Corrected Sept. 16, 2026: the I-539 and I-765 half of this did not take effect. A federal court postponed the rule those two new editions were built to carry out, and USCIS is not accepting them. The I-485 change is unaffected by this particular court order.
Taking them in turn, in the order they actually apply. USCIS currently accepts either the 01/20/25 or the 09/04/26 edition of Form I-485 — the 09/04/26 edition was issued in early September — and that acceptance window closes for anything postmarked or electronically submitted on or after Sept. 18, 2026, when both of those editions will be rejected and a further edition dated 09/18/26 becomes the required one. There is no grace period on that transition.
(USCIS ties these two I-485 editions to separate rules of their own, at least one of which has its own pending litigation — a different story from the one in this item, which concerns only the fixed-period rule for F, J, and I nonimmigrants and the I-539/I-765 editions built around it.)
The Forms I-539 and I-765 editions dated 09/15/26 are a different story. They were tied to a DHS final rule, "Establishing a Fixed Time Period of Admission and an Extension of Stay Procedure for Nonimmigrant Academic Students, Exchange Visitors, and Representatives of Foreign Information Media," 91 Fed. Reg. 44976 (July 17, 2026), that was to take effect Sept. 15, 2026. On Sept. 14 — the day before — Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV postponed the rule's effective date under 5 U.S.C. § 705 and preliminarily enjoined DHS "from taking any further action to implement the Final Rule," in Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration v. DHS, No. 1:26-cv-13799-FDS (D. Mass.), ECF Nos. 50 and 51.
USCIS has confirmed that it "continues to accept the 08/28/24 edition of Form I-539 and 08/21/25 edition of Form I-765 and is not accepting the 09/15/26 edition of Forms I-539 and I-765." The older editions are therefore not merely still valid — they are the only ones USCIS will take.
Treat that as provisional. The court denied the request to vacate the rule outright, without prejudice, so this is a preliminary order that can still be appealed or modified, and DHS has said it "strongly disagrees with the court's order and if the order is lifted, will take measures to implement the final rule." As of Sept. 16, 2026, no notice of appeal had been filed.
The habit underneath all of this is what actually protects a filing: check the edition date printed at the bottom of each form against the current version on the USCIS website immediately before you send it, not against anything you read weeks earlier.