DV Lottery: Eligibility, Entry Steps, and the $1 Fee

To enter the Diversity Immigrant Visa lottery, you need to have been born in a country the U.S. government classifies as low-admission, meet either an education or a work-experience standard, and submit one free electronic entry during the roughly five-week fall registration window. The program awards up to 55,000 green cards each fiscal year, though about 50,000 are actually issued after Congress diverted up to 5,000 to the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) program.¹ It remains one of the only paths to U.S. permanent residency that does not require a family sponsor or an employer petition.

Country of Birth Eligibility

Eligibility turns on where you were born, not where you live or hold citizenship. The Department of Homeland Security applies a statutory formula to the previous five years of immigration data and identifies “low-admission” countries whose natives sent fewer than 50,000 immigrants during that window.² If your birth country is on that list, you can enter. If it isn’t, you cannot — unless one of the two chargeability exceptions applies.

For the DV-2026 cycle, natives of the following countries were ineligible: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (including Hong Kong SAR), Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Venezuela, and Vietnam.³ The list changes from year to