K-1 Fiancé Petition Waits Reach 300 Days, Up 30 Percent Year Over Year
Cases approved the week of Oct 12 carried a median total wait of 300 days from filing to approval, 70 days above the same week in 2025. The pending backlog has grown to 98,181 cases, up from 95,074 just 28 days earlier.
K-1 fiancé petitions approved the week of Oct 12 carried a median total wait of 300 days from filing to approval, up from 230 days the same week last year, a 30.4% increase. Eleven percent of this week's approvals waited more than a year from filing. Meanwhile, 98,181 cases remain pending as of Oct 19, up from 95,074 just 28 days earlier. Every wait figure in this brief is measured on cases that were approved; none of it describes how long those pending cases have waited. The final-stage acceleration and the growing backlog of pending cases point in the same direction.
- The median total wait for I-129F approvals the week of Oct 12 was 300 days, up 70 days (30.4%) from the same week last year (230 days, n=381).
- The final-stage wait (time from the last status update to approval) has risen from 158 days in late July to 261 days this week, an increase of over 100 days in roughly 11 weeks, with a slope of +13.2 days per week and R²=0.78.
- The pending backlog reached 98,181 cases as of Oct 19, up from 95,074 twenty-eight days earlier, a 3.3% increase.
- An RFE (Request for Evidence) anomaly flag fired this week: RFE-response cases cleared in a median of just 15 days, versus 296 days for cases with no RFE, likely reflecting a batch of same-vintage RFE responses clearing together.
- Cases filed from May through October 2026 show 0% approval rates so far, consistent with a 300-day total wait from filing.
300 days to approval, and the line keeps climbing
Cases approved the week of Oct 12 waited a median of 300 days from filing to approval, 70 days above the same week in 2025. That year-over-year gap of 30.4% is the widest in the 12-week window. Eleven percent of this week's approvals waited more than a year from receipt to decision. At the same time, 98,181 cases remain pending as of Oct 19, up from 95,074 just 28 days earlier, a 3.3% increase in the active backlog of pending cases. The 300-day figure describes only the cases that were approved this week; it does not describe how long those pending cases have been waiting.
Eight weeks of acceleration, not a single bad week
The time from the last status update to approval, the final-stage wait, has risen from 158 days in the week of Jul 27 to 261 days this week, an increase of more than 100 days in roughly 11 weeks. The 8-week regression slope is +13.2 days per week, with an R² of 0.78, indicating a strong and consistent upward trend rather than week-to-week noise. This is not a single high reading pulling up an otherwise flat series; every week since late July has added to the climb.
This week's final-stage median of 261 days is 53 days above the same week last year (208 days, n=132), a 25.6% year-over-year increase. The 12-week trailing average is 221 days, meaning even that average, which spans the lower readings of July and August, now sits roughly 40 days below where the series stands today.
Where the wait is accumulating
Among all tracked I-129F cases observed in the last 30 days, 42% currently sit at the 'Case Was Received' status, with a median of 252 days already elapsed at that stage, a 25th percentile (p25) of 227 days and a 75th percentile (p75) of 299 days across 32,401 cases. A further 31% sit at the 'Case Was Approved' stage, where a median of 45 days elapses before the case moves to the State Department's National Visa Center handoff. A long stretch at 'Case Was Received' does not mean USCIS has taken no action; it reflects time in the adjudication (the USCIS case decision step) queue before a decision is issued.
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