What Happens to EB-5 After September 2026: The September 30 Cutoff, Reauthorization, and the 2027 Outlook

EB-5 after September 2026 splits along one statutory line: a regional center investor petition filed on or before September 30, 2026 is grandfathered under INA 203(b)(5)(S) and keeps being processed even if the Regional Center Program lapses, while a petition filed after that date has no statutory protection and would be frozen if Congress lets the program sunset on September 30, 2027. The grandfathering cutoff has now passed, and as of November 7, 2026, no bill has been enacted to move, extend, or soften either date.

As of November 7, 2026.

The two dates sit exactly one year apart, and conflating them is the single most common mistake we see. September 30, 2026 is a filing cutoff for grandfathering. September 30, 2027 is the date the Regional Center Program's authorization expires. Nothing dramatic happened to the program itself on October 1, 2026. What changed is the legal footing of everyone who files after that day.

What does EB-5 after September 2026 actually look like?#

Mechanically, very little changed on October 1, 2026. USCIS keeps accepting Form I-526E. Regional centers keep operating. The investment minimums stay where the statute put them until January 1, 2027, $1,050,000 for a standard project and $800,000 for a targeted employment area or infrastructure project under INA 203(b)(5)(C). The visa categories keep running on the same allocation, roughly 9,940 EB-5 numbers a year as a baseline, with the rural, high-unemployment, and infrastructure set-asides intact.

The shift is legal, not operational. The grandfathering clause Congress wrote into the 2022 Reform and Integrity Act, enacted as Division BB of Public Law 117-103, protects a defined class of filers: those whose petitions are on file by September 30, 2026. Miss that date by a day and you are outside the protected class, even though the form, the fee, and the project may be identical to your neighbor's who filed a week earlier.

If you want the deadline mechanics in isolation, we cover them separately in the September 30, 2026 grandfathering deadline guide. This piece is about the year that follows it.

What does grandfathering protect, and what does it not?#

Grandfathering under INA 203(b)(5)(S) does one specific thing: if the Regional Center Program lapses after the sunset, USCIS may not deny or refuse to process a grandfathered petition on the ground that the program has expired. A petition filed on or before September 30, 2026 continues toward adjudication regardless of what Congress does in the autumn of 2027.

It is worth being precise about what the clause does not do, because the marketing language around it tends to oversell.

• It does not lock your investment amount against the CPI adjustment. The automatic inflation adjustment under INA 203(b)(5)(C)(iii) takes effect for petitions filed on or after January 1, 2027, on its own schedule. Grandfathering protects your petition's viability through a lapse; it is not a price freeze. We walk through that mechanism in the 2027 CPI investment-increase explainer.
• It does not waive the rest of the program's requirements. Source-of-funds documentation, the ten-job requirement, admissibility, and the I-829 removal of conditions all still apply on their normal terms.
• It does not protect petitions filed after the cutoff. This is the whole point. A petition filed October 1, 2026 or later carries no grandfathering shield. If the program sunsets without reauthorization, that petition is exposed.

One cite-discipline note for readers checking the statute: the grandfathering provision is subsection (S), not (M). Subsection (M) is the separate post-termination investor-protection provision and is often confused with grandfathering.

What is the reauthorization question right now?#

The Regional Center Program is authorized through September 30, 2027 under INA 203(b)(5)(E)(i). For the program to continue past that date, Congress has to reauthorize it, the same way it has had to periodically since the program began in 1990.

As of November 7, 2026, no reauthorization, extension, or change to either the September 30, 2026 grandfathering cutoff or the September 30, 2027 sunset has been enacted. There is no bill on the President's desk, no enacted continuing provision, and no published USCIS guidance announcing a change. Anyone telling investors that an extension is "basically done" is describing a hope, not a law. We track the actual legislative posture rather than the rumor, and the honest status today is: pending.

That uncertainty is why the September 30, 2026 cutoff mattered. Grandfathering is the insurance policy Congress built for filers who got in before the cutoff. Anyone filing now does not have that insurance, so their timeline depends more on a legislative outcome they cannot control. Our grandfathering-versus-price-increase breakdown lays out how the two pressures interacted.

What does the 2021 lapse precedent tell us?#

We are not speculating about what a lapse looks like, because EB-5 just lived through one. The Regional Center Program's authorization lapsed in June 2021 and was not restored until the Reform and Integrity Act took effect on March 15, 2022. For those roughly nine months, USCIS could not approve regional center petitions. Pending cases sat frozen. New regional center filings had nowhere to go.

