Art may be subjective to fans and listeners, but not to the U.S. immigration system.

For international musicians, breaking into the $65 billion U.S. market is a career milestone. Yet, international artists need a specialized work authorization called the  O-1 visa to perform in the United States. The visa is reserved for individuals who can demonstrate “extraordinary ability” through sustained recognition across fields including arts, sciences, education, business and athletics. It is basically a temporary work permit that allows talented people to live and work in the country, but it does not grant residency or citizenship.

The pathway to earning the “extraordinary” O-1 visa has become increasingly difficult to navigate. Costs have risen sharply in recent years, jumping from $460 to $1,615 per filer in 2024, to its current fee of $2,965 in 2026. And then there’s the waiting. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office has historically promised to process visa applications in two weeks but takes a lot longer in reality.

“Processing is currently taking 10 to 12 months, which is too long for the industry's practices,” immigration expert Matthew Covey told Chartmetric. That waiting period rubs up against the realities of marketing timelines and venue bookings. “You can’t confirm a tour that far out,” Covey said.

Covey is the executive director of Tamizdat, an organization that works on legal issues for international traveling artists. He says the rigamarole can set an artist back between $3,000 and $6,000 per visa application, which is an unsustainable burden for tours that are already at risk of losing money. It’s even worse for bands with multiple members. 

The system has drifted from its original intent, Covey argues, explaining that “visa petitions in 1995 were usually about 30 pages long. Now they are often more than 500 pages long,” and that “the all-in costs of navigating this process have increased 5,000% since the 1990s,” without a clear policy benefit in terms of national security or labor protection.

Anecdotally, Covey observes that artists from the Global South are among the most affected, but the impact extends across genres and regions. “From DJs to orchestras, from dance to theater, we are seeing a major drop in artists even trying to come to the U.S.,” he says. Tamizdat estimates that 2026 will see at least a 30% drop in international touring across the performing arts in the United States, even as global music grows in popularity. Chartmetric counts at least 213,000 artists hailing from Brazil alone, alongside 131,000 from India, 128,000 from Mexico and tens of thousands more across Argentina, Indonesia, South Africa and Chile.  

Even among the top superstar artists, Chartmetric counts that 57% of the artists from the tier hail from outside the United States – meaning the majority of the world's biggest acts are potential O-1 visa applicants. For many of them, the U.S. is not just another stop on a tour itinerary but their single largest audience: 43% of non-U.S. superstars count America as their top streaming market (257 out of the 596 non-US superstar artists).For hundreds of the world's most successful artists, access to the U.S. is directly tied to reaching their biggest fanbase.

So how are some artists making it work? We spoke to a few to learn.

Italian violinist Ludovica Burtone turned professional collaborations into a petition

Ludovica Burtone arrived in Boston in 2011 already a working musician. She had spent nearly a decade playing violin in a regional Italian orchestra before enrolling at Berklee College of Music on a student visa to study jazz composition. 

After graduating, she filed for an O-1without a lawyer—hiring one was too expensive. She relied on a pro bono advisor to brief her on what her application would need. She pulled the accumulated evidence of her expertise from her career in Italy through her Berklee portfolio, gathering press coverage, documented performances, recordings, collaborations with established musicians and appearances at recognized venues like Carnegie Hall and The Boston Opera House.

As a chamber musician, Burtone was worried the immigration officials might not recognize her accomplishments: “I always wonder who is looking at my application,” Burtone said. “I never know if they like niche things. Maybe they know some of the jazz artists I play with, but maybe they need a big name to know you are collaborating with someone that has an incredible impact in that kind of music.” 

For that reason, she advises: “If you have a Grammy—put it on the first page." Recently, Burtone has added performances with familiar names to her resume, including collaborations with the Icelandic band Sigur Ros, Jon Batiste’s American Symphony, and in the Notorious B.I.G. tribute concert at Lincoln Center.

