B1 B2 Visa Family Appointment Wait Time

Four people. Four DS-160 forms. Four appointment slots that may not open on the same day, in the same week, or even in the same month.

That's the part nobody warns you about. If you've started looking into a B1/B2 visitor visa for a family trip, you've probably already hit the headline number: the median worldwide wait for a B1/B2 interview appointment is currently about seven weeks. Seven weeks sounds fine. You picture booking in March and flying in summer.

Then you check your actual consulate and it looks nothing like seven weeks. It might be three days. It might be months. In some places it's well over a year.

Getting those two numbers straight is step one. Step two is the bit almost every guide skips: what happens when the people who need appointments are your spouse, your kids, and your mother-in-law, all at once.

What the B1/B2 wait time looks like right now: the worldwide median vs. your consulate

Seven weeks is a global median. It's a decent headline and a terrible planning tool.

A median just means half the world's consulates are doing better than that and half are doing worse. It tells you nothing about the desk you'll actually be standing at. If you're applying in India, or anywhere else with heavy demand, your real number could be far above the average. If you're applying somewhere quieter, it could be far below it.

Wait-time estimates are worked out from each consulate's workload — how many applicants it's handling, how many officers it has, how many slots it can open in a given stretch. A big post drowning in applications moves slowly. A small post with lighter traffic moves fast. Same visa, same paperwork, wildly different queues.

So when someone tells you "the wait is about seven weeks," the honest reply is: for whom, and where?

Why the number swings from a few days to several months or years depending on where you apply

There's no single global queue for B1/B2 interviews. Each consulate runs its own.

That's why the spread is so enormous. One 2026 processing-times source put London's estimated B1/B2 interview appointment wait at just 3 days, while noting it can change. Other consulates in high-demand countries are looking at several months, and a few are looking at a year or more.

A few things push a post toward the slow end:

• High local demand. More applicants per officer means a longer line.
• Limited interview capacity. Some posts simply have fewer windows to fill.
• Backlogs that haven't cleared. Once a queue builds up, it takes a while to burn down.
• Seasonal squeezes. Peak travel seasons pack the calendar.

And here's the frustrating bit: these numbers move. A consulate that's quick this month can slow down next month, and the other way round. Anyone quoting you a fixed figure without a date attached is quoting you history, not a plan.

Booking a B1/B2 appointment for a family: what the scheduling portal actually lets you do

This is where the official pages go quiet and you're left figuring it out yourself.

There isn't a documented, published "book the whole family at once" button. The research doesn't confirm a combined family appointment option, so don't count on one existing. What's realistic is this: each family member is their own applicant. Each person has their own DS-160, their own profile in the scheduling system, and their own appointment slot.

Practically, that means you're running several bookings side by side, and slots can open at different times for different people. One person's calendar might show availability on Tuesday; your spouse's might show nothing until the following week.

What you *can* control:

1. Create a profile for every family member early. Don't wait until you have everyone's documents in hand. Get the accounts set up.
2. Keep each DS-160 confirmation number handy. You'll need the right one matched to the right person every time you log in.
3. Check availability often, and be ready to move. If a slot appears for one person, book it. Waiting for a matching set of four is how families end up with nothing.
4. Expect staggered dates. Plan around the idea that your family may interview across two or three different days.

That last point matters more than it sounds. If your travel date is fixed, "everyone gets a slot eventually" isn't good enough — you need everyone's slot to land *before* your trip.

Do siblings and children need their own appointments? Age rules, interview waivers, and the under-14 question

Short answer: siblings are treated as individual applicants. There's no separate published wait category for brothers and sisters. Each one falls under the same consulate-level B1/B2 estimate as everyone else — which, depending on the post, can run from a few days to several months or even years.

So no, siblings aren't guaranteed the same appointment date. If that's a problem for your travel plans, plan for it now rather than finding out in the portal.

The one genuine wrinkle is age. Applicants under 14 show up as an exception category in at least one 2026 processing-times article. That exception usually relates to whether a young child has to appear in person at all, or whether they can be handled through an interview waiver process instead. The exact rules depend on your consulate, and they change, so read your specific post's page rather than a general guide — including this one.

If you have a mix of adults, teenagers, and little ones, expect the little ones to follow a different path through the system than the adults. That's normal. It just means your booking isn't going to happen in one neat transaction.

When new B1/B2 slots get released — consulates that drop appointments on a set weekly schedule

Some consulates don't trickle slots out. They release them in batches on a schedule.

