I-129F 2026 Slowdown: Where does I-129F stand now?

Over the last few months, the K-1 visa community has been closely monitoring the I-129F processing slowdown at USCIS. As mentioned in our April 13th article, I-129F processing activity dropped significantly in early March 2026 after nearly a year of stable and consistent progress through the backlog. While the slowdown was initially concerning, recent data suggests that the situation may be improving, with USCIS re-increasing processing activity. However, USCIS processing has not yet fully rebounded to pre-slowdown levels.

Current Processing Numbers

At Track My Visa, one of the key metrics we monitor to understand these shifts is the USCIS processing activity. We carefully track how many cases (from our userbase) USCIS is approving or otherwise processing on a given working day.

Prior to the slowdown, USCIS was processing ~50 Track My Visa cases per day. At the lowest point in the slowdown, this processing output dropped to ~20–30 Track My Visa cases per day. As of today, USCIS seems to be processing ~40 Track My Visa cases per day, almost returning to pre-slowdown processing — but not quite.

While this remains below the levels seen before the slowdown began, it is a noticeable improvement from the reduced activity that defined much of March, April, and May, providing hope and reassurance.

The Front of the Line

Another important indicator we track is what we call the "Front of the Line". While not an official USCIS term, it's one of the clearest ways to understand how far USCIS has worked through the backlog. Put simply, the Front of the Line represents the filing date that separates cases USCIS has already begun working on from those still waiting in the queue. Essentially, it shows how far back in the queue USCIS has reached.

During the worst part of the slowdown, the Front of the Line often remained frozen for days at a time, only occasionally making small jumps forward. The longer the Front of the Line stays "stuck", the greater the case backlog grows, leading to a quick escalation in end-to-end processing times.

However, over the past several weeks we have seen encouraging progress. The Front of the Line has been advancing consistently again, moving forward every few days rather than remaining stalled for extended periods of time. Though the pace is still slower than the pre-slowdown cadence, USCIS has notably improved from their slowdown trough.

• Prior to the slowdown, we were seeing the Front of the Line move ~6–10 days per week
• During the slowdown, the Front of the Line moved ~0–3 days per week
• Currently, we are seeing the Front of the Line move ~3–5 days per week

Although the Front of the Line is not moving as fast as it was prior to the slowdown, USCIS is approaching a rate that would allow them to maintain the current processing times and the current backlog size. Generally, we consider the situation "stable" if USCIS is moving the Front of the Line forward by about 5 filing dates per week.

DOS Improvement

One of the most encouraging factors during the I-129F slowdown was the significant reduction in DOS wait times, which helped partially offset the reduced approval rates.

As we had noted in our previous article, the Department of State (DOS) backlog was shrinking as approval volumes started to decline. Prior to the slowdown, DOS transfer times were over 5 weeks long. Today, we are seeing cases consistently sent to DOS within 1 to 2 weeks of being processed — a significant decrease. Although wait times from Received to Approved may have increased, the improvements in DOS transfers have helped offset that extra wait time.

Overall Processing Time

The metric that is perhaps most important to applicants is the overall end-to-end processing time. Cases do not move on to the next phase of the K-1 process until their case is sent to DOS, so understanding processing times from Received to DOS is crucial.

At the beginning of 2026, end-to-end processing times for K-1 cases dropped down to a low of about 8 months. Despite the DOS speed up, the slowdown has still caused overall processing times to grow. As of May 2026, end-to-end processing times are edging closer to 9 months.

Based on USCIS's current processing rate, we expect the end-to-end processing time to very slowly increase or even stay the same. If USCIS improves even more, we are cautiously optimistic that the end-to-end processing times could start to drop again in the future.

Is the Slowdown Over?

For now, the current data points to cautious optimism:

• USCIS is actively processing cases again at a reasonable (although slightly sub-optimal) rate
• USCIS is moving the Front of the Line forward consistently on a week-by-week basis

Moreover, if USCIS is still "pulling out" of the slowdown, it's certainly possible that they will increase their rate of processing even further. It seems less likely that they will slow back down significantly. Assuming that the slowdown was caused by internal changes at USCIS, it is reasonably safe to assume that those obstacles are likely behind us.

However, with just a few weeks of positive data, it is still too early to declare that the slowdown is fully "over". While we are certainly breathing a sigh of relief, we still would like to see a few more weeks of positive data and hopefully see USCIS establish a new consistent trendline.

Current processing activity remains below the levels that applicants were experiencing in late 2025 and early 2026. While the recent trends are encouraging, USCIS still has some ground to cover before we can confidently say that processing times will stop increasing.

As always, we will continue to monitor USCIS processing activity closely and share updates as new trends emerge.

— Track My Visa Team