- The United States officially made the Visa Bond Program permanent on August third, twenty twenty-six.
- Consular officers can demand bonds up to twenty thousand dollars for applicants from fifty designated nations.
- New ESTA regulations now require ten years of email history and five years of social media data.
No new countries joined the Visa Waiver Program in August. Instead, the Department of State made its Visa Bond Program permanent on Aug. 3, 2026, and DHS tightened the Electronic System for Travel Authorization.
The final rule says the 2025 pilot generated enough data to support the bond as a compliance tool. It also rewrites 22 CFR part 41.
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"The 2025 visa bond pilot. has provided sufficient data to suggest that a visa bond program is an effective tool for enforcing compliance among bonded visa holders. This final rule amends 22 CFR part 41 to make permanent a Visa Bond Program."
Consular officers can require B-1/B-2 applicants from 50 designated countries, mostly in Africa, to post bonds of $10,000, $15,000 or $20,000. Those rules do not touch visa-free travelers. They are exempt.
DHS also pushed ESTA further toward its mobile app. The app uses liveness detection, facial recognition and NFC chip scanning to check identity. The data sweep now reaches 5 years of social media identifiers, 10 years of email history and 5 years of phone numbers, a shift that grew out of a December 2025 proposal now being folded in.
A DHS spokesperson said in July:
"The administration is working diligently to ensure that the electronic authorization process is not a loophole, but a high-security vetting tool that utilizes state-of-the-art AI and facial biometrics to safeguard our borders."
The 42-country list stayed unchanged in August
Travelers from the 42 participating countries, including the UK, Japan, Germany, Israel and Qatar, can still use visa-free entry if they clear ESTA. The total did not move in August. It stayed flat.
Qatar entered the program on Sept. 24, 2024, with entries starting late that year. Romania followed in 2025, and visa-free travel there was fully operational by the start of 2026.
Bulgaria is still chasing the threshold
Bulgarian officials have said they are nearing the 3% visa refusal threshold needed for entry. No official DHS designation has been made this month. That leaves the next expansion decision still open.
