Where does your priority date sit?
The Visa Bulletin is a monthly table that decides whose turn it is, and it is written for people who already understand it. Put in your category and the priority date from the I-797, and this tells you where you stand in the Philippine line — plus the one thing in each category that can quietly move your relative into a longer queue.
What it will not do is predict a year. The Philippine family lines are the longest in the world and they do not advance at a steady rate — a category can sit still for months and then jump, or retrogress and go backwards. Anyone offering you a date is guessing.
F4 · Philippines · Final Action · October 2026
May 15, 2008
Visas are being issued to people who filed on or before this date. Enter a priority date above to see where it sits.
Final Action Dates from the October 2026 Visa Bulletin, Philippines column, family-sponsored preferences. These change every month — confirm against the current bulletin before acting on anything here. Dates of Filing (the other chart) can differ, and USCIS says each month which chart adjustment-of-status applicants may use.
Making sense of the answer
If the categories themselves are unfamiliar — why a married child waits longer than a sibling, what the second chart is for, and what happens when the petitioner naturalizes — the Visa Bulletin explained walks through the whole table in plain language. To work out who you are even able to petition in the first place, start with who you can petition.
For a parent specifically, there is no queue at all — parents of adult US citizens are immediate relatives, which is a different and much faster process: petitioning a parent. And if the wait in your category is measured in decades, it is worth reading the visitor-visa route honestly before pinning a family's plans on it.