At least one consulate opens new B1/B2 appointments every Wednesday at 8 a.m., based on availability, skipping U.S. holidays and that country's holidays. If you know your consulate works this way, Wednesday morning becomes your standing appointment with your laptop.

Other posts release slots less predictably, and some wait-time trackers refresh daily from the State Department's Global Visa Wait Times data — which is worth watching if you want to see the trend rather than a single snapshot.

The takeaway: figure out your consulate's rhythm. If there's a day of the week when slots appear, that's the day you log in early with everyone's passport numbers, DS-160 numbers, and payment details sitting in front of you. Slots at popular posts can vanish in minutes.

Appointment wait time vs. visa processing time: two different numbers families keep confusing

These two get mixed up constantly, and the mix-up ruins trip plans.

Appointment wait time is how long you wait for the interview itself. That's the seven-week median, the London 3-day figure, the several-months-to-years range at busy posts. It's the queue to get in the door.

Visa processing time is what happens *after* the interview — the review, the decision, and getting your passport back with the visa inside. That's a completely separate clock, with its own numbers.

They are not the same figure. A short appointment wait doesn't mean quick approval, and a long appointment wait doesn't automatically mean a slow decision afterward. Add both together, then add mailing time on top.

If you've ever asked "how many days will it take for our family's visas to be approved?" — this is why nobody can give you one clean number. The wait estimate only tells you how long until the interview. Approval is a different measurement, and it should be checked against your consulate's own processing figures, not a global average.

Building a realistic timeline for a family trip, working backwards from your travel date

Start at the end and walk backwards. Grab a calendar and do it properly.

• Step 1: Write down your travel date — the day you actually need passports in hand.
• Step 2: Subtract visa processing time for your consulate. Leave room, not a best-case guess.
• Step 3: Subtract your consulate's current appointment wait. Check the live number the day you do this, not a blog figure.
• Step 4: Subtract a buffer of a few weeks. Staggered family appointments and postal delays eat buffers alive.
• Step 5: Whatever date you land on is when you should already have DS-160s submitted and profiles created.

If that date is in the past, your timeline is tight and you should treat every step as urgent. If your trip is tied to something immovable — a wedding, a graduation, a first grandchild being born — start earlier than feels reasonable. Way earlier.

And if only some of your family gets slots before your travel date, you have real choices to make: keep checking for the stragglers, travel in two waves, or move the trip. None of those are fun, but deciding them early beats deciding them at the airport.

Expedited and emergency appointments when the family can't all wait

There is an emergency appointment process, and it exists for genuine crises — urgent medical situations, a death in the family, certain time-critical business matters.

It is a request, not a switch you flip. You ask, you explain, and someone decides. A family holiday isn't on the list, however much you've been looking forward to it, and it won't get you moved to the front. If your situation genuinely qualifies, apply through your consulate's own process and be ready to show evidence.

For everyone else, the honest answer is: your lever is timing, not urgency. Apply early, watch the portal, and book what opens.

What to prepare while you wait: documents and passports for every family member

Use the waiting time. You'll need most of this anyway, and having it ready means you can move the second a slot appears.

• A valid passport for every traveler, including the kids. Check expiry dates now — many countries want months of validity beyond your travel dates.
• Each person's DS-160 confirmation page.
• Visa fee payment receipts for each applicant.
• Photos meeting the current size and format rules.
• Documents showing ties to home — employment, school enrollment, property, family — for the adults.
• Birth certificates for children.
• Consent documentation if only one parent is traveling with a child. Check your consulate's requirements.
• A single folder, physical or digital, with all of it in one place. Then it's a two-minute job to grab what you need at booking time.

Where to check live wait times daily (and why blog posts quoting a single number go stale)

Here's the rule that solves most of this: the only number that matters is the one on the official page on the day you check it.

The State Department publishes live wait-time data for consulates worldwide through its Global Visa Wait Times page, and many third-party trackers refresh from that source daily. Your consulate's own appointment portal — the one you log into to book — is the other page worth opening regularly.

Everything else, including figures in articles like this one, is a snapshot. Wait times shift as workloads and capacity change, so a number written several weeks ago may already be wrong for your post.

Open the official page for your specific consulate today. Not the country page, not the regional average — your consulate. Write the number down, check it again in a week, and watch which way it's moving before you lock in flights.

And once the visas are sorted and the passports are safely back in the drawer, that's when the fun planning starts. Have a browse through Baby Sock Shoe's first-shoes guides and travel-day tips for flying with little ones — because the appointment wait is the hard part, and the flight with a toddler is a whole different adventure.