa Bulletin and priority date explainer covers the mechanics. This post is narrower: the actual checklist for confirming where your case sits, right now, this month.

Where your priority date actually lives

Your priority date is not something you calculate. It is assigned once, early in your case, and it never changes even as you move through I-140 approval, I-485 filing, and eventual green card approval.

• PERM-based EB-2 and EB-3: your priority date is the day the Department of Labor received your ETA-9089 labor certification application, not the day it was certified and not the day your I-140 was filed.
• EB-1 and self-petitioned categories (including EB-2 NIW): there is no PERM step, so your priority date is the day USCIS received your I-140 petition.

Either way, the number is printed directly on your I-140 receipt notice or approval notice. If you cannot locate the notice or are not sure which document to trust, our guide to reading your I-140 approval notice line by line walks through every field, and our USCIS case status and receipt notice guide explains how to pull your case up online if the paper notice is lost.

Step-by-step: checking your status this month

1. Pull your priority date from your I-140 notice (Form I-797).
2. Confirm your category — EB-1, EB-2, or EB-3 — and your country of chargeability, which is generally your country of birth, not your country of citizenship or current residence.
3. Open the current month's Visa Bulletin at travel.state.gov. Do not rely on a bookmarked or cached version; cutoffs move monthly and a stale page will mislead you.
4. Read the Final Action Dates table, not the Dates for Filing table, since Final Action Dates govern actual case approval.
5. Compare dates. If the cutoff published for your category and country is on or after your priority date, you are current this month. If it is before your priority date, or the cell reads "U" for unavailable, you are not yet current.
6. Recheck every month. A category that is current in one month can retrogress (move backward) or close entirely the next, especially late in a fiscal year when annual limits are close to being reached.

That sixth step is the one people skip. A priority date checker only tells you where you stand today; it says nothing about next month unless you go back and run it again.

August 2026 Final Action Dates: India and China

Employment-based demand from India and China is backlogged enough that these two countries carry their own column in nearly every category. Here is where EB-2 and EB-3 stood in the August 2026 bulletin:

A few things worth noting in that table. EB-2 India shows unavailable because India's prorated EB-2 allocation was reached for the remainder of the fiscal year, not because the cutoff simply failed to move — that is a harder stop than a flat month. EB-3 China advanced modestly compared to the prior month, while EB-3 India's cutoff sits over a decade behind the filing date, which is the well-known reason many India-born EB-2 applicants weigh an EB-3 downgrade strategy instead of waiting on EB-2.

These are August 2026 figures specifically. By the time you read this, the current bulletin may show different numbers — always confirm against the live page before making any decision based on a date.

Dates for Filing versus Final Action Dates

The Visa Bulletin actually publishes two charts every month, and mixing them up is one of the most common ways people misjudge their own status.

• Dates for Filing is generally the more generous chart. When USCIS authorizes its use for a given month, it lets applicants submit Form I-485 earlier, before their case is fully current, so they can lock in benefits like employment authorization and travel permission while they wait.
• Final Action Dates is the chart that actually governs approval. Even if you filed I-485 using a Dates for Filing cutoff, USCIS cannot approve your case until your priority date is current under Final Action Dates.

USCIS announces which chart applies for I-485 filing purposes each month on its own website, separately from the State Department's bulletin. As of 2026, USCIS continues to use Final Action Dates for employment-based adjudication, so treat that as the chart that ultimately decides your case, and check the USCIS announcement for the current month rather than assuming the more generous chart applies to your filing.

What priority date checker and calculator tools actually do

Search "priority date checker" or "GC priority date calculator" and you will find spreadsheets and small web tools that plot historical cutoff movement and extrapolate forward. Used correctly, they are a reasonable way to build intuition about how fast (or slowly) a category has been moving. Used incorrectly, they get mistaken for a forecast USCIS or the State Department has endorsed, which none of them are.

These tools cannot see:

• Future application volume, which can spike or slow unpredictably
• Policy changes that shift how numbers are allocated
• Country-specific per-country limits, which cap how much of the worldwide EB-2 or EB-3 pool any single country can use in a year
• Whether a category will retrogress instead of continuing to advance

If you want a closer look at how these estimators are built and where their blind spots are, see our breakdown of how priority date calculator tools actually work.

