EB-5 Grandfathering: The 30 September Deadline, Explained

Published on: 16th September 2026

There are two important dates in the EB-5 calendar, and although they are four months apart, most coverage treats them as one event. They are not.

They protect against completely different risks, and only one is still realistically actionable if you haven't already started.

Here is what you need to know.

EB-5 5 filing deadline: the three windows at a glance

Here are the three key EB-5 dates.

If you haven’t submitted your visa application already, the first likely won’t apply. The two important dates for investors are 1 October-31 December 2026 and 1 January 2027 onward.

September 2026: EB-5 grandfathering ends

The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (the RIA) contains a grandfathering provision. Regional Center petitions — generally Form I-526E — that are properly filed on or before 30 September 2026 receive statutory protection against a future lapse or expiry of the EB-5 Regional Center Program.

Note the wording. On or before. A petition filed on 30 September qualifies; one filed on 1 October does not.

What that protection means in practice: if Congress later fails to reauthorise the Regional Center Program, USCIS and the Department of State must still process those petitions and issue the resulting visas. The petition does not freeze, and the investor does not end up in limbo.

This is not to be confused with the EB-5 visa ending on 30 September 2026; it’s not. The Regional Center Program is currently authorised through 30 September 2027—a full year later. You can still file after this month. You simply file without the statutory safety net.

Filing after the EB-5 grandfathering cutoff

The middle window is where most people reading this now actually sit. Filing between 1 October and 31 December 2026 still locks in the following current investment amounts:

• $800,000: Targeted employment area (rural or high-unemployment) and qualifying infrastructure projects

• $1,050,000: Standard projects

This means you still have time to qualify for the current EB-5 investment amounts before they increase. The trade-off is that filing after the EB-5 grandfathering deadline means you will have no protection if the Regional Center Program lapses or if there are future government shutdowns.

What happens on 1 January 2027

From 1 January 2027, a separate change takes effect, and the EB-5 amount increases.

The RIA set today's minimum investment amounts in statute and tied them to inflation, with adjustments every five years. The first adjustment takes effect on 1 January 2027. The formula is driven by the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) and requires no congressional action.

At the time of writing, USCIS has not published the new figures and cannot until the underlying CPI-U data is complete. Industry analysts modelling the formula project a TEA minimum of roughly $900,000, with some models running as high as $937,500, and a standard minimum of somewhere between $1.2 million and $1.25 million.

Treat those as projections rather than figures. The confirmed amounts will appear in the Federal Register before they take effect.

The important mechanical point: the threshold that applies to you is set by your filing date, not the date when you transfer funds. File Form I-526/526E at any point in 2026 and the current amounts apply to your petition, even though the increase lands weeks later.

A distinction that matters: direct versus Regional Center

The 30 September date applies to the Regional Center Program. That is the route most passive investors use, filing Form I-526E.

The direct EB-5 route, generally filed on Form I-526, has been permanently authorised since the Immigration Act of 1990. It does not depend on periodic reauthorisation, so it carries no equivalent lapse risk, and the grandfathering deadline is far less consequential.

Direct investors are not exempt from the January increase, however. The inflation adjustment applies across both routes.

What grandfathering does not do

Worth stating plainly, because it is routinely oversold:

• It is not an approval: Every eligibility requirement still applies — lawful source of funds, at-risk capital, job creation. A grandfathered petition can still be denied.

• It does not affect visa availability: Backlogs, per-country limits and retrogression operate on entirely separate mechanics. Grandfathering protects against programme lapse, nothing more.

• It does not speed anything up: Filing earlier does secure an earlier priority date, which improves your position in a queue — but that is a consequence of the filing date, not of grandfathering.

Where the visa queues actually stand

As at the September 2026 Visa Bulletin:

• EB-5 unreserved is unavailable for India for the remainder of the 2026 fiscal year. Indian nationals with unreserved cases cannot be issued a visa or adjust status while the category is listed as "U".

• China unreserved sits at a final action date of 1 December 2016.

• All other countries remain current in the unreserved category.

• All three set-aside categories — rural, high unemployment and infrastructure — remain current for every country, including India.

The set-aside distinction is doing significant work there. An Indian investor in a qualifying rural or high-unemployment project has visa numbers available right now; an Indian investor in the unreserved pool does not.

Fiscal year 2027 begins on 1 October 2026, when visa numbers reset. The Department of State projects 186,317 employment-based immigrant visas for FY2027. The October bulletin is the one to watch.

If you have not started yet

If you have not started your EB-5 application yet, you are very unlikely to file by 30 September.

A compliant EB-5 petition requires project due diligence, a fully documented lawful source of funds, subscription and transfer of capital, and preparation of the petition itself.

From a standing start, the realistic timeline for all of this is months, not weeks, and getting your application done right is crucial. A rushed source-of-funds file is a materially worse outcome than a later filing. Requests for evidence and denials follow weak documentation, not late filing.

The date that is still genuinely within reach is 31 December. Roughly fifteen weeks is a demanding but achievable timeline for a well-prepared applicant with straightforward, well-documented funds, and it locks in the current investment amount.

If your source of funds is complex — multiple jurisdictions, business sale proceeds, gifted capital, historic transactions requiring reconstruction — be realistic that this may run into 2027, and plan for the higher threshold rather than gambling on hitting the lower one.

Who should be acting on this now?

• Anyone already mid-process with a Regional Center project: If you can complete and file your petition in the next 16 days, it is worth pressing hard to do so. Confirm with your adviser today what remains outstanding.

• Anyone who has chosen a project but has not filed: Target the 31 December window. Start the source-of-funds work this week.

• Anyone weighing EB-5 against other routes: The January increase changes the comparison against the Gold Card, E-2 and European residency options. Worth revisiting before year-end.

• Anyone who has already filed: Nothing to do. If you've filed your qualifying petition, the statutory protection already attaches.

Ready to talk it through?

If you are weighing an EB-5 filing against the December threshold, the practical question is not whether the route suits you — it is whether your source-of-funds documentation can be assembled in the time available. That is the assessment worth doing first, and it is the one our team starts with.

Speak to our team.