Opportunity Zones 2027 List: 6,576 Tracts Designated November 5, 2026 (IR-2026-132), by State and County

Until today the open question for anyone planning an opportunity zone investment in 2027 was which tracts would be on the map. This page answers it with Treasury’s own file, counted by state and county and set against the 2018 list. It does not say whether any zone is a good place to invest. For the rules that apply to money invested after December 31, 2026, the 180-day windows and the 5-year deferral, see our opportunity zone 2.0 guide; for gain that is still deferred from an earlier fund investment and is included in income on December 31, 2026, see what lands on the 2026 return. Our earlier guide said no list had been published; that is now out of date.

What Treasury and the IRS published on November 5, 2026

The release says Treasury and the IRS “announced the Qualified Opportunity Zone (QOZ) designations for all 50 states, territories, and the District of Columbia.” The figures in it, and the files behind it:

Source: IRS news release IR-2026-132 (November 5, 2026); Treasury files OZ2-Designations-2027 and OZ2-Eligible-Tracts (both dated October 2026); IRS Rev. Proc. 2026-14 and Notice 2026-40. Percentages and the October-file counts are ours.

We downloaded the designation file and counted it: 6,576 rows, 2,594 flagged “Rural” and 3,982 “Non-Rural”, in 56 jurisdictions (the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands). Treasury’s companion file of eligible tracts has 25,462 rows with the low-income flag set, which is the April list plus the 130 tracts the release mentions. That means the 6,576 designated tracts are all drawn from a pool of 25,462, not 25,332. Our 2.0 guide worked out a maximum of 6,544 from the April list; with the added tracts the maximum is 6,576 (our arithmetic).

Every jurisdiction took its full allowance

Rev. Proc. 2026-14, section 2.02(3)(c), caps designations at 25% of a state’s low-income tracts, “rounding the fractional quotient up to the next whole number”, and says a state with fewer than 100 may designate 25. We applied that rule to the number of eligible tracts in each jurisdiction in Treasury’s October file and compared it with the number designated. All 56 match (our arithmetic). Texas has 2,431 eligible tracts, a quarter is 607.75, rounded up 608, and Treasury designated 608. California has 2,479 eligible, 619.75 rounds up to 620, designated 620. Nebraska has 112 eligible and 28 designated. The 17 jurisdictions with fewer than 100 eligible tracts show the 25-tract rule at work: Hawaii has 89 eligible and 25 designated; Vermont has 24 eligible and 24 designated; Wyoming, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa have 20, 20, 19, 18 and 16 and every one of them is designated.

In the 39 jurisdictions with 100 or more eligible tracts the designated share is between 25.0% and 25.3% (our arithmetic). So the question of which tracts a governor chose is the only discretion left: the number was fixed by the formula. Treasury’s release does not describe how each governor chose; we do not guess at it.

State by state: 2018 zones against 2027 zones

Counts of tracts. “Eligible” is the pool in Treasury’s October 2026 file. The table lists every jurisdiction with 100 or more zones designated for 2027; the 56-row version is in the CSV.

Source: CDFI Fund list “Designated Qualified Opportunity Zones” (updated December 14, 2018); Treasury OZ2-Designations-2027 file; Treasury OZ2-Eligible-Tracts file. Counts by script; the 2018 file names the territories “Virgin Islands” and “Northern Mariana Islands” and we merged them with the 2027 names.

Four things stand out (all our arithmetic from these files):

• Puerto Rico lost 685 zones, 31% of the national drop. In 2018 every low-income tract there was deemed designated; Rev. Proc. 2026-14 (section 2.02(3)(d)) records that the 2025 law removed that special rule, so the Governor of Puerto Rico had to nominate, within the same 25% limit. Puerto Rico went from 863 to 178, and its 2018 zones end December 31, 2027.
• Without Puerto Rico the count fell 19%, from 7,901 to 6,398. California lost 259, Illinois 87, Florida 85, New York 84 and Pennsylvania 82. Texas is nearly flat (628 to 608).
• Four jurisdictions gained: Louisiana (150 to 156), the U.S. Virgin Islands (14 to 18), Mississippi (100 to 102) and New Mexico (63 to 65). Alaska, American Samoa, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Rhode Island and South Dakota are unchanged.
• Rural zones are concentrated in a few states. Texas has 184, North Carolina 126, New York 124, Georgia 118 and California 106. West Virginia (52), Vermont (24), Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands have only rural zones.

