K-1 Fiancé Petition Approvals Now Take 300 Days, Up 27% Year Over Year
Cases approved the week of September 28 waited a median of 300 days from filing, 64 days longer than the same week in 2025. The pending backlog now stands at 96,282 petitions, up from 94,492 twenty-eight days earlier.
The median total wait for I-129F K-1 fiancé petitions approved the week of September 28 reached 300 days from filing to approval, up from 236 days the same week a year ago, a year-over-year increase of 27.1% (64 days). The week-over-week reading also fell modestly, from 305 days the prior week to 300 days. These figures describe only the 753 cases approved this week, not the 96,282 petitions still pending as of October 5. None of the wait figures here capture how long those pending cases have been in the queue.
- The total wait from filing to approval for I-129F cases approved the week of Sep 28 was 300 days, up 64 days (+27.1%) from the same week a year ago (236 days, n=457).
- The final-stage trend (time from last status update to approval) has risen from 155 days in mid-August to 290 days this week, a slope of +17.9 days per week with an R² of 0.92 over eight weeks.
- The rfe_fast anomaly fired this week: RFE-response cases cleared in a median of 15 days, roughly 19x faster than plain-processing cases at 294 days, consistent with a batch-clearing effect.
- The pending backlog stands at 96,282 K-1 petitions as of October 5, up 1,790 (about 1.9%) from 94,492 twenty-eight days earlier.
- If the current slope continues, the 4-week linear forecast projects the final-stage median reaching approximately 361 days by the week of October 26 (band: 355 to 368 days).
300 days, up 27% from a year ago
Cases approved the week of September 28 waited a median of 300 days from the date USCIS received the petition to its first approval, with the 25th percentile (p25) at 296 days and the 75th percentile (p75) at 304 days. That is 64 days above the same-week reading a year earlier, when 457 approved cases carried a median of 236 days. As of October 5, 96,282 K-1 petitions remain pending, up from 94,492 twenty-eight days earlier. The wait figures here describe only the 753 cases that reached approval this week; none of them reflects how long the pending cases have been waiting.
Ten weeks of acceleration, nearly unbroken
The time from the last status update to approval (the final-stage wait, a secondary metric distinct from the total filing-to-approval wait) tells the clearest story of the past ten weeks. At the week of August 17, the final-stage median stood at 155 days. It has risen in nearly every subsequent week, reaching 290 days this week, an increase of 135 days over roughly ten weeks. The 8-week linear regression slope is +17.9 days per week with an R-squared of 0.92, a tight fit that places the directional trend well outside normal week-to-week noise. The data shows the pace of final adjudications (the USCIS case decision step where approval, denial, or a request for more information is issued) slowing consistently; the data brief does not tell us why.
A slope of nearly 18 days per week, held across eight consecutive weeks, is the data's way of saying this is a trend, not a fluctuation.
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