VA Claim Status Tracker

What each VA claim status actually means, and how long claims are taking this week — from VA's own Monday workload report, the Board's annual report and the Court's annual report, not from anyone's guess. Updated weekly; current through the week ending August 29, 2026.

What each VA claim status means

va.gov shows five steps. The right-hand columns map each step to the pipeline stage VBA reports every Monday, with the number of rating claims sitting in that stage nationwide this week.

Older tools and letters use eight names for the same pipeline: Claim received · Under review · Gathering of evidence · Review of evidence · Preparation for decision · Pending decision approval · Preparation for notification · Complete. “Preparation for decision” and “Pending decision approval” are step 3's tail; “Preparation for notification” is step 4.

Of the 640,149 rating claims pending, 527,192 (82%) are in evidence gathering. That is the only stage a claimant can shorten: a fully developed claim with the records and a completed DBQ attached skips most of the waiting for VA to request them.

How long VA claims are taking right now

VBA's Monday Morning Workload Report for the week ending August 29, 2026:

“Average days pending” is how long the claims still waiting have waited so far; “average days to complete” is how long the claims VA finished this fiscal year took start to finish. The second number is the better answer to “how long will mine take”, and it is an average: original claims and claims that need exams run longer than the mean, supplemental claims with evidence attached run shorter.

By lane

Decision reviews (after a decision you disagree with)

A Higher-Level Review is decided at VBA; the Board is a separate queue with its own clock (next section). Legacy-system appeals still under VBA control: 2,415.

The last 18 weeks

Same report, week by week. Since May 2, 2026 the pending inventory has moved by +68,135 and the over-125-day backlog by −4,549.

If your claim is at the Board of Veterans' Appeals

The Board reports to Congress once a year. From its FY2024 Annual Report (fiscal year 2023-10-01 to 2024-09-30):

The Board's own long-term targets for average days to complete are 365 days (Direct Review docket), 550 (Evidence Submission) and 730 (Hearing). In its words: “During FY 2024, the ADP for pending Direct docket appeals peaked at about 640 days in March 2024, and steadily fell during Q4 of FY 2024. By year end, the ADP for the Direct Docket was 551 days – an improvement over FY 2023.”

The Board's historical reporting counts a multi-issue appeal once, by hierarchy: allowed if any issue was allowed, else remanded if any was remanded, else denied, else other. So 'allowed' means the veteran got at least some relief. Issue-level rates from every published Board decision since 1992 are on VetAid's Board outcomes and judge statistics pages.

And if a Board decision is appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims: in FY2025 the Court decided 8,758 appeals and 95.3% of its merits dispositions sent the Board's decision back, most on the parties' joint motion (what overturns the Board).

What you can do at each step

• Before filing: an Intent to File locks your effective date for a year while you gather evidence. File the claim as fully developed: service records, private treatment records and a completed DBQ attached, so step 3 has less to request.
• Initial review / development letter: answer every VA letter by its deadline (usually 30 days), and return the VA Form 21-4142 authorization if VA needs private records — an unanswered request is the most common self-inflicted delay.
• Evidence gathering: if a C&P exam is scheduled, attend it or reschedule before the date; a no-show without good cause can end the claim (38 CFR 3.655). You can still upload evidence at this step.
• Preparation for decision / notification: nothing to do but wait; new evidence now usually re-opens step 3.
• Complete, and you disagree: one year from the letter date to file a Higher-Level Review, Supplemental Claim or Board appeal and keep the effective date. Upload the decision letter to VetAid's free analyzer to see the reasoning VA used and the deadlines that apply.

Sources and method

• Weekly claims numbers: VBA Monday Morning Workload Report, week ending August 29, 2026, C&P Rating Bundle national rows (parsed from the workbook's data sheet; VA's index). Refreshed weekly.
• Board figures: Board of Veterans' Appeals FY2024 Annual Report to Congress, transcribed with the report's own wording.
• Court figures: U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims Annual Report (38 U.S.C. § 7288), table 5.
• Status step names: va.gov's claim status tool (five steps) and the older eight-step list still shown in some letters and tools.

Page generated 2026-09-04 by scripts/build_claim_status_tracker.py from the files above; no number on this page is estimated.