You hired a promising professional—maybe a recent graduate working on Optional Practical Training, maybe someone a colleague recommended. They are doing excellent work, and you want to keep them. Then they mention the H-1B lottery. Suddenly you are navigating a system that involves registration windows, wage-level weighting, numerical caps, and filing deadlines—and if you miss any of them, you lose a year.
This page explains how the H-1B cap selection process works right now, in 2026. The system has changed fundamentally in the last few years—for the better—and the old descriptions floating around the internet no longer reflect reality. If you are an employer considering the H-1B lottery for the first time, or a professional whose employer needs to understand the process, this is where to start. Our main H-1B visa guide covers eligibility, specialty occupation requirements, prevailing wages, and the Labor Condition Application. This page focuses specifically on the annual lottery and how to get into it.
Why There Is a Lottery: The H-1B Cap
Congress limits the number of new H-1B visas issued each fiscal year. The regular cap is 65,000 visas. An additional 20,000 visas are reserved for beneficiaries who hold a master’s degree or higher from a U.S. institution—commonly called the “master’s cap.” That gives a combined ceiling of 85,000 new H-1B approvals per year.
Demand consistently exceeds supply. In recent years, USCIS has received registrations for well over 300,000 unique beneficiaries competing for those 85,000 slots. Because there are more qualified applicants than available visas, USCIS uses a selection process—popularly called the “lottery”—to determine which petitions it will accept for processing.
Certain H-1B petitions are exempt from the cap entirely—for example, petitions filed by institutions of higher education, nonprofit research organizations, and governmental research organizations. If your employer falls into one of these categories, the lottery does not apply. For most private-sector employers, however, the cap is the gateway.
How We Got Here: A Short History of the H-1B Cap
Understanding where the system has been helps explain why recent reforms matter so much.
The original H-1B cap was set at 65,000 when Congress created the program in 1990. During the tech boom of the late 1990s, Congress temporarily raised it—first to 115,000 (FY 1999–2000), then to 195,000 (FY 2001–2003) under the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act. When that temporary increase expired in FY 2004, the cap dropped back to 65,000 and has remained there ever since. Congress added the 20,000 master’s cap exemption in 2004, bringing the effective ceiling to 85,000.
I have practiced immigration law since 2001, so I have watched the entire arc. When the temporary increase expired, demand immediately overwhelmed the cap, and the lottery was born. For years, the competition settled into a pattern: roughly 200,000 applications for 85,000 slots, giving any individual petition about a one-in-three chance of selection.
The Old Paper-Based System
Before 2020, entering the lottery meant preparing a complete H-1B petition—the full application, supporting documentation, and filing fees—before you even knew whether USCIS would accept it. Attorneys prepared these packages over the winter months, typically starting in January, and mailed them to arrive at USCIS during the first week of April. USCIS accepted petitions for approximately five business days, ran a random lottery, and returned the unselected petitions with the uncashed filing fee checks.
As a practitioner, I can tell you this was a miserable system for everyone involved. I charged $5,000 to prepare an H-1B petition, and that work had to be done before the lottery. If the client was not selected, the petition came back in the mail, but the legal work was already complete—clients understood that upfront, but it was a significant financial commitment for what amounted to a one-in-three gamble. Multiply that across every immigration attorney in the country preparing dozens of these petitions simultaneously, and you can appreciate the scale of wasted effort.
The Registration Fraud Crisis
In 2020, USCIS replaced the paper-based system with electronic registration. Instead of preparing a full petition, employers submitted a simple online registration for $10 per beneficiary. USCIS ran the lottery on registrations, and only selected employers needed to prepare and file the actual petition. This was a genuine improvement—it eliminated the wasted preparation work and reduced the upfront cost dramatically.
But the low barrier to entry created a new problem. Because registering was cheap and easy, some entities began filing multiple registrations for the same worker through different companies—shell companies, staffing firms, or related entities—to multiply that worker’s chances of selection. In the FY 2024 lottery (registrations filed in March 2023), USCIS received over 780,000 registrations. More than 400,000 of those were for individuals who had multiple registrations submitted on their behalf—an increase of over 140% from the previous year. USCIS publicly stated it suspected fraud and launched investigations.