The closest thing to an official projection comes from the Department of State itself, published as commentary inside the Visa Bulletin. For example, DOS projected in its August 2026 commentary that EB-2 India could advance to approximately 2014-07-15 or earlier once the new fiscal year opens around 2026-10-01. That is a Department of State forecast, not a guarantee — treat it exactly as labeled, a projection subject to revision, and re-check the bulletin each month rather than planning around it as fixed.

DOS also flagged in the same bulletin that continued demand could force retrogression or unavailability later in FY2026 for EB-1 India, EB-2 China, and EB-3 Philippines. That is a warning about risk, not a scheduled event, but it is a reason not to treat any single month's cutoff as permanent in either direction.

Once your date is current: what changes

Becoming current does not finish your case; it opens the door to file (or have USCIS approve) Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status.

A few facts to know before that stage:

• The I-485 base filing fee is $1,440 if filed by mail or $1,390 if filed online, for applicants age 14 and older.
• There is no premium processing option for Form I-485. Unlike I-140, you cannot pay to expedite adjudication of the adjustment application itself.
• Processing time varies significantly by category and field office, so lean on your own receipt notice and your USCIS online account for the timeline that applies to your specific case rather than a general average.

If you have not yet confirmed that your employer's history supports continued green card sponsorship at this stage, our PERM and green card sponsorship lookup shows how to check an employer's filing pattern before you count on them for the next step.

Common mistakes

• Reading Dates for Filing as your green light. It can let you file I-485 early, but it does not mean your case can be approved yet — Final Action Dates does that.
• Using country of citizenship instead of country of birth. Chargeability is almost always based on birth country, and mixing this up sends people to the wrong column entirely.
• Treating a calculator's estimate as a commitment. Every prediction tool, including the Department of State's own commentary, is explicitly a projection.
• Checking once and assuming it holds. Cutoffs move monthly in either direction; a category that was current in July is not guaranteed to stay current in August.
• Confusing "no movement" with "unavailable." A flat cutoff means demand outpaced supply that month. Unavailable means the annual limit was reached and no further approvals are possible in that category and country until the next fiscal year.
• Not distinguishing your PERM priority date from your I-140 filing date. For PERM-based cases these are different dates, and only the earlier PERM receipt date counts.

Frequently asked questions

What is my priority date and where do I find it? For PERM-based EB-2 and EB-3 cases it is the date the Department of Labor received your ETA-9089 labor certification. For EB-1 and self-petitioned categories like EB-2 NIW it is the date USCIS received your I-140. Either way it is printed in the priority date field on your I-140 receipt notice or approval notice (Form I-797).

How do I check my priority date against the Visa Bulletin? Open the current month's Visa Bulletin on travel.state.gov, find your employment-based preference category (EB-1, EB-2, EB-3, etc.), locate your country of chargeability, then compare the cutoff date in that cell to your own priority date. If the published cutoff is on or after your priority date, your category is current for you that month.

What is the difference between the Final Action Date and the Dates for Filing chart? The Visa Bulletin publishes both every month. USCIS announces monthly which chart applicants may use to file Form I-485, but final approval always requires your priority date to be current on the Final Action Dates chart. As of 2026 USCIS continues to use Final Action Dates for employment-based adjudication, so treat that as the chart that ultimately governs your case.

Can a priority date checker or GC priority date calculator predict exactly when I will become current? No. These tools extrapolate from past cutoff movement and are useful for a rough sense of trend, but they cannot see future demand, country caps, or policy changes. The only source close to an official prediction is the commentary the Department of State publishes inside the Visa Bulletin itself, and even that is explicitly framed as a projection, not a commitment.

Why did my priority date category become unavailable instead of just not moving? Unavailable means the annual numerical limit for that category and country was reached for the fiscal year, so USCIS cannot approve any more cases in it until the new fiscal year opens on October 1. It is a harder stop than a cutoff simply staying flat, and it can happen mid-year once demand outpaces the allocation.

Priority date tracking is a monthly habit, not a one-time lookup, and the stakes of misreading a chart are too high to guess. If you want a second set of eyes on where your case actually stands, F1Jobs can help you make sense of your specific timeline.