N-400 Total Wait Doubles to 410 Days as Pending Backlog Climbs to 342,560
Cases approved in the week of Oct 19 waited a median of 410 days from filing — more than double the 187-day median recorded in the same week last year. The pending backlog grew 4.4% in the past 28 days, with new filings entering the queue faster than completions are clearing it.
N-400 naturalization applicants approved in the week of Oct 19, 2026 waited a median of 410 days from the date USCIS received their case to approval — compared with 187 days in the same week a year ago, a year-over-year increase of 119.3%. Among the 867 approved cases with a known filing date, 79% waited longer than one full year. Meanwhile, 342,560 cases remain pending as of Oct 26, up from 328,029 twenty-eight days earlier. Every wait figure in this brief is measured on approved cases only; none of it describes how long those pending cases have waited so far.
- The total wait median for N-400 cases approved the week of Oct 19 was 410 days, up from 187 days in the same week last year — a 119.3% year-over-year increase.
- 79% of approved cases with a known filing date waited longer than one full year, and the 90th percentile reached 521 days.
- The pending backlog stood at 342,560 cases as of Oct 26, up 14,531 (4.4%) from 28 days earlier — new filings are entering the queue faster than completions are clearing it.
- The final-stage wait (time from the last status update to approval) was 41 days this week, well below the 116-day reading from the same week last year, though the 8-week regression (R² = 0.37) is too weak to support a confident trend call.
- Cases filed in May 2026 — 25 weeks ago — have a cumulative approval rate of only 2.1%, illustrating how far most recent filers are from the front of the queue.
410 days: the wait has more than doubled in a year
N-400 cases approved the week of Oct 19 waited a median of 410 days from the date USCIS received the application to approval, with the 25th percentile (p25) at 373 days and the 75th percentile (p75) at 467 days. A year ago, in the same week, the median was 187 days across 3,397 approved cases. This week's sample was 872 approvals, suggesting a meaningful reduction in weekly throughput alongside the longer waits. Among the 867 cases with a known filing date, 79% waited longer than one full year. As of Oct 26, 342,560 N-400 cases remain pending, up from 328,029 twenty-eight days earlier — none of those pending cases are captured in the wait figures above, which measure only cases that have already been approved.
The total-wait series has risen steadily from 348 days the week of Aug 3 to 410 days this week, a 62-day climb over roughly 11 weeks. The trend accelerated after Aug 24, crossing 390 days in early September and holding above 400 since late September. The most recent two weeks (409 and 410 days) suggest the pace of increase may be flattening, but the median has risen in 10 of the past 11 weeks and has not reversed.
Eleven weeks of rising waits, with no reversal
The week-by-week record makes the trend concrete. The total-wait median opened at 348 days on Aug 3, moved to 354 days over each of the next two weeks, then rose to 372 days on Aug 24. It crossed 390 days the week of Sep 7 and has not come back below that level. The most recent readings — 406 days (Sep 28), 421 days (Oct 5), 409 days (Oct 12), and 410 days (Oct 19) — suggest the climb has slowed but the median has risen in 10 of the past 11 weeks, with no week printing a sustained reversal.
The spread around that median is wide. The interquartile range (p25 to p75) this week runs from 373 to 467 days, meaning even the faster quarter of approved cases waited more than a full year. The 90th percentile stands at 521 days, roughly a year and a half. Attorneys and applicants using these figures as a planning window should treat 373 to 467 days as the typical range for cases that have cleared, not as a guarantee for pending ones.
Even the fastest quarter of approved cases this week waited more than a full year from filing to approval.
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