N-600 Total Wait Falls to 209 Days as Pending Backlog Grows Past 103,000

The N-600 total wait median came in at 209 days for cases approved the week of Nov 2, 2026, the sharpest weekly drop in the 12-week table (down from 319 days the prior week). The 25th percentile (p25) ran to 152 days and the 75th percentile (p75) to 295 days, so a substantial share of approved cases still waited considerably longer than the median. The same week last year posted 240 days, making this week 31 days (12.9%) faster year over year. The sample is 186 cases with a known filing date out of 189 total approvals.

As of Nov 9, 103,702 N-600 cases remain pending, up from 102,078 four weeks earlier. Every wait figure in this brief is measured only on cases that were approved this week, so the 209-day median says nothing about how long those 103,702 pending applicants have already been waiting. The two signals point in different directions: the approved-cases median fell, while the pending pool grew.

Over the last 12 weeks, the total wait median has ranged from 201 days (Sep 28) to 319 days (Oct 26), with swings of more than 100 days between consecutive weeks on more than one occasion. At 209 days, this week sits near the low end of that range. The volatility appears to follow the form's modest weekly sample sizes, which have ranged from about 140 to 350 cases with a known filing date per week. When the pool of approved cases in a given week is that size, the composition of who happens to clear can move the median by tens of days without any underlying change in adjudication (USCIS's decision step) pace. Reading this week's drop as evidence of a structural speedup would overstate what the data supports.

Looking at where cases currently sit in the pipeline (from the Stage durations, 30-day window): 43% of tracked cases are at 'Case Was Received and A Receipt Notice Was Sent', with a median of 89 days at that stage and an interquartile range (IQR, the spread from the 25th to 75th percentile) of 65 to 120 days across 28,931 cases. Another 25% are at a processing status with a median of 117 days and an IQR of 65 to 171 days across 17,055 cases. Together those two stages account for more than two-thirds of the active caseload. The approved stage shows a median of 65 days between the approval decision and the certificate across 6,296 cases, suggesting some administrative lag after the adjudication (the USCIS case decision step) itself.

About 8.8% of tracked cases are at 'Oath Ceremony Will Be Scheduled', with a median of 28 days at that stage across 5,925 cases. For N-600 applicants documenting derived citizenship, an oath ceremony can be part of the documentation process for certain applicants; cases reaching this status are close to completion. This is a distinct step from the N-400 naturalization ceremony.