U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Announces Opening of Initial Registration Period H-1B Cap for Fiscal Year 2026

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the initial registration period for the fiscal year (FY) 2026 H-1B cap will open at noon Eastern on March 7, 2025, and run through noon Eastern on March 24, 2025. The H-1B is the primary visa used by employers who hire foreign national students from U.S. colleges and universities. If your business has employees on Optional Practical Training "OPT," you should consider the H-1B. The H-1B is also useful for employees seeking permanent residence (a green card).

Important Information:

• Each foreign national will only get one spot in the lottery no matter how many different employers submit registrations. The FY 2026 H-1B cap will use the beneficiary-centric selection process launched in FY 2025. Under the beneficiary-centric process, registrations are selected by unique beneficiary rather than by registration.
• During the registration period, prospective H-1B cap-subject petitioners or their representatives must register each beneficiary electronically for the selection process and pay the associated $215 H-1B registration fee for each beneficiary using a USCIS online account.
• H-1B petitioning employers who do not have a USCIS online account will need to create an organizational account. First-time registrants can create an account at any time at https://my.uscis.gov/.
• H-1B petitioning employers who had an H-1B registrant account for the FY 2021 – FY 2024 H-1B registration seasons, but did not use the account for FY 2025, will have their existing account converted to an organizational account after their next login.
• Representatives can add clients to their accounts at any time, but both representatives and registrants must wait until March 7 to enter beneficiary information and submit the registration with the $215 fee.
• Selections take place after the initial registration period closes, so there is no requirement to register on the day the initial registration period opens.
• If USCIS receives registrations for enough unique beneficiaries by March 24, it will randomly select unique beneficiaries and send selection notifications to users’ USCIS online accounts (and employers’ organizational accounts).
• If USCIS does not receive enough unique beneficiary registrations, all registrations for unique beneficiaries that were properly submitted in the initial registration period will be selected.
• Notifications to prospective petitioners and representatives whose accounts have at least one registration selected are anticipated to be sent by March 31.
• An H-1B cap-subject petition, including a petition for a beneficiary who is eligible for the advanced degree exemption, may only be filed by a petitioner whose registration for the beneficiary named in the H-1B petition was selected in the H-1B registration process.

Additional Information: Information on creating organizational accounts can be found here. 

If you have questions about the upcoming FY 2026 H-1B cap, or if you have questions about working in the United States, please reach out to our Immigration Practice Group.

Disclaimer:

This client alert is a form of attorney advertising. Hodgson Russ LLP provides this information as a service to its clients and other readers for educational purposes only. Nothing in this client alert should be construed as, or relied upon, as legal advice or as creating a lawyer-client relationship.