FY 2025 Visa Limit Has Been Reached for EB-1 Category

Quick Hits

• The annual limit for the EB-1 immigrant visa category has been reached for FY 2025, which ends on September 30, 2025.
• No further immigrant visas or permanent resident cards (commonly referred to as “green cards”) will be issued for the EB-1 category until the federal government’s new fiscal year begins on October 1, 2025.

Section 201 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) governs the availability of immigrant visas for employment-based preference immigrants. Overall, there are 150,000 immigrant visas available across all categories for FY 2025. The EB-1 category is statutorily mandated to receive 28.6 percent of the annual limit. Once the numerical limit has been met, the category becomes unavailable until the next fiscal year (i.e., FY 2026, which begins on October 1, 2025)—resulting in no further permanent resident cards being issued for that category in FY 2025.

Next Steps

Despite the annual limit having been reached, eligible applicants may continue to file new EB-1 adjustment of status applications with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) if their priority dates are current under the Final Action Date Chart of the State Department’s September 2025 Visa Bulletin. These applications will be held for adjudication beginning on October 1, 2025. Similarly, the State Department announced last week that the annual limit had been reached for EB-2 employment-based immigrant visas.

Ogletree Deakins’ Immigration Practice Group will continue to monitor developments and will publish updates on the Immigration blog as additional information becomes available.

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