Need a new passport? Now is the time to act. The average wait to renew a U.S. passport has not been this short in decades.
On Thursday, the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs announced that the average processing time for passports has dropped to four to six weeks.
“This announcement comes after months of issuing passports well under the 6-8 week commitment and showcases our progress to continuously improve the efficiency, equity, and accessibility of the U.S. passport application process,” the agency said in a statement.
Prices are not changing. Obtaining a new or renewed passport book costs $130. For an additional $60, expedited processing can shave a few weeks off the wait time.
Acquiring a passport now takes a third as long as it did in 2021, when a pandemic backlog bogged down processing times to 12 to 18 weeks. And it now takes half as long as in July 2023, when 10 to 13 weeks was the norm for routine processing.
Historically speaking, an average of four to six weeks is remarkably speedy. The former six- to eight-week processing time had been the norm not only before the Covid-19 pandemic but for decades prior.