FY 2026 H-1B Cap Registration Begins
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin to accept H-1B cap registrations for employment in FY 2026 on Friday, March 7, at noon ET. The registration period is set to close on Monday, March 24, at noon ET. The agency will again implement a beneficiary-centric H-1B cap registration system.
If your organization will be working with immigration counsel to draft and submit H-1B cap registrations, the company must do the following:
- Maintain an organizational account in the USCIS online system. Sponsoring employers must have an organizational account at USCIS.gov; these accounts have replaced the “registrant” account used in the FY 2021 to FY 2024 cap seasons. The organizational account platform, launched last year for the FY 2025 cap season, permits employers and counsel to collaborate more easily on registrations.
- Identify prospective H-1B beneficiaries as soon as possible. If your organization has not yet provided your immigration counsel with a complete list of foreign nationals to be registered for the H-1B cap, it must do so as soon as possible so that registrations can be submitted during the registration period.
- Ensure that each foreign national can provide valid passport or travel document information for their registration. Under the beneficiary-centric registration system, foreign nationals are required to provide valid passport or travel document information for the registrations submitted on their behalf. There are several critical rules in connection with this requirement:
- The passport or travel document must be valid at the time the H-1B cap registration is submitted to USCIS;
- The foreign national must use the same valid passport or travel document for all FY 2026 registrations filed on their behalf, or risk invalidation of all FY 2026 registrations submitted for them; and
- The passport or travel document that is used for the H-1B registration(s) should be the same as the one that would be later used to support the foreign national’s H-1B petition filing, H-1B visa application, and entry/reentry to the United States, if the foreign national is selected in the cap lottery (with exceptions for renewed or replacement passports, legal name changes, and similar circumstances).
- Promptly review each registration drafted by immigration counsel. When your attorney finishes drafting an H-1B cap registration for your organization, the company’s designated signatory (called an “Administrator”) will be notified to log into the USCIS system to review, approve, and e-sign the registration. This is the time to determine whether any changes need to be made to the company’s registrations. The registration period is brief, so the signatory should review registrations as soon as requested to do so by their attorney.
- Prepare for possible technology issues. In recent years, the USCIS system has experienced slowdowns and technical glitches, especially at times of high-volume use. Notify your attorney and USCIS if your organization encounters any problems. The risk of potential glitches increases as the registration deadline approaches and log-ins and submissions increase. Prompt completion and submission of cap registrations can help to minimize last-minute problems.
It is expected that the H-1B cap registration system will continue to function during a possible government shutdown starting on March 15. However, as a federal shutdown has not coincided with the H-1B cap registration period in the past, technical and other systemic issues cannot be ruled out.
A government shutdown would more likely impact the H-1B cap petition filing process, depending on the shutdown duration. The U.S. Department of Labor suspends operations during a shutdown, meaning the Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) that are required for H-1B petitions could not be drafted, accessed, or processed during that time. Without a certified LCA, employers cannot file H-1B petitions.
After the registration period closes, USCIS will run two cap lotteries to select the beneficiaries on whose behalf H-1B cap petitions can be filed. The first lottery will contain all registered H-1B beneficiaries. USCIS will use this lottery to select enough beneficiaries to meet the regular H-1B cap of 65,000. The second lottery will contain all registered master’s cap beneficiaries who were not selected in the first lottery. USCIS will use this lottery to select enough beneficiaries to meet the H-1B cap exemption of 20,000 for holders of U.S. advanced degrees. Subsequent lotteries are possible if the number of H-1B petitions received for unique beneficiaries from the initial lotteries is insufficient to meet the FY 2026 quota.
USCIS plans to notify employers and immigration counsel of the lottery results by March 31. For winning beneficiaries, USCIS will notify each employer that filed a registration on their behalf of the foreign national’s selection in the lottery. Each employer will be permitted to file an H-1B petition on behalf of that foreign national. To learn the lottery results, your attorney and your company’s authorized signatory will need to access their myUSCIS.gov account and review the status of each beneficiary. Make a record of your selected beneficiaries through screenshots or other means, to guard against any irregularities in the USCIS system.
USCIS will begin to accept H-1B cap petitions on behalf of lottery selectees on April 1, 2025. The petition filing period will end no earlier than June 30, 2025. USCIS will specify the exact end date of the petition filing period in cap selection notices. All FY 2026 H-1B cap petitions for beneficiaries selected in the initial lottery must be submitted during the designated filing period.