The government have now published the new visa bulletin which is for February interviews. There has been some good movement in the regions and some countries – which is a sign I was hoping to see. For example, the Asia region number doubled to 30,000 which is effectively making the whole region current. I say that because our poll of selectee numbers suggests there are very few if any DV2026 AS numbers above 30,000. As we know, many people in Asia region are affected by the travel ban, and whilst that is horrific for those people, I wanted to see the government making good progress on the VB numbers as early as possible, so that redistribution of visas could happen. This move of numbers for AS region is positive for that reason, and also good for cases that can be interviewed before Trump introduces any further expansion of the bans.

Africa region moved up quite well also, and both country exceptions got a good increase. Europe also got an increase, but I’m sure some EU selectees would have liked to have seen more movement. However, those people should be cheering for AS and AF to move faster in order to benefit from redistribution of unused visas.

OC and SA got small increases also after having seen the starting numbers repeated several months ion a row – so that should offer some encouragement to those regions also (who again, can benefit from the redistribution of unused visas).

So – although the VB was later than expected this month, it is positive to see the numbers increase – and I will choose to look at that positivity rather than the horrific travel ban news.

Those that are current, and have forms processed early enough, can normally expect their 2NL in the next 2 to 3 weeks from now. This is supposed to be the same every month. VB from the 8th to the 15th of each month, and 2NLs in the second half of the month. For the last few months there have been 2NLs in daily batches, but we seem to be moving to a more normal procedure where almost all the 2NLs are sent before the end of the month, with just a handful being sent earlier this month. I would normally expect all the interview 2NLs to have all been sent by the end of this month, but we can see recently they are exceeding that to try and get as many interviews in as possible. They can be sent right up until the last day of the month, and even the first few days of the following month during exceptional times. One quick point, the 2NLs tend to come out in an approximate alphabetical order, based on the city name of the embassy. So, Addis and Accra tend to be early, and an embassy such as Yaounde would be later. As ever, just be patient…

To those new to looking at VBs, let me explain what the “except” XXX country means – and you can also read this post on how to read the visa bulletin.