Community Report · November 2026
Standard citizenship waits have held near 137 days for three months.
Standard citizenship decisions issued in October 2026 took a median 137 days (n=64) from application, after 134 in August and 140 in September. The median rose every month from December to September; it is still 71% above October 2025 (80 days). Priority decisions still take days, not months: half of the 11 reported as priority took 7 to 21 days, a small sample. Standard ILR is 56 days over the last 90 days (n=39).
Published 8 November 2026 · Data through 2026-10-31 · Methodology · Download CSV
October in numbers
137 days
Standard citizenship median (n=64)
+71% vs October 2025 (80 days) · 134, 140, 137 in Aug, Sep, Oct
7 to 21 days
Priority citizenship, middle half (n=11)
Small sample, below our n=20 bar for a median · fastest 4, slowest 83
56 days
Standard ILR median (n=39)
the 90 days to 31 October 2026 · 71 days (n=31) in the October edition
75%
of SET(O) work-route applicants paid for a faster service
267 of 355 · partner route 41% (116 of 286) · a share, not a median
Standard citizenship: the wait by decision month
Median days from application to decision, by the month the decision was issued. Standard service only: every decision before July 2026 was standard, and priority decisions are shown separately below. Thirteen months of data, through 2026-10-31.
Recent months settle slightly as people add their timelines. All services combined, October is 133 days (n=80), the figure comparable with editions before October 2026.
Who got a decision in October? Mostly May applicants.
All services combined. A further 16 decisions were on applications made in September or October (7 with a median of 7 days and 9 with a median of 11 days). The other 5 came from application months with fewer than 10 cases each.
- Spread on standard service in October: fastest 86 days, 25th percentile 128, 75th percentile 145, 90th percentile 156, slowest 194 days. n=64. Half of standard decisions landed in a 17-day band.
- Route made little difference (all services): Other 130 days (n=38); Via ILR 130 days (n=21). Other routes had fewer than 10 decisions each.
Priority citizenship
Still days, not months, but on a small sample this month
The Home Office citizenship priority service costs +£500 for a target decision within 30 working days of biometrics, on new applications only, and opened in July 2026. Only 11 October decisions were reported as priority, fewer than the 20 we need before treating a median as reliable, so this month we publish the range rather than a headline median: half took between 7 and 21 days from application. That is 14% of the 80 October decisions, a count, not a median.
| Decision month | Priority median (as reported) | Standard median |
|---|---|---|
| July 2026 | 5 days · n=7small sample | 130 days · n=102 |
| August 2026 | 8 days · n=15small sample | 134 days · n=80 |
| September 2026 | 7 days · n=28 | 140 days · n=89 |
| October 2026 | 8 days · n=11small sample | 137 days · n=64 |
Months with fewer than 20 priority decisions are flagged as a small sample. September is restated with this edition's data: 28 decisions reported as priority, median 7 days.
- October spread: fastest 4 days, 25th percentile 7, 75th percentile 21, 90th percentile 25, slowest 83 days. n=11. On a sample this small, one or two late reports can move these figures by several days.
- Different clocks. Our figure counts days from application. The Home Office target counts working days from biometrics, so the two are not a like-for-like comparison.
- Treat this as indicative. This is a small, self-selected sample, and people with a fast decision are more likely to post it. The 30-working-day figure is a target, not a guarantee.
- Decisions classified as priority by timing. 5 more October decisions took 30 days or fewer from biometrics without being reported as priority. Our citizenship tool classifies them as priority too, which gives 16 priority decisions with a median of 8 days, still a small sample. We lead with the 11 reported ones, because a rule capped at 30 days cannot be used to measure how long priority takes.
- Start date. We say July 2026 rather than a precise day: the gov.uk applicant guidance says 20 July 2026, but two applications in our data that were reported as priority were made before that date.
The rest of the citizenship journey
Application → biometrics
8 days
Median gap from application submission to biometric enrolment (n=2,930).