The practical effect was devastating for legitimate employers. With 780,000 registrations for 85,000 slots, the odds dropped to roughly one in fourteen. Employers who had a genuine position and a genuine employee were competing against a flood of duplicate entries. As someone who has watched this system for over two decades, I found it infuriating—the lottery was supposed to allocate scarce visas fairly, and it was being gamed.
The Current System: Beneficiary-Centric Selection and Wage-Level Weighting
USCIS responded to the fraud crisis with two major structural reforms, implemented in successive years. Together, they represent the most significant changes to the H-1B lottery since the cap was created.
Beneficiary-Centric Selection (FY 2025 Onward)
Starting with the FY 2025 cap season (registrations filed in March 2024), USCIS switched from selecting registrations to selecting beneficiaries. Under the old system, if five different companies each filed a registration for the same worker, that worker had five chances of being selected. Under the new system, each unique beneficiary gets one entry in the lottery regardless of how many employers register them. Multiple employers can still register the same worker, but it does not increase the worker’s odds.
The effect was immediate and dramatic. Total registrations dropped from approximately 780,000 in FY 2024 to about 470,000 in FY 2025, and further to roughly 344,000 in FY 2026. The selection rate climbed from single digits under the inflated FY 2024 numbers to approximately 29% in FY 2025 and 35% in FY 2026. The system stopped rewarding those who gamed it and started working better for everyone else.
Wage-Level Weighting (FY 2027 Onward)
The second reform, effective for the FY 2027 cap season (registrations filed in March 2026), adds a wage-based weighting layer on top of the beneficiary-centric system. USCIS now enters each unique beneficiary into the selection pool a number of times based on the prevailing wage level of the offered position:
Wage Level IV (highest wages for the occupation and area): 4 entries in the selection pool
Wage Level III: 3 entries
Wage Level II: 2 entries
Wage Level I (entry-level wages): 1 entry
The projected selection rates tell the story: a beneficiary at wage Level IV has an estimated 61% chance of selection, Level III around 45%, and Level II around 30%. Level I remains roughly where the old flat lottery was—but now, employers offering competitive wages for experienced professionals have meaningfully better odds.
This is a reform I have been genuinely pleased to see. In our FY 2027 lottery this spring, I filed registrations for three beneficiaries—all U.S.-educated, all in legitimate professional positions—and all three were selected. One was at a Level IV wage, which gave that individual four entries in the pool. The system is now rewarding exactly what it should: real employers offering real professional wages for genuinely qualified workers.
How the H-1B Lottery Process Works Now: Step by Step
The annual H-1B cap cycle follows a predictable calendar. Here is how it works under the current system.
Step 1: Set Up an Organizational Account (Before Registration Opens)
Both the employer (or prospective petitioner) and the attorney must have USCIS organizational accounts. These accounts allow the employer and attorney to collaborate on registrations and petitions through the myUSCIS portal. Set these up well before the registration window opens—not the week of. We work with employers to get this done in January or February.
Step 2: Electronic Registration (March)
USCIS opens the electronic registration period for approximately two weeks in early to mid-March. For FY 2027, the window was March 4–19, 2026. The registration is simple: basic information about the employer and the beneficiary, the offered wage level, and a $215 registration fee per beneficiary. No supporting documents are required at this stage.
This is where the current system diverges so dramatically from the old one. Under the old paper-based process, we had to prepare the entire H-1B petition before knowing whether it would be selected. Now, the registration costs $215 and takes a fraction of the time. We typically charge $500 to prepare and submit these registrations. Compare that to the $5,000 it used to cost to prepare a full petition that might come back in the mail unselected.
Step 3: Selection Notification (Late March)
USCIS runs the selection process and notifies registrants of the results by the end of March. For FY 2027, our clients were notified on March 30. If your beneficiary is selected, the registration status in your myUSCIS account changes to “Selected,” and you will have a filing window to submit the actual H-1B petition. If not selected, the status changes to “Not Selected,” and the process is over for that fiscal year.
Step 4: Prepare and File the H-1B Petition (April 1 – June 30)
Selected registrants have a 90-day filing window—typically April 1 through June 30—to prepare and file the complete H-1B petition (Form I-129 and all supporting documentation). This is when the real legal work happens: assembling the specialty occupation evidence, the employer’s prevailing wage documentation, the Labor Condition Application, and the beneficiary’s credentials.
