The Bureau of Consular Affairs has posted a system-maintenance alert advising that the Consular Electronic Application Center (CEAC) will be offline from 00:01 EDT on Wednesday, 16 September 2026, until at least 17 September. During the outage, applicants will be unable to access or submit the immigrant-visa Form DS-260 or upload civil documents. Although a routine update, the blackout lands in the final two weeks of the fiscal year when many consular sections race to issue visas before annual quota numbers reset on 1 October. Immigration attorneys warn that even a one-day delay could push clients beyond “documentarily qualified” cut-off dates published in the monthly Visa Bulletin, forcing them to restart parts of the process. For employers managing green-card sponsorships, the immediate action item is to ensure any DS-260 drafts are submitted before midnight, 15 September. Where that is impossible, practitioners should prepare explanatory letters to the National Visa Center and the relevant post requesting that case-deadlines be tolled. Applicants with scheduled interviews on 16–17 September should print confirmation pages in advance; consular officers have discretion to proceed if evidence of prior completion is available. The outage does not affect non-immigrant DS-160 filings, but stakeholders should expect sporadic slow-downs on that portal as shared infrastructure is patched. The Department says maintenance may be extended “beyond this time,” so mobility teams should monitor the CEAC homepage and NVC social-media feeds for updates before advising travelling employees to depart for interviews. Long-term, the incident underscores the fragility of the Department’s ageing visa-processing architecture. A multi-year modernisation project—CEAC NextGen—remains in early procurement stages, meaning similar brown-outs are likely through at least 2027.
Source: U.S. Department of State – CEAC