CS email → Atlas email
0 days
Median gap between the informal "a decision has been made" reply and the official approval email. 90% within 11 days (max 61, n=492).
Approval → ceremony
22 days
Median wait from approval to ceremony (n=640). 67% choose a private ceremony. 17 ceremonies were reported in October.
Refusal rate (self-reported)
0.5%
10 of 1,967 decisions. Treat as a floor, since refused applicants under-report.
ILR: standard down to 56 days, on a small sample
standard service · the 12 months to 31 October 2026The ILR figures use the same method as the October edition, on a corpus that grew from 2,672 to 2,842 confirmed decisions across both datasets. Standard ILR is 56 days this edition (n=39) against 71 in October (n=31), and the 90th percentile fell from 173 to 139 days. Both rest on fewer than 40 decisions, so read it as a direction to watch, not a precise figure.
By service level, last 90 days
| Service | Median | P90 | n |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standardincluded in fee | 56 days | 139 days | 39 |
| Priority+£500 | 5 days | 6 days | 63 |
| Super Priority+£1,000 | 1 days | 10 days | 26 |
A further 12 decisions in the same window had no service level recorded (median 7 days) and are left out of the table.
By route, standard service, last 12 months
Other ILR forms: 71 days on just 4 decisions, too few to treat as reliable, shown for completeness only.
Application to biometrics: median 5 days (n=965). Refusal rate (self-reported, treat as a floor): 0.9% (8 of 875 decisions).
Glossary & methodology
CS email: reply from UKVI Customer Service confirming "a decision has been made", an unofficial early heads-up. · Atlas email: the official automated decision email from the Home Office's Atlas casework system (the formal approval; ceremony invite follows). · Pre-bio wait: application submission → biometric enrolment. · Decision month: reports are bucketed by when the decision was issued, not when the application was filed. · Priority: the paid Home Office service for nationality applications, introduced in July 2026.
Source population. Every figure in this edition is computed from publicly posted timelines in Reddit community megathreads: 4,273 timelines, of which 2,842 have a confirmed decision. ILR Tracker holds a further 2,554 timelines from other sources (ECAA, ABCV and users who shared their own), and those are not included in any figure here, because they are collected differently and would not be comparable.
Sample sizes. Every figure states its own n. Where a group has fewer than 20 decisions we flag it as a small sample or publish a range rather than present it as a precise figure. This month that applies to priority citizenship. Medians are of self-reported days from biometric enrolment to decision for ILR, and from application to decision for citizenship. Percentiles are of the same distributions.
Standard and priority citizenship. Few people state which service they used, so the split follows the same rule as our citizenship tool: the tier the person gave; otherwise a decision made before 20 July 2026 is standard, and for later decisions 30 days or fewer from biometrics counts as priority and 60 or more as standard. Decisions in between (one in July, none since) are left out of the split. Most people do not state a tier, so standard figures largely come from that rule. Every priority figure we lead with is a decision the person themselves reported as priority. As in the October edition, the citizenship trend is standard tier only; every decision before July 2026 was standard, so earlier months match the all-services figure. We cannot verify any tier.
Windows are fixed, not rolling. "the 90 days to 31 October 2026" means decisions dated 2026-08-03 to 2026-10-31 inclusive; the 12-month window is 2025-11-01 to 2026-10-31. They are anchored to the end of the data month rather than to the date we ran the query, so anyone can reproduce these figures later and get the same answer. October figures will settle slightly as more reports come in.
Limitations. This is a self-selected sample of people who chose to post a timeline, not a random sample of applicants, and it over-represents the routes and services that community members use. Refused applicants under-report, so our refusal rates are a floor and not an estimate. Do not read these medians as Home Office service standards.
Reuse. These figures and charts are published under CC BY 4.0: use them anywhere, including commercially, with attribution. Cite the series as ILR Tracker Community Processing Times Report, ilrtracker.com/reports, which always shows the current edition. The aggregate figures are downloadable as CSV (medians, percentiles and n; no individual timelines).
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