Short answer
Yes. Limited nonimmigrant visa appointments are available again at the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi and the US Consulate General in Dubai, and new interview slots are released every Friday morning between 7:30 and 11:30. All immigrant visa services are still suspended. The UAE books through usvisascheduling.com rather than the AIS portal, and the $750 paid expedite does not operate at any post in the UAE.
At a glance
- Nonimmigrant visas
- Limited appointments available at Abu Dhabi and Dubai
- Immigrant visas
- Still suspended, with no resumption date announced
- When new slots appear
- Friday mornings, 7:30 to 11:30, US and UAE holidays excepted, plus occasional releases outside that window
- Where you book
- usvisascheduling.com, not ais.usvisa-info.com
- Posts
- Embassy Abu Dhabi and Consulate General Dubai. You choose one when you book
- Paid expedite
- Not available. The $750 pilot covers Mission Mexico and Mission Canada only
- Free expedite route
- Book the earliest regular date first, then submit an expedite request with proof
- Who can apply here
- Residents and nationals of the UAE. Third country applicants are directed home
What actually happened to UAE visa services
If you have spent 2026 refreshing an empty calendar in Abu Dhabi or Dubai, none of it was your account, your browser or your luck. It was staffing.
On 3 March 2026 the State Department ordered non-emergency US government employees to leave the UAE. An ordered departure is not a symbolic gesture. It physically removes the people who conduct interviews, so consular sections that lose staff to one stop scheduling the work those staff would have done. Routine visa services were suspended, appointments already on the books were cancelled, and the mission's notice said applicants would be contacted to reschedule when routine services resumed.
Through the spring and summer the mission published a run of security messages, and consular appointments were cancelled again for several days in mid-July. Both the Embassy and the Consulate General remain on ordered departure status today.
What changed is that the mission has since restarted part of the work. Its current published position, carried in the security messaging of 1 August 2026, is that limited nonimmigrant visa appointments are available and that all immigrant visa services remain suspended.
That sentence is doing a lot of work and it is worth reading precisely. It is not a return to normal operations. It is a reduced post releasing a reduced number of interview appointments, while a second category of visa work has not restarted at all. In practice that means the calendar is not empty any more, but what appears on it goes quickly, and it appears on a schedule.
Service status in the UAE has moved several times in 2026 and can move again with the regional security picture. The mission's own site is the only place any of this is authoritative, and we restate the position on this page whenever it changes. If you are reading this and the mission is saying something different, tell us and we will update it.
The Friday morning release window
Here is the part almost nobody tells applicants in the UAE, and it is published by the mission itself rather than inferred from forum posts.
The US Embassy in Abu Dhabi and the US Consulate General in Dubai release nonimmigrant visa interview appointments every Friday morning between 7:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., with the exception of US and UAE holidays. The mission also says it may occasionally release additional interview appointments outside that regular schedule.
Understand what that changes. In most countries slot release is genuinely unpredictable, which is why so much of the advice online amounts to "check often and hope". The UAE is one of the few missions in the world that has told you, in writing, when its calendar is loaded. If you have been checking on a Tuesday evening and finding nothing, you were not unlucky. You were looking on the wrong day.
| What you do | Why it matters in the UAE specifically |
|---|---|
| Have the account ready before Friday | DS-160 submitted, MRV fee paid and showing as received, profile complete. A release window is no use if you spend it filling in a form. The system will not show you an interview calendar until the fee is recognised. |
| Be signed in before 7:30 | Signing in is the slowest step and it is the one you can do in advance. Arriving at 7:35 to a login screen is how a four hour window becomes a four minute one. |
| Do not stop at 8:00 | The published window is four hours wide, not a single drop. Appointments continue to appear across it, and the later part is often less crowded than the first ten minutes. |
| Check both posts | Abu Dhabi and Dubai are separate consular sections with separate calendars. Applicants fixate on the one nearer home and never look at the other. A two hour drive is a small price for four months. |
| Keep checking on other days anyway | The mission reserves the right to release appointments outside the Friday window, and cancellations return to the pool whenever they happen. Friday is where the volume is, not where all of it is. |
Release window as published by the US Mission to the UAE. Retrieved 19 August 2026. Times are local. The mission can change the schedule without notice, so check its visas page before you plan your week around it.
