DV Lottery 2026: Results, Visa Pause, and Deadline

The DV lottery 2026 selection results have been available since May 3, 2025, and you can only check them through the Entrant Status Check tool at dvprogram.state.gov using the confirmation number you received when you submitted your entry. About 129,516 people were selected for roughly 50,000 available visas, so selection is a place in line rather than a guarantee. And there is a serious complication: the State Department has paused all diversity visa issuances, so even selectees who complete every step cannot currently receive a visa.¹²

How to Check Your DV-2026 Result

Go to dvprogram.state.gov and open the Entrant Status Check. You will need the confirmation number generated when you submitted your entry, plus your name and year of birth. Results remain accessible through at least September 30, 2026.³

The Department of State does not send winners an email, a letter, or a phone call. Any message telling you that you have won and asking for a fee is a scam. There is also no reliable way to recover a lost confirmation number, so if you no longer have it, you have no way to verify a selection. The confirmation page is effectively your ticket.

The Visa Issuance Pause

The State Department has paused all visa issuances to diversity immigrant visa applicants, effective immediately, with no exceptions listed in the guidance.¹ Applications are still being accepted, interviews are still being scheduled, and consular officers are still conducting them. What has stopped is the final step: a consular officer cannot actually issue you a diversity visa while the pause is in effect.

Because every DV-2026 visa expires at the end of fiscal year 2026, the pause matters enormously. Every week it continues, selectees with higher case numbers lose a bit more of the runway they need to be processed before the deadline. If you were selected, watch the State Department’s news page for updates and consider talking to an immigration attorney about your options.

The September 30, 2026 Deadline

Every DV-2026 case has to be finished by September 30, 2026. Diversity visas do not carry over into the next fiscal year.⁴ For consular processing, that means the visa must actually be issued before that date. For applicants adjusting status inside the United States, USCIS must approve the I-485 by then. No extensions.

Under normal circumstances the deadline is already tight. With the current pause running down the clock, the practical advice is to have everything ready — DS-260 submitted, civil documents gathered, medical exam scheduled — so you can move the moment issuances resume.

What to Do If You Were Selected

File the DS-260

Selected entrants file Form DS-260, the online immigrant visa application, through the Consular Electronic Application Center. The Kentucky Consular Center processes the submission and schedules your interview once your case number becomes current on the monthly Visa Bulletin.

Speed matters. The Kentucky Consular Center works roughly in case-number order, and if your number is high, any delay in filing the DS-260 can push your interview past September 30 — at which point selection is worth nothing.

Complete the Medical Exam

Before your interview, you must see a State Department-authorized panel physician for an immigration medical exam. The exam screens for conditions that could make you inadmissible and confirms required vaccinations, including MMR, polio, tetanus and diphtheria, pertussis, hepatitis B, and haemophilus influenzae type B, among others.⁵ The seasonal flu shot is only required if your exam falls between October 1 and March 31. COVID-19 vaccination is no longer required as of January 2025.

Costs vary widely by country and provider, and results can take days or weeks. Any supporting documents that are not in English need certified translations. Schedule early.

Attend the Interview and Pay the Fee

Your interview happens at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate. Bring originals: birth certificates, police clearance certificates from every country where you have lived for 12 months or more since age 16, and evidence of your qualifying education or work experience.

The diversity visa application fee is $330 per person, paid at the interview and nonrefundable whether or not a visa is issued.⁶ After a successful interview, and once the pause is lifted, you also owe a separate USCIS Immigrant Fee, paid online through USCIS before entering the United States as a permanent resident.

If You Are Already in the United States

Selectees legally present in the United States may be able to adjust status through USCIS instead of going to a consular interview abroad. That means filing Form I-485 with supporting documents: the selection letter, passport-style photos, birth certificate, Form I-693 medical exam results, and proof that you paid the DV processing fee.⁴

A visa number must be immediately available when you file. Section C of the monthly Visa Bulletin shows the cut-off numbers for diversity immigrants. If your rank number is below the cut-off for your region, you can file. If it is above, wait for a later bulletin that makes your number current.

Confirming Your Eligibility

Selection does not overrule the underlying eligibility rules. Two thresholds have to be met.

Country of Chargeability

You must be a native of an eligible country — one that has not sent more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States over the previous five years.⁷ For DV-2026, the ineligible list is: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland and Hong Kong), Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Venezuela, and Vietnam.⁸ Natives of Macau SAR and Taiwan remain eligible despite mainland China’s exclusion.

If you were born in an ineligible country, you can sometimes claim chargeability through your spouse’s country of birth, or in some cases a parent’s. Cross-chargeability through a spouse requires that the spouse is listed on the entry and intends to immigrate with you.

Education or Work Experience

You need either a high school education or its equivalent — a completed formal 12-year course of elementary and secondary education — or two years of qualifying work experience within the past five years in an occupation that itself requires at least two years of training or experience.⁸⁷ Correspondence programs and equivalency certificates such as the GED do not satisfy the education path. For the work path, the Department of State uses the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*NET database to decide which occupations qualify, so check it before relying on work experience.

One eligibility trap catches otherwise strong cases: leaving an eligible family member off the original entry. The entry required your spouse and every unmarried child under 21, even ones who never planned to move. An omission on the entry form can lead to a visa denial at the interview.

Odds and Realistic Expectations

Congress set aside 55,000 diversity visas per year, up to 5,000 of which are reserved for the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act program, leaving about 50,000 for lottery selectees in practice.⁹ The State Department picks well over that number because many selectees never file, do not qualify at interview, or fall out for other reasons. For DV-2026, approximately 129,516 selectees and family members were registered against those roughly 50,000 visas.²

Practically, that means selection places you in a queue that runs faster than the number of visas available. Your rank number determines when you can be scheduled; the calendar determines whether there is still time. With the current pause, the calendar is doing more of the work than it usually does.

Watching Out for Fraud

Scam volume around the DV lottery is heavy. Emails, letters, and phone calls claiming you have won and demanding a fee are all fraudulent. The State Department only publishes results through Entrant Status Check. Anyone charging hundreds of dollars to “submit your entry” is selling a service you could do yourself for free, and the $330 fee is paid only after selection, only at an official interview, and only to the U.S. Embassy or Consulate directly.

1
U.S. Department of State. Diversity Visa Issuance Updated Guidance
2
U.S. Department of State. DV 2026 – Selected Entrants
3
USAGov. Check the Diversity Visa Lottery Results and What to Do if You Were Selected
4
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Green Card Through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program
5
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Technical Instructions for Panel Physicians
6
U.S. Department of State. Diversity Visa Program – Prepare for the Interview
7
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Policy Manual Volume 7 Part G Chapter 2 – Eligibility Requirements
8
U.S. Department of State. Instructions for the 2026 Diversity Immigrant Visa Program
9
U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual. 9 FAM 502.6 – Diversity Immigrant Visas