Prediction methodology

How the release-timing model works

This page explains the forecasting logic behind the May 2026 release estimate and the official source data used to build it.

English 中文 हिन्दी

BackForecast page

Current model

Backtested business-day forecast

Each forecast uses the latest 8 official releases from the same release month only.
Candidate dates are business days only, so Saturdays and Sundays cannot rank.
The main signal is a business-day-index kernel with sigma 1.75.
Blend weights: 70% business-day index, 20% ordinal weekday pattern, 10% recency.
Conditioning removes already-passed business days in the active release month and renormalizes the remaining probability mass.

Backtest

Rolling holdout results

24 eligible same-month holdout targets were used in the rolling evaluation.
Top-3 hit rate: 42%.
Top-1 hit rate: 13%.
Mean absolute business-day error: 2.8.
Mean log loss: 2.61.

Official sources

Government data only

Release timestamps for May 2026 come from the official Department of State Visa Bulletin archive and each issue's official PDF metadata. Filing-chart companion links come from USCIS.