Being told the schedule does not make it easy
A published release window helps you and it helps everyone else in the UAE reading the same page. The Friday window is the most competitive four hours of the week at these two posts precisely because it is public. Knowing when to look removes the guesswork; it does not remove the queue, and on many Fridays a post running reduced operations will release very little or nothing at all. If someone tells you that knowing the timing is the whole trick, they are selling you something.
The UAE is not on the portal most guides describe
This trips up more UAE applicants than anything else on this page, and it is invisible until it wastes an hour of your life.
Most online guidance about US visa appointments describes the AIS portal at ais.usvisa-info.com. That is the system used in India, Canada and a long list of other countries, and it is where phrases like "reschedule attempts remaining" and the familiar blue Continue screen come from.
The UAE does not use it. The mission moved to the current contractor's platform on 30 May 2025, after a booking and fee-payment freeze that ran from mid-May while the migration happened. The AIS site itself now states that visa information and appointment scheduling is no longer provided for the United Arab Emirates. UAE applicants schedule at usvisascheduling.com, and the mission's own support address for the country sits on that domain.
Three practical consequences:
- Screens and steps in AIS guides do not match. If a walkthrough tells you to click something you cannot find, the walkthrough is probably correct for a different country. It is not your account.
- Reschedule allowances are not the Indian ones. The widely quoted limits, such as India's single reschedule per MRV fee since January 2025, are AIS portal rules. Your own allowance is shown inside your UAE account, and that is the only number that applies to you. Read it before you spend a change, not after.
- Old bookmarks and old email links can point at the wrong system. Anyone who applied from the UAE before mid-2025 has stale links, and scam pages deliberately impersonate both platforms. Reach the scheduling site from the mission's own visas page rather than from search results or a message.
Coming to this from an Indian passport and Indian advice? Almost everything you have read about reschedule limits and slot behaviour was written for a different portal. Start with how rescheduling to an earlier date actually works, which sets out which rules are country-specific and which are not.
Who is allowed to apply in the UAE at all
For years the UAE was one of the busiest third country processing destinations on earth. Applicants from India and elsewhere flew in, interviewed in Abu Dhabi or Dubai, and flew home with a visa while the queue at home stretched into next year. A whole cottage industry grew up around it.
That route is largely closed. Under the State Department's guidance of 6 September 2025, updated on 10 October 2025, nonimmigrant visa applicants are directed to apply in their country of nationality or legal residence. Applicants who schedule elsewhere are told to expect significantly longer waits, that qualifying may be harder, and that fees already paid are neither refunded nor transferred to another post.
So the practical position in the UAE today:
- UAE citizens and UAE residence visa holders. The UAE is your country of nationality or legal residence, so Abu Dhabi and Dubai are your posts. Everything on this page is for you.
- Long term residents on employment, investor, golden or family visas. Same answer. Your residence is what places you here, not your passport.
- Visitors, tourists and people on entry permits. You are not resident in the UAE. Scheduling here is applying outside your country of residence, with all the consequences the guidance describes, and the money is not returned when it does not work.
We get asked to arrange UAE appointments for applicants living in India several times a month. The honest answer is the same every time: we will not chase a date at a post you are not supposed to apply at, because the likeliest outcome is that you spend the fee and the airfare and still get sent home. That is not a service, it is an expensive detour.
What is still not available, including the $750 lane
Two things applicants in the UAE keep being told exist here, and neither does.
Immigrant visa interviews
All immigrant visa services at the mission remain suspended, with no resumption date published. Nonimmigrant appointments restarting does not carry immigrant visa cases with them; they are separate tracks with separate staffing. If you are in an immigrant visa process at Abu Dhabi, the only thing worth watching is the mission's own updates.
The $750 paid expedite
Since 1 July 2026 the State Department has run a pilot letting B-1 and B-2 applicants pay $750 for an interview within ten business days. It only operates at missions the department has designated, and as of 19 August 2026 that list is Mission Mexico and Mission Canada. No post in the UAE participates. The department has said further locations may be added while the pilot runs, and the pilot is scheduled to close on 31 December 2026.
Read our full explainer on the $750 expedited appointment if you want the mechanics, or what happened when Canada was added for a picture of what designation actually changes at a post.
