For an EB-5 investor living outside the United States, the consular interview is the step that converts an approved petition into an immigrant visa. Its timing depends on three separate things: whether a visa number is available, whether the National Visa Center (NVC) has marked the case documentarily qualified, and whether the assigned embassy or consulate has interview capacity.
Those three inputs are tracked in different places, and the data available for each has changed over the past year. This article covers what can be tracked now, what cannot, and which sources are currently publishing.
The Scheduling Status Tool
The State Department publishes an Immigrant Visa Scheduling Status Tool that shows, for each post and visa classification, the documentarily complete month for which NVC is currently scheduling most interviews. It is updated monthly and covers employment-based preference categories.
This is the closest thing to a direct answer on interview timing. An applicant whose case became documentarily complete in March 2026, at a post currently scheduling October 2025 cases, can estimate the remaining gap. The tool does not guarantee an appointment, and it excludes certain case types.
NVC Processing Timeframes
NVC publishes its own timeframes for the stages before scheduling. As of mid-July 2026, case creation was running about two weeks, document review about four to five weeks, and interview scheduling roughly 60 to 90 days after a case becomes documentarily qualified.
These figures refresh frequently, so the published page is more reliable than any summary of it. They also describe NVC’s own throughput, not the wait for a specific appointment slot at a specific post.
Monthly Issuance Data Has Gaps
The State Department’s Monthly Immigrant Visa Issuance Statistics report how many immigrant visas each consular post actually issued, broken out by category. Issuance counts are the best available proxy for completed interviews.
The practical problem is currency. As of August 2026, that page carries data through FY2025 and has not published FY2026 monthly reports. The 2025 Report of the Visa Office had not been released either. Anyone building a monthly tracking routine around this source should know it is currently running well behind.
What FY2025 Showed for EB-5
The completed FY2025 data is still useful for calibration. Across the year, consular posts issued 9,831 unreserved EB-5 visas and 922 reserved EB-5 visas.
September 2025 was the lowest month of the year, with 372 EB-5 visas issued: 339 unreserved, 28 rural, 2 high unemployment, and 3 infrastructure. Those three infrastructure visas were the first ever issued in that category, all to Indian applicants at the U.S. Consulate in Singapore.
Availability Comes First
No interview can be scheduled without an available visa number. This is not a formality in the current fiscal year. India’s EB-5 unreserved allocation was exhausted on June 5, 2026, and posts cannot issue visas in that category to Indian applicants through September 30, 2026.
A documentarily qualified case in an unavailable category simply waits. Set-aside categories have remained current for all countries throughout FY2026, so EB-5 investors in a rural, high unemployment, or infrastructure EB-5 project have faced capacity constraints rather than availability constraints.
Why Posts Differ
Two equally prepared cases can move at different speeds because scheduling is post-specific and is not strictly first in, first out. Staffing, facilities, and competing caseloads all shape how many interviews a post can hold.
Policy has added variation as well. Recent Visa Bulletins note that issuance rates for nationals of certain countries have declined because of executive actions, and the State Department has signaled reductions to visa processing operations at some posts. Both affect throughput independently of any individual case.
A Workable Monthly Routine
A simple log is still worth keeping. Each month, record the Visa Bulletin cutoff for the relevant category and country, check the Scheduling Status Tool for the assigned post, note the current NVC timeframes, and check the post’s own announcements.
Over three to six months, the pattern becomes readable. What the log cannot do is produce a date. It shows direction, which is enough to tell whether a case is progressing normally or has stalled relative to comparable cases at the same post.
Key Takeaway
Consular interview timing is more visible than it used to be, because the Scheduling Status Tool now publishes post-level scheduling dates that once had to be inferred. It is also less visible in one respect, because monthly issuance data for the current fiscal year has not been published.
For EB-5 investors, the sequence is what matters. Visa availability governs first, documentary qualification second, and post capacity third. A case cannot skip ahead of the first two, and the third varies enough that comparisons to other applicants are rarely informative.
All figures are current as of August 2026. Consular issuance figures reflect full-year FY2025, the most recent complete data published by the State Department. NVC timeframes reflect the mid-July 2026 update and change frequently.
Sources
U.S. Department of State, Immigrant Visa Scheduling Status Tool (post-level scheduling status by classification, updated monthly). https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information-resources/iv-wait-times.html
U.S. Department of State, Monthly Immigrant Visa Issuance Statistics (post-level and category-level issuance counts). https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-statistics/immigrant-visa-statistics/monthly-immigrant-visa-issuances.html
U.S. Department of State, Visa Bulletin for August 2026 (visa availability by category and country). https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin/2026/visa-bulletin-for-august-2026.html
U.S. Department of State, India Per-Country Limit Reached in the EB-5 Unreserved Category (announced June 10, 2026). https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/india-per-country-limit-reached-in-the-eb-5-unreserved-category.html
IIUSA, EB-5 Visa Issuance in FY2025 (monthly and full-year consular issuance detail). https://iiusa.org/eb-5-visa-issuance-in-fy2025-trends-in-unreserved-and-reserved-categories/