When we get a selection, I ask the employer to sign an engagement letter immediately and we start preparing the petition. You have until June 30, but there is no reason to wait. A practice tip I share every year: I have read accounts on attorney discussion boards of practitioners who used overnight delivery on the last possible day and the package was not delivered on time. June 30 is a hard deadline. Do not test it.
Step 5: H-1B Employment Begins (October 1)
If the petition is approved, the beneficiary’s H-1B status begins on October 1—the start of the federal fiscal year. This is the earliest date a cap-subject H-1B worker can begin employment in H-1B status.
The Master’s Cap: An Additional 20,000 Visas
Beneficiaries who hold a master’s degree or higher from a U.S. institution have an advantage in the selection process. Under the current system, USCIS first runs the selection for the 20,000 master’s cap from eligible U.S. advanced degree holders. Those not selected in the master’s cap are then included in the regular 65,000 cap pool alongside all other registrants. This effectively gives U.S. master’s degree holders two chances at selection.
With the new wage-level weighting system, the master’s cap advantage compounds. A U.S.-educated professional with an advanced degree is often working in a position that commands a Level III or Level IV wage, which means more entries in both selection pools. This is one reason I was so encouraged by our results this year—all three of our selected beneficiaries were U.S.-educated, which put them in the strongest possible position under the new system.
The Cap-Gap: Bridging OPT to H-1B Status
If your prospective H-1B worker is currently on F-1 status with Optional Practical Training, there is often a timing gap between when their OPT expires and when H-1B status begins on October 1. This gap—sometimes called the “cap-gap”—can leave the worker without authorization to remain in the U.S. or to work.
Federal regulations provide an automatic cap-gap extension of OPT and F-1 status for students who are beneficiaries of a timely filed, cap-subject H-1B petition requesting a change of status. As of January 2025, this extension runs through April 1 of the following fiscal year—a significant expansion from the previous October 1 cutoff. The extension is automatic; no separate application is required.
In practice, cap-gap issues arise most often for graduates whose standard 12-month OPT expires before October 1 but who have been selected in the lottery. Students on STEM OPT (the 24-month extension available to qualifying STEM degree holders) generally have enough runway that the gap is not a concern. This year, all of our lottery winners with OPT were STEM OPT holders, so the transition was seamless. But if your employee is on standard OPT that expires in, say, May or June, the cap-gap extension becomes essential to maintaining their work authorization through the transition.
If the H-1B petition is denied, withdrawn, or revoked, the cap-gap extension terminates immediately, and the worker has a 60-day grace period. This is another reason to ensure the underlying H-1B petition is strong before entering the lottery—a selection that leads to a denial is worse than not being selected at all, because the worker may lose status in the process.For a detailed explanation of how the cap-gap extension works, eligibility requirements, and the 2025 rule expansion, see our complete cap-gap guide.
What We Do Before We Enter You in the Lottery
Winning the lottery is only the first step. The selection means USCIS will accept the petition for processing—it does not mean the petition will be approved. If the position does not qualify as a specialty occupation, or the wage does not meet prevailing wage requirements, or the beneficiary’s credentials do not match the position, the petition will be denied regardless of the lottery outcome.
This is why we screen every case before registration. We review whether the position is genuinely a specialty occupation, whether the offered wage aligns with the prevailing wage data for the occupation and geographic area, and whether the beneficiary’s education and experience support the petition. If something does not line up, we identify the issue before the employer spends money on registration and petition preparation—not after a selection when the clock is already running on the filing deadline.
My general philosophy is no surprises—not for me, not for the employer, and not for the employee. If we enter you in the lottery, it is because we have determined that if you are selected, we can build a strong petition. That assessment is part of what you are paying for when you hire an immigration attorney rather than trying to navigate the process on your own.
How We Can Help
If you are an employer considering the H-1B lottery for an employee, the time to start planning is well before the March registration window. We work with employers across Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Colorado to evaluate whether the H-1B is the right visa category, whether the position and wage will support a strong petition, and whether entering the lottery makes strategic sense for your situation.
If you have already hired a foreign professional on OPT and want to explore the H-1B path, or if you are a professional whose employer needs guidance on the process, contact us for a strategy consultation. We will assess your situation, explain your options, and give you a realistic picture of what to expect—before any money changes hands.