Where the UAE fraud is right now
Two live openings for fraud sit in this article. The first is the paid expedite: anyone offering to sell you a $750 fast track in Abu Dhabi or Dubai is selling something that does not exist at those posts, and when the pilot does not apply there is no fee to refund and no receipt to dispute. The second is the platform change: with the UAE on a different scheduling domain from the portal most guides describe, look-alike sites and payment pages are unusually effective here. Reach the scheduling site from the mission's own visas page, pay the MRV fee only inside your own account, and treat any request to send money to a personal account or a messaging app as the end of the conversation.
If you need an interview sooner than the calendar offers
The UAE posts run the ordinary expedited appointment process, which is free, discretionary and decided by the consular section. The sequence catches people out because it is not the order you would guess.
- Complete the DS-160 and pay the MRV fee.
- Book a regular interview on the earliest date the system will give you. Whatever it offers, take it. An expedite request attaches to an existing booking; it is not a way to book from nothing, and you cannot request one without a date in hand.
- Submit the expedite request through your scheduling account, with documentary evidence of the urgency.
- Keep the original appointment until a decision comes back. Requests are refused routinely, and giving up a confirmed date to chase an unconfirmed one is the worst trade in this process.
What consular sections generally accept is narrow and consistent: a medical emergency, the death or funeral of an immediate family member, or urgent unavoidable business travel with evidence. Students with a documented programme start date are often considered separately. Booked flights, a paid holiday, a wedding you want to attend and "my visa expires soon" are not urgency in the sense the consular section means, and submitting them tends to burn the one request you had.
If the expedite is refused, or your reason does not qualify, you are back to the same mechanism as everybody else: hold your date and keep trying to move it earlier. In the UAE that means Friday mornings, and it means persistence rather than cleverness.
Why the published wait time is not telling you much
The State Department publishes an interview wait time for every post, and applicants reasonably treat it as the answer to "how long will this take". At Abu Dhabi and Dubai right now it is closer to a rough indicator than a forecast, and it is worth understanding why before you plan a trip around it.
| Post | B-1/B-2 interview wait | For scale |
|---|---|---|
| Abu Dhabi | About 180 days | Toronto sits near 495 days and Sydney near 435. Abuja in Nigeria is around 15. The UAE is in the middle of the global range, not at the bad end of it |
| Dubai | About 150 days |
Figures as recorded from the State Department's wait time tool in August 2026. Retrieved 19 August 2026. They move week to week, and at a post running reduced operations they move more than most, so treat them as a rough indicator rather than a forecast.
The figure is built from how far out the next available appointment sits on the day it is measured. At a normally staffed post that is a fair proxy for the length of the queue. At a post running reduced operations after an ordered departure, where releases are concentrated into one morning a week, the same number can swing hard between one measurement and the next depending on whether it was taken before or after a Friday. The published figure and what you can actually book can differ substantially in both directions.
Two things follow. Check the official wait time tool for your post rather than quoting a number from an article, this one included. And treat what the booking calendar shows you on a Friday morning as the real answer, because it is.
How your options compare in the UAE
The choices in the UAE are not the same as in Canada or Mexico, because the government's paid lane is simply not on the table here. That leaves four, and the first one is free.
Four routes to an earlier interview in Abu Dhabi or Dubai
Costs exclude the US$185 MRV application fee, which everybody pays to the US government regardless. Third-party pricing changes, so verify with each provider directly.
| Option | Cost | What it actually does | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself on Friday mornings | Free | You sign in before 7:30 and work the published release window yourself, at both posts. | Anyone who can be at a screen on a Friday morning |
| Expedite request to the consular section | Free | A discretionary decision on documented urgency. Refused routinely, and you get one credible attempt. | Medical emergencies, funerals, documented urgent travel |
| Slot-availability websites | Free tier; paid alert plans, billed whether or not a date appears | Surfaces availability and alerts you. You still book it yourself. | Applicants who can act within seconds |
| All-in-one visa platforms | Service fee charged at checkout, before anything changes | Guided DS-160, document checks and appointment support in one platform. | First-time applicants wanting everything handled |
| Easy Visa Booking us | From $100, paid only on success | Our team takes on the rescheduling work for Abu Dhabi or Dubai and keeps working it until an earlier interview date opens. The wider your acceptable date range, the more often it moves. | Long waits, a fixed deadline, and no time to watch a portal |
The categories above are the alternatives you are already comparing, not endorsements. We have no commercial relationship with any provider in them, and pricing models change, so verify current terms directly. Note that the $750 government expedite, which would appear in this table for an applicant in Mexico or Canada, does not operate at any post in the UAE.