The difference between then and now is the grandfathering clause itself. The 2021 lapse happened under the old statutory regime, before INA 203(b)(5)(S) existed. There was no protected class. Everyone in the regional center pipeline was exposed at once, which is precisely why the lapse was so disruptive and why Congress wrote grandfathering into the RIA afterward.

So the 2021 episode is the right reference point with one correction applied. If the program lapses after September 30, 2027, the people who filed on or before September 30, 2026 are, by statute, supposed to keep moving. The people who filed after the cutoff are the ones who would relive 2021. The precedent is real, but it now cuts two different ways depending on which side of the cutoff you are on.

What should investors at each stage expect?#

The honest answer depends entirely on where your filing date falls relative to September 30, 2026.

If you filed on or before the cutoff#

You are inside the grandfathered class. Your petition is designed to survive a lapse, and your near-term experience is governed by ordinary processing, not by the reauthorization fight. Keep an eye on the published USCIS processing times for the I-526E and the I-829, because those queues, not the 2027 calendar, are what actually determine when you reach the finish line. Your job between now and the sunset is to keep your case clean and responsive, not to refresh legislative news.

If you were filing in mid-2026#

You were racing a real, fixed date, and it has now passed. A petition counted as "filed" when USCIS received it, not when the engagement letter was signed. If your petition went out in late September, confirm the USCIS receipt date with your EB-5 immigration attorney; a petition received October 1 or later is not grandfathered.

If you are considering filing after the cutoff#

Go in with clear eyes. A post-cutoff petition has no grandfathering protection, and if it is filed on or after January 1, 2027 it is also priced under the higher CPI-adjusted investment minimum. Filing before that date avoids the price increase; nothing now avoids the lapse exposure. That is not automatically a bad decision, particularly if reauthorization passes and the program continues smoothly, but it is a bet on a legislative outcome rather than a protected position. Define the term you understand and the one you do not in plain language using our glossary before you commit capital on those terms.

How do today's data points factor in?#

The current visa picture shapes the decision as much as the statute does. The unreserved EB-5 category was unavailable for India from July through September 2026 after its pro-rated limit was reached. The October 2026 bulletin restored an India final action date of December 1, 2023, and the November 2026 bulletin keeps it there. The three set-aside categories, rural, high-unemployment, and infrastructure, remain current for every country. China's unreserved final action date sits at December 1, 2016.

That matters for the after-September reading because the set-asides are the part of the program staying current while unreserved retrogresses for high-demand countries. An investor from a heavily backlogged country who filed a grandfathered, set-aside petition before the cutoff combined two different protections: statutory grandfathering against a lapse, and a reserved visa lane that is not retrogressed. Track the live numbers on our visa bulletin page and the country-specific movement on the India hub, because those are the variables that change month to month while the 2027 sunset stays fixed.

What is the realistic outlook for 2027?#

Here is where we separate fact from forecast. The facts: the program is authorized through September 30, 2027, grandfathering protects pre-cutoff filers, and as of November 7, 2026 nothing has been enacted to change either date.

The forecast, clearly labeled as ours: reauthorization of a now-reformed, integrity-funded program is a more straightforward political proposition than the contentious fight that produced the 2021 lapse, and the existence of a large grandfathered class gives Congress a softer landing if it acts late. None of that is a guarantee. The 2021 lapse is recent enough to remind everyone that "Congress will surely act" is a sentence that has been wrong before. We will update this page the moment a reauthorization bill clears committee or USCIS publishes the January 2027 CPI adjustment, whichever comes first.

Common questions about EB-5 after the cutoff#

Did the program shut down on October 1, 2026? No. Nothing closed on that date. October 1, 2026 was simply the first day a new petition fell outside the grandfathered class. The program's authorization itself runs through September 30, 2027.

If I am grandfathered, am I immune to a 2027 lapse? Largely, for the specific risk grandfathering addresses. Under INA 203(b)(5)(S), USCIS may not deny or stop processing your petition because the program expired. Other requirements and ordinary processing delays still apply.

Will my investment amount go up after the cutoff? The CPI adjustment is a separate clock. It takes effect for petitions filed on or after January 1, 2027, independent of grandfathering. Filing before the cutoff protects your petition through a lapse; it does not by itself lock the pre-2027 dollar amount.

Sources#

• USCIS, About the EB-5 Visa Classification
• 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5) (grandfathering at subsection (S); sunset at (E)(i); investment amounts and CPI at (C))
• U.S. Congress, Public Law 117-103, H.R. 2471 (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Division BB, the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act)
• USCIS, Policy Manual Volume 6, Part G
• U.S. Department of State, Visa Bulletin