County view: where the zones moved

We matched counties by the five-digit county code in the tract number, which lets us compare the two lists for every state except Connecticut: the 2027 file codes Connecticut by planning region (for example 09110) and the 2018 file by county (09001 to 09015). The 15 counties with the most 2027 zones:

Source: tract numbers in the CDFI Fund 2018 list and the Treasury 2027 file, grouped by county code by script; county names as in the file for the year shown.

The biggest moves, in tracts:

Source and method as above. Our arithmetic.

Outside Connecticut, 1,908 counties have at least one 2027 zone against 2,144 in 2018. Of these, 246 counties have a 2027 zone and no 2018 zone, and 482 counties had a 2018 zone and have none now (our arithmetic; a county whose code changed between the lists, such as Alaska’s Kusilvak Census Area, which appears only in the 2027 file, is counted on both sides). The picture for a metro investor: Dallas and Hidalgo counties in Texas roughly tripled and doubled their zone counts, while Cook County, Los Angeles County, Kings County (Brooklyn) and Harris County (Houston) each lost between 54 and 97.

The map moved more than the count suggests

The tempting comparison is to match tract numbers. Do not rely on it: the 2018 list is built on 2010 census tracts and the 2027 list on 2020 census tracts, and the Census Bureau redrew many of them between the two. The same 11-digit number can be a different area, and a zone can survive under a new number. By number alone, 2,393 tract numbers appear on both lists.

To compare areas we used the Census Bureau’s 2020-to-2010 tract relationship file, which gives for each pair of overlapping 2010 and 2020 tracts the land area they share. For each 2018 zone we added up the share of its land area that lies inside tracts on the 2027 list, and did the reverse for each 2027 zone. We call a zone “carried over” if at least 90% of its land lies in the other list’s zones, and “new” (for 2027) or “dropped” (for 2018) if under 10% does. Connecticut is left out because its tract numbers cannot be matched, and one 2018 tract is not in the Census file (our arithmetic throughout).

Columns: 2018 zones compared; 2018 zones with at least 90% of land inside a 2027 zone; 2018 zones with under 10%; 2027 zones compared; 2027 zones with under 10% of their land in a 2018 zone, and that as a share of the 2027 zones. Our arithmetic from the CDFI Fund, Treasury and Census Bureau files. In between are 351 partly carried-over 2018 zones and 62 partly new 2027 zones.

Reading the totals: of 8,691 comparable 2018 zones, 2,541 (29%) are carried over, 351 (4%) partly and 5,799 (67%) are dropped. Of 6,515 comparable 2027 zones, 2,902 (45%) are carried over, 62 (1%) partly and 3,551 (55%) are new ground. Put differently, more than half of the 2027 map is land that was not in an opportunity zone in 2018. In Puerto Rico the 2027 map is the reverse: 177 of 178 zones sit almost entirely on 2018 zones (166 of the 863 old zones are kept).

What this does not tell you: it counts land area, not people or property value, and it says nothing about investment results in any tract. A 90% overlap is a statement about borders, not about whether a given building is inside the zone; that depends on the building’s own tract.

Eligibility does not explain much of the choice. Among all 25,462 eligible tracts, the median poverty rate of the 6,576 designated is 25.1% against 23.5% for the 18,886 not designated, and the median ratio of tract median family income to the area median is 61.2% against 61.9% (our arithmetic from the American Community Survey fields in Treasury’s file). The rural share is higher among designated tracts, 39% against 33% of the eligible pool.