What our row gives you that the ones above it do not
- You pay only if the date actually moves. From $100, charged when an earlier interview is secured. An alert plan bills you every month for information whether or not anything opens. A platform fee is taken at checkout, before anything has changed. Ours is the only paid row where a result you did not get costs you nothing.
- The Friday morning stops being your problem. The free route is genuinely good in the UAE, but it asks you to be awake, signed in and free between 7:30 and 11:30 on a working morning, week after week, until something lands. Our team carries that work instead.
- Both posts, not just the convenient one. Abu Dhabi and Dubai hold separate calendars and most applicants only ever watch one. We look at the pair and tell you which is realistic for your dates.
- A wide date range is the biggest lever you control. If you can accept any date inside a broad window rather than one specific morning, the odds of moving your interview go up sharply. Tell us the widest range your travel plans allow and we will tell you honestly how it looks before you commit to anything.
- Nothing is asked on trust. A named founder, real support channels, published terms and refund policy, and a written statement that nobody can promise you a date. Read all of it before you speak to us.
If you are UAE resident, your travel is flexible and your Friday mornings are your own, do it yourself. That row is free, the release window is published, and this article has told you everything you need to work it. And if your reason for needing an earlier date is a genuine emergency with paperwork behind it, the free expedite request beats anything we or anyone else can offer you, so make that first.
The reader who should not pay anybody, including us, is the one with a valid appointment, a trip that is months away and a free Friday morning. You already hold the thing that is hard to get, and you have both the time and the published schedule to improve on it yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Are US visa appointments available in Abu Dhabi and Dubai right now?
Limited nonimmigrant visa appointments are available. The US Mission to the UAE has been on ordered departure since March 2026 and routine visa services were suspended, but the mission's own security messaging now states that limited nonimmigrant visa appointments are available while all immigrant visa services remain suspended. Limited means exactly that: appointments exist, but far fewer of them than a normally staffed post would release, and they are gone quickly.
When are new US visa appointment slots released in the UAE?
The US Embassy in Abu Dhabi and the US Consulate General in Dubai release nonimmigrant visa interview appointments every Friday morning between 7:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., US and UAE holidays excepted. The mission also says it may occasionally release additional appointments outside that schedule. This is published by the mission itself, and it is the single most useful fact an applicant in the UAE can know.
Which website do I use to book a US visa appointment in the UAE?
The UAE uses usvisascheduling.com, not the AIS portal at ais.usvisa-info.com that serves India, Canada and many other countries. The UAE moved to the current contractor's system on 30 May 2025 and the AIS site now states that it no longer provides appointment scheduling for the United Arab Emirates. Guides written for the AIS portal describe screens and reschedule rules that do not exist on the system you will actually be using.
Can I fly to Dubai or Abu Dhabi to get an earlier US visa interview?
In almost all cases no. Since the State Department's guidance of 6 September 2025, updated on 10 October 2025, nonimmigrant visa applicants are directed to apply in their country of nationality or legal residence. Applicants who schedule outside it are told to expect significantly longer waits and that qualifying may be harder, and fees paid are neither refunded nor transferred. The UAE was one of the most heavily used third country processing destinations in the world before that guidance, which is exactly why it changed.
Can I pay the $750 expedite fee in the UAE?
No. The State Department's expedited appointment pilot is running only at designated missions, and as of 19 August 2026 those are Mission Mexico and Mission Canada. No post in the UAE participates, so no fee will buy you a faster interview in Abu Dhabi or Dubai. The pilot is scheduled to end on 31 December 2026, and the department has said further locations may be added during the testing period.
What can I do if I need an interview sooner than the calendar offers?
The UAE posts operate the ordinary expedited appointment process. You first book a regular interview on the earliest date the system will give you, then submit an expedite request explaining the urgency with documentary evidence. It is free, it is discretionary, and it is decided by the consular section rather than by anything you pay. Genuine medical emergencies, funerals of immediate family and unavoidable business travel are the usual grounds. A holiday booking is not.
