New EB-5 Fees Take Effect November 30, 2026
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USCIS published a final rule on September 30, 2026 that resets the filing fees across the EB-5 immigrant investor program. The new fees apply to any application, petition or request postmarked on or after November 30, 2026.
That sentence is the whole practical point of this article. The date that decides your fee is not the date USCIS opens your envelope or the date it enters your case. It is the postmark.
What the new fees are
These are the amounts set by the rule itself.
For individual investors
| Filing | New fee |
|---|---|
| Form I-526, standalone investor petition | $7,615 |
| Form I-526E, regional center investor petition, initial filing | $7,850 |
| Form I-526E, amendments | $7,775 |
| Form I-527, amendment to a legacy Form I-526 | $10,330 |
| Form I-829, petition to remove conditions | $5,000 |
A $75 EB-5 technology fee is built into the Form I-526 and initial Form I-526E amounts above, not charged separately. Separately, an investor petition carries an additional $1,100 EB-5 Integrity Fund fee.
For regional centers and the people around them
| Filing | New fee |
|---|---|
| Form I-956, regional center designation, initial | $44,115 |
| Form I-956, amendment | $9,835 |
| Form I-956F, approval of an investment offering | $42,675 |
| Form I-956G, annual statement | $2,165 |
| Form I-956H, bona fides attestation, per person | $65 |
| Form I-956K, promoter registration, per person | $2,165 |
The regional center annual Integrity Fund fee stays at $20,000, or $10,000 for a regional center with twenty or fewer investors in new commercial enterprises in the preceding fiscal year.
How big an increase this is
USCIS puts it in its own words in the rule. Across the existing forms, fees rise by about 70.7 percent, which works out to roughly $2,945.90 more per filing on a weighted average, affecting about 16,600 EB-5 filings a year.
The agency explains the increase as full cost recovery. Its revised estimate puts EB-5 program costs at about $105 million a year against about $56.6 million of revenue under the fees being replaced.
How this differs from the 2025 fee change
We wrote about EB-5 fees once before, in December 2025, and the two are opposite events. That one was a court order: a partial stay of the 2024 fee rule sent EB-5 fees back down to the schedule that had been in effect until 31 March 2024, and USCIS has been collecting those lower amounts since. This rule replaces them. The regional center application is the clearest illustration. Its current fee is $17,795, and from 30 November an initial filing costs $44,115 while an amendment costs $9,835. One goes up sharply, the other falls.
What the rule does not change
It does not change the investment amounts. The qualifying investment stays at $1,050,000, or $800,000 for a targeted employment area or an infrastructure project. This rule is about what you pay USCIS to file, not what you invest.
It does not change eligibility, job creation requirements, or processing times. Nothing in it makes a petition easier or harder to approve.
It does not change the priority date or visa availability picture. Those move with the Visa Bulletin, not with a fee rule.
One trap worth knowing about
If you look up EB-5 fees in the Code of Federal Regulations, you may find amounts that USCIS is not actually charging. The agency says so plainly in the rule: the EB-5 fees printed at 8 CFR 106.2 reflect an older fee rule and do not match what it currently collects.
The operative schedule is USCIS Form G-1055, the agency's fee schedule, which this rule updates. Check the amount there, or with your attorney, before writing a check. A filing submitted with the wrong fee can be rejected, and a rejection around a deadline is expensive in a way the fee difference never is.
What to do before November 30
If your petition is ready now, send it now. Twenty-two days is enough time to file something that is already prepared, and the saving is real money.
If it is not ready, do not rush it. A petition filed incomplete to beat a fee increase is a false economy. A request for evidence costs months; the fee difference costs a few thousand dollars. File it properly.
Keep proof of the postmark. Use a service that gives you a dated receipt and keep it with your file. If there is ever a question about which fee applied, that receipt answers it.
If you are a regional center, the arithmetic is different. The jump on Form I-956 and Form I-956F is large in absolute terms. Any offering or designation filing you were planning for early December is worth looking at this week.
Last reviewed: November 8, 2026.
Sources
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Employment-Based Immigrant Visa, Fifth Preference (EB-5) Fee Rule, final rule, 91 FR 61940, published September 30, 2026, effective November 30, 2026, CIS no. 2846-26, DHS docket no. USCIS-2025-0139
- Fee amounts as set in the rule's regulatory text at 8 CFR 106.2(d)
- USCIS Form G-1055, Fee Schedule