To this day, Burtone says the the hot-and-cold limbo of maintaining her visa status can feel fragile at times. While her current O-1 visa allows her to remain in the U.S. for three years, she says international travel introduces risk. Each re-entry can require embassy interviews before receiving a passport stamp. “You might be targeted,” she explained. “We know that that happens. It has been happening, and it keeps happening.” 

Like artists do best, Burtone transformed her emotions from her experiences into music with her 2023 album Migration Tales, a chamber project built from conversations with immigrant women.

Taiwanese jazz artist Yuhan Su became an ‘endorsement artist’

Yuhan Su arrived in Boston from Taiwan in 2008 on a student visa to study jazz at Berklee. After graduation, she needed an O-1 visa to stay and build her career in New York. Looking for a way to prove her exceptionality she reached out directly to Mario DeCiutiis, the CEO of Alternate Mode, a company that manufactures MIDI vibraphones. She’d met DeCiutiis at a Berklee workshop and decided to pitch him for a brand endorsement deal. Because she had a direct connection between the instrument and her music career, her pitch compelled DeCiutiis enough to make her the face of the company’s vibraphones.

“I'm kind of like their endorsement artist,” she said.

Su has since renewed her O-1 every three years, all without hiring a lawyer. “That costs a lot of more money,” she said, adding that she meticulously documents her collaborations and professional work so that her paperwork reflects her qualifications. “You just have to be really hands-on with everything,” she says. "This process somehow makes your mind stronger.”

Even with a strong visa portfolio, touring remains constrained by logistics. With an eight-person ensemble on her latest album, OVER THE MOONs, Su ultimately found it too hard and financially unfeasible to tour with her full band internationally, largely due to visa complexity and cost. Instead, she often travels solo and collaborates with local musicians abroad to make touring viable.

“In that way, you also get more local help and connections,” she said.

Bob Sumner assembles bandmates on a P-2 visa

Bob Sumner, an Americana artist based in Vancouver, holds U.S. citizenship through his mother but still needs visas for the Canadian musicians he brings south of the border. He tours on a P-2 visa, a U.S. work authorization that allows international artists and entertainers to temporarily perform in the country under a reciprocal exchange between U.S. and foreign organizations, typically for up to one year. He builds bands for his touring lineups by rotating between players from Canada, Kentucky and Nashville. He says the process involves navigating a constant logistical puzzle and leveraging relationships with venues and presenters.

Timing is often frustrating.The P-2 requires proof of confirmed engagements for the duration of the visa request. An applicant who wants to tour for a year must prove they have one gig per month for all 12 months of the visa period, a standard that Sumner says “is pretty difficult to have.”

Difficulty compounds with the processing lag. On a recent album release tour, Sumner attempted to plan around what he was told would be a three-month processing window to receive visas for his bandmates. Instead, it stretched to six. “We didn’t get it in time for the band,” he said. He was forced to assemble local musicians in Seattle and Portland instead of bringing his Vancouver group, despite having already paid application fees for the original bandmates.

Sumner said the unpredictability makes planning nearly impossible for mid-level artists. The fixed costs of visas remain the same regardless of how profitable the tour might be. “If I’m going down and playing 500-room caps and not filling them, I’ll be lucky if I break even,” he says.

Starting in May 2026, Sumner plans to spend two months on tour in Europe, where he says entry is comparatively straightforward.

Getting ahead of US tour planning

Every big artist at one point started small.  As Covey puts it, “the U2 and Elton Johns of tomorrow are playing at 200 capacity clubs today.”

Knowing this, artists interested in touring in the U.S. can get ahead by developing their U.S. audience as early as possible. Most important is nurturing relationships from every collaboration and connection. As these artists have demonstrated, you never know where a single gig or credit might lead. Document the process and keep a list of press mentions, interviews and media clips. 

Musicians can also pull audience data from platforms like Chartmetric to track their U.S. fanbase. That may help them build a case for an O-1 visa because they can better prove international demand and that they have had a long-time track record of growing their audience from abroad.  

In a system that heavily filters who gets to cross the border, it’s important that musicians leverage every tool at their disposal to keep the music alive.