CBP has published one appointment release schedule: interview slots for enrollment centers appear on the first Monday of every month, by 9 a.m. local time. Everything else that reaches the scheduler — and most of what people actually end up booking — arrives on no schedule at all.
That one announced moment is worth planning around. It is also worth being precise about how much weight it can carry, because a good deal of what circulates about release times is not something CBP has ever said. Here is the difference.
In a national media release dated February 2, 2023, headed "CBP to Open New Trusted Traveler Program Appointments Each Month", CBP said it "will release interview appointment slots for enrollment centers on the first Monday of every month by 9 a.m. local time."
Two details in that sentence matter:
CBP repeated the same wording on its own social account in August 2024 — "by 9:00AM local time". As of August 2025 the first-Monday release was still being reported as something people observed in practice, along with the unsurprising note that the appointments get booked up quickly.
What has not happened is a restatement on CBP's current pages. The Global Entry FAQ, last modified June 24, 2026, does not mention a monthly release at all.
So the honest position is this. CBP announced a first-Monday release in 2023 and repeated it in 2024; it was still being observed as of mid-2025; CBP does not currently publish it as a standing rule. Check the scheduler on the first Monday, treat it as the one predictable moment in the month, and do not build a plan that only works if it holds. This guide was last checked against CBP's published guidance on September 15, 2026.
The announcement says 9 a.m. local time, and the local time in question belongs to the enrollment center, not to the person refreshing the page.
That only matters once you are watching more than one center, which most applicants should be. If you are in New York and also watching a center in California, that center's 9 a.m. is noon where you are. If you are in Seattle and watching something on the East Coast, its 9 a.m. has already passed by 6 a.m. your time.
Watching centers across several time zones therefore does not mean one alarm on the first Monday. It means a morning with several different deadlines in it, running from east to west.
One more piece of plain reading: CBP wrote "by 9 a.m.", not "at 9 a.m.". Taken literally that describes a deadline rather than a start time — slots could be in place earlier. CBP has published nothing more precise than that sentence, so the only defensible expectation is that a center's new slots, if they come, are there sometime before 9 a.m. in that center's own zone.
The monthly release is not where most bookings come from. Appointments also return to the scheduler continuously through cancellations and reschedules, as we have written before in why the scheduler says no appointments available.
Those returns happen whenever somebody's plans change. There is no published hour, no published day, and no reason to expect one: an appointment reappears at the moment its previous holder gives it up.
This is why a center that showed nothing on Monday morning can have something on Thursday afternoon, and why the first Monday is a good day to look rather than the only day worth looking.
You will find confident claims about the best hour of the day to check, the days of the week that are supposedly better, and the percentage of slots that appear in some particular window. We do not publish any of those, and we are not aware of a verified source for them.
We read the same public CBP scheduler everyone else can read, and record what it returns. That is enough to say what a center's next available date is right now. It is not enough to claim a pattern in when new dates arrive, and inventing one would be worse than useless — it would send people to look at the wrong times.
So the only two timing statements we will make are the ones above: CBP announced a first-Monday release, and cancellations arrive continuously and go quickly. Frequency of checking beats any theory about timing.
The gap between seeing a slot and confirming it is where most slots are lost, and the first Monday is the moment that gap is most crowded. Three things are worth settling in advance:
Installing the official DHS Trusted Traveler Programs mobile app helps too: it handles interview management, which is quicker than getting to a laptop.
If you already hold an appointment and are hunting for a better one, note CBP's own instruction on the TTP FAQ:
"Please note that canceling an appointment could cause your application to be cancelled. To avoid having your application cancelled, you should reschedule instead of canceling."
Reschedule into the better slot. Do not cancel the one you have first and then book.
Enrollment on Arrival removes the question entirely. A conditionally approved applicant completes the interview during the normal admissibility inspection when they next arrive in the United States on an international flight — no appointment, no release schedule, no first Monday.
CBP has been consistent about this. The same February 2023 release that announced the monthly slots also said CBP "continues to encourage applicants to take advantage of the Enrollment on Arrival option, as it remains the most accessible and efficient method to complete the interview process". The current list of participating airports and their hours is on CBP's Enrollment on Arrival page, and we cover the rules in our guide to Enrollment on Arrival airports.
If you have any international trip on the calendar, that is the plan. The first Monday is for people who do not.
Whichever source a slot comes from, it helps to know in advance which centers are worth opening. Availability differs enormously between locations, and a center an hour further out is regularly weeks ahead of the nearest one.
Our Global Entry wait times page lists the current next-available date for every U.S. enrollment center, and the state pages group them by where you are — Texas and New York, for example. Decide your shortlist there, then watch those centers rather than refreshing one. Software can watch the scheduler for you, which is what this site does, but a person with a shortlist and a free Monday morning is doing the same job.
This guide was last checked against CBP's published guidance on September 15, 2026.
If the first Monday comes and goes without anything usable, the full set of options for getting an earlier interview covers what is left.
By US Global Entry Team