What happens to a property in a 2018 zone that is not on the 2027 list

Notice 2026-40 sets the transition. The 2018 designation period ends “December 31, 2028, for all other QOZs” and December 31, 2027 for Puerto Rico (section 2.04(c)). New money is another matter. Property acquired by a fund or a zone business after December 31, 2026 “cannot be QOZBP unless (i) the property is acquired for use in a QOZ that is designated after July 4, 2025, or (ii) one of the exceptions in section 5.01(2) and (3) of this notice applies.” The exceptions are a written working-capital plan adopted by December 31, 2026 and ordinary-course replacement of existing property, not expansion. A building in a 2018 zone that is also a 2027 zone is in a zone designated after July 4, 2025; a building in a 2018 zone that is not one is not.

For property a fund acquired on or before the expiry of the old designation, the notice says the zone may be treated as a zone for the substantial-use test “through December 31, 2047” (section 5.02), and says the proposed regulations are expected to carry the same safe harbors. This is a transition rule for existing holdings, not a way to buy new property in a dropped zone. Our Form D census of opportunity zone funds shows how much was raised under the old map.

How to check a tract

Treasury’s file lists the 11-digit census tract number, a zone identifier, the state, the county and a rural flag. Its notes explain the number: two digits for the state, three for the county and six for the tract. The identifier starts with R if the zone is entirely rural and N if not, then the tract number, then “27” for the designation period beginning in 2027. The test is simple: whether a property is in a zone on January 1, 2027 depends on its own census tract number, not on its county or neighborhood name. A fund marketing page that still shows the 2018 map can be right for a building in a carried-over zone and wrong for one in a dropped zone.

We publish counts, not a tract-level map. The tract list is Treasury’s file; the release also says a map is available. As of November 5, 2026 we have not verified whether the HUD map we link in our 2.0 guide has been updated, and we have not seen a notice in the Internal Revenue Bulletin that lists the 2027 tracts (the 2018 list was published in Notice 2018-48).

What a reader can do with this

This is a list of questions the public record lets you answer yourself, not advice on whether to invest.

• Get the census tract number of each property a fund or sponsor shows you and look it up in Treasury’s 2027 file. Ask which tract numbers the fund has bought in or intends to buy in.
• Ask for the purchase date. Property bought after December 31, 2026 in a 2018 zone that is not a 2027 zone is outside the general rule in Notice 2026-40; property bought earlier has the transition rules.
• If you hold a fund bought in 2018 to 2020, do not assume its zone is on the new map. The map matters for property bought after 2026, and for a gain already deferred the date that matters is December 31, 2026, covered in our guide to that inclusion date.
• For a gain you are about to realize, put the 180-day window next to the map: see the table in the 2.0 guide, and our note on capital gains tax on real estate for the tax before any deferral.
• If the fund is a rural one, ask how it meets the all-rural test: Treasury’s flag means the whole tract is rural, and the 2.0 rules give a larger basis increase only to funds that hold 90% of assets in such zones.

What can still change

Treasury’s files are labelled October 2026 and the release says news items “may not be updated after their release”, so a corrected file is possible. The 2018 zones keep their status through 2028, and the proposed fund-reporting regulations are a separate track: see our explainer of REG-116506-25. The next round of designations, under the 10-year cycle in the 2025 law, is not until 2036.

FAQ

Sources: IRS news release IR-2026-132 (November 5, 2026); Treasury Qualified Opportunity Zones files OZ2-Designations-2027-Data-Transparency and OZ2-Eligible-Tracts-Data-Transparency (October 2026); CDFI Fund, Designated Qualified Opportunity Zones (updated December 14, 2018); IRS Revenue Procedure 2026-14 and Notice 2026-40; U.S. Census Bureau 2020 to 2010 census tract relationship file. Counts and overlaps by script are ours. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.