Are immigrant visa and green card interviews happening in the UAE?
No. The mission's current position is that all immigrant visa services remain suspended, with no resumption date announced. That is a separate track from nonimmigrant visas and it has not reopened alongside them. If you are in an immigrant visa process at Abu Dhabi, watch the mission's own updates rather than any third party, because nothing anyone outside the government does will move that queue.
The bottom line
The UAE spent most of 2026 as one of the hardest places in the world to get a US visa interview, for a reason that had nothing to do with demand. A post that has lost staff to an ordered departure cannot interview people, and no amount of refreshing changes that.
What has changed is that nonimmigrant appointments are being released again, in limited numbers, on a schedule the mission publishes: Friday mornings between 7:30 and 11:30. If you take one thing from this page, take that, and take the fact that Abu Dhabi and Dubai run separate calendars you can both look at.
Be equally clear about what has not changed. Immigrant visa services are still suspended. The $750 paid lane does not operate here and cannot be bought from anyone. And the UAE is no longer a place to fly into for a faster interview, whatever anyone offers to arrange for you.
We have started taking UAE cases again now that there is genuinely something to work with. If your Friday mornings are not free, that is what we are for, and if they are, this article has told you how to use them without paying anyone.
What nobody can promise you
Nobody outside the US government can guarantee an interview slot, a timeframe, or a visa decision. We cannot either, and in the UAE specifically we cannot promise that a given Friday will produce anything at all, because a post running reduced operations decides how much it releases and when. What we offer is that the work gets done properly and that you pay only if it produces a result.
Sources
- US Embassy and Consulate in the United Arab Emirates, Visas. Friday 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. appointment release window, the occasional additional releases, and the UAE scheduling contact at usvisascheduling.com. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- US Embassy and Consulate in the United Arab Emirates, Security Alert: US Embassy Abu Dhabi and US Consulate General Dubai, 1 August 2026. Limited nonimmigrant visa appointments available, all immigrant visa services suspended, mission on ordered departure status. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- US Embassy and Consulate in the United Arab Emirates, Important Notice: Suspension of Routine Visa Services. The original suspension of routine visa services and the instruction that cancelled applicants will be contacted to reschedule. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- US Embassy and Consulate in the United Arab Emirates, Travel Advisory: United Arab Emirates, 3 March 2026. Ordered departure of non-emergency US government employees, which is what took consular staffing down. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- Gulf News, UAE travellers alert: major change to US visa appointment system starting May 30. The UAE's migration off the previous appointment platform onto the current contractor's system, and the booking freeze around it. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- US Department of State, Nonimmigrant Visa Expedited Appointment Pilot Program. The participating post list. Mission Mexico and Mission Canada only, and the 31 December 2026 end date. No UAE post appears on it. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- US Department of State, Adjudicating Nonimmigrant Visa (NIV) Applicants in Their Country of Residence. 6 September 2025, updated 10 October 2025. Applicants are directed to their country of nationality or legal residence, and fees are not refunded or transferred. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- Afno Visa Guide, US visa appointment wait times: United Arab Emirates. August 2026 record of the State Department wait time tool: Abu Dhabi about 180 days and Dubai about 150 days for interview-required B-1/B-2. A secondary record of an official figure, so check the official tool as well. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
- US Department of State, Visa Appointment Wait Times. The official interview wait by post. Treat the UAE figures with care while the mission is running reduced operations. Retrieved 19 August 2026.
Published 19 August 2026. Reviewed whenever the mission changes its published service status or its appointment release schedule. This article is general information about a US government scheduling process and is not legal or immigration advice.
A Friday morning in the UAE, or someone doing it for you
If you can be at a screen on Friday morning with your account already open, do it yourself. That is genuinely the best free option in the UAE and this article exists so you can use it. If you cannot, because you are working, travelling or in a different time zone, our team can take on the rescheduling work for Abu Dhabi or Dubai instead. Tell us your post, your current date and your deadline, and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth paying us at all.
- From $100, and you pay only if we secure you an earlier date
- The wider the date range you can accept, the more often we can move it
- No guarantee of a date, stated plainly before you decide anything
Easy Visa Booking is an independent scheduling assistance service, not affiliated with the US Department of State, any US Embassy or Consulate, CGI Federal or the AIS portal. All appointments are made through the official portal.