USCIS Completes H-1B Lottery for FY 2026

USCIS announced on Monday that it has completed the selection of the registrations submitted in this year’s H-1B visa lottery. The agency has not yet released the number of registrations it received, but based on our firm’s experience, chances of selection seemed higher with the significant increase in the government fee for each registration. USCIS normally releases this data later in the year, and we will update you with these numbers once they are available. 

If your registration was selected, you should have received an email notification from USCIS to the email address associated with your myUSCIS account. If we helped you with the registration, we will be in touch with you this week regarding the next steps.  

To view the status of your registration(s), please log into the sponsoring employer’s myUSCIS account. The status of each beneficiary registered will display one of the following: Submitted, Selected, or Denied - duplicate registration.  “Submitted” registrations will remain in consideration for selection until the end of the fiscal year on September 30, 2026, at which point they will become either Selected or Not Selected.  If your registration shows as Denied, please contact us to discuss further. This could mean the beneficiary used different passports to have more registrations filed on their behalf. 

If we submitted a registration on your behalf, and it continues to show Submitted, unfortunately, your registration was not selected. USCIS may select additional registrations later this year if it does not receive enough petitions based on the registrations selected. USCIS has made additional selections in prior years, so the same may happen this year. We will definitely keep you updated about further selections by USCIS. If you would like, we also would be happy to set up a call to discuss alternative visa options. 

For those with selected registrations, we have 90 days from April 1, 2025, to file the complete H-1B petition with USCIS. Due to the high volume of petitions, USCIS may delay sending out receipt notices, so the use of a delivery service, like UPS or Fedex, is highly recommended to document receipt of the petition by USCIS. The agency will not accept prepaid mailers with which to mail approval notices because its process for mailing out approval notices through first-class mail is fully automated. Online filing is also available now, although it has been glitchy and does not integrate easily with existing case management software. 

Here is a breakdown of the government filing fees for the H-1B petition:

The agency’s full announcement about the H-1B lottery is available here.  

We look forward to working with you over the next few months, either with the preparation and filing of your H-1B petition or discussing alternative visa options.

The alert is for informational purposes only. Please contact us if you would like to discuss this development further.