How to reschedule or move up a US visa appointment in Colombia

Yes, you can change the date of your US visa appointment, and you do not have to pay again. The date you were assigned is not final: the official portal lets you reschedule an appointment you already hold, and people move theirs up every day.

What almost nobody tells you is where the real difficulty sits. It is not permission and it is not paperwork. It is that when you log in to look, there is almost never anything better available.

This guide explains why that happens, how to change the date step by step, and what to settle before you move anything.

When do visa appointments open up in Bogotá?

There are two separate moments, and they are worth keeping apart.

Tuesdays at 9 a.m. The US Embassy in Colombia says so on its visa page: it opens new tourist (B1/B2) interview appointments "every Tuesday at 9 a.m.", and expressly invites applicants who already hold an appointment to check the portal if they want an earlier date. That same page warns that demand is very high and that not everyone who tries succeeds, but that you can try again every Tuesday.

The rest of the week, through cancellation. Someone who had an appointment reschedules, cannot attend, or abandons the process, and that space returns to the system for whoever takes it next. The Embassy also notes that it may open appointments outside that regular schedule.

If you are only going to look once a week, make it Tuesday at 9. But the drip of cancellations happens at any hour, without warning, and it has two consequences that only appear to contradict each other:

• There are far more openings than it seems. Checking the calendar once and seeing the same old month does not mean nothing is being released. It means nothing was released in that instant.
• They last very little. A good slot can vanish within minutes, because a lot of people are waiting for exactly the same thing.

That is why the usual experience is logging in, seeing the same distant date, and concluding it cannot be done. It can. You have to be looking at the exact moment.

Booking and rescheduling are not the same thing

They get confused constantly, so it is worth separating them:

Booking is taking your first appointment after paying the consular fee. It is a mandatory step in the process.

Rescheduling — moving it up — is exchanging an appointment you already hold for an earlier one. It is not mandatory, it has no cost of its own, and you can do it yourself from the official portal: ais.usvisa-info.com/en-co/niv, the portal the Embassy points applicants to.

Everything below is about the second one. If you do not have an appointment yet, there is nothing to move up: you have to book first.

How to change your appointment date, step by step

1. Go to ais.usvisa-info.com/en-co/niv with the username and password for your case. It is the portal the Embassy points applicants to, the same one where you paid and where you see your current appointment.
2. Open your application and find the option to reschedule or change the appointment. You will see the date you hold today and a calendar with what is available.
3. Look at what the calendar offers. If there is nothing better, there is nothing to do at that moment. Availability changes on its own. Come back later, and above all come back on Tuesday at 9.
4. If a date that works for you appears, take it and confirm. Until you confirm, your previous appointment is still yours.
5. Save the new confirmation. That is the one that counts on interview day.

One detail that catches many people out: if your case includes an appointment at the applicant service centre as well as the consular interview, those are two separate appointments. Check the status of both in your account before you consider the process closed.

How many times can you reschedule?

A lot of contradictory information circulates about this, so it is worth going to the source.

The US Embassy in Colombia publishes no limit on reschedules. Quite the opposite: on its visa page it invites those who did not succeed to try again the following Tuesday. That it publishes no limit does not mean the portal cannot apply some restriction in a specific case, and if you run into one you will see it in your own account. But there is no official count you can spend by mistake.

That said, the practical advice does not change: do not move the appointment for a handful of days. Every change exposes you to losing the date you already had if something goes wrong, and gaining three days rarely justifies that risk.

What to settle before you move anything

Three conditions worth being clear about, whether you search by hand or with help:

The minimum gain that is worth it. Moving up three days rarely pays off. Decide how many days of difference make the change worth making.

The months that work for you. A great appointment on a date you cannot attend is no use. If you have constraints — work, studies, a trip already paid for — set them out from the start.

The time of day. If you live outside Bogotá and have to travel the night before, an early morning appointment can be worse than a later one on another date.

If several people are travelling

When there is more than one person on the case, the appointment is rescheduled for the whole group. Accepting a slot that only covers one person breaks the family trip and complicates the rest.

Before confirming anything, check that availability covers every applicant.

What does not change when you reschedule

Moving up the appointment changes nothing else about your case. Your DS-160 stays the same, the consular fee you paid remains valid, and your documents do not change. The only thing that moves is the date and time of the interview.

It does not improve or worsen your chances either. The consular officer assesses your case, not when you booked it.

Doing it by hand: what to actually expect

It is perfectly possible and there is no trick to it. The problem is not difficulty, it is persistence.

For it to work you would have to check every few minutes, every day, nights and weekends included, because there is no way to know when a slot will be released. And when one appears, you are competing against everyone else looking at that same instant.

People who check by hand usually get something, yes — but after weeks of watching, and normally not the best date available, just the one they managed to grab.

What if you cannot spend all day checking?

That is exactly the gap a bot fills. VisaBot checks consulate availability every few minutes, around the clock, and when a slot appears that meets your conditions — the minimum number of days, the months that suit you, the time of day — it takes it and notifies you.

We charge 600 COP for each day we move your appointment forward, and only if we succeed. If your appointment was in March and we leave it in September of the year before, that is 180 days: 108,000 COP, once. If we get nothing, you pay nothing.

The full numbers, including the case of several applicants, are in how much it costs to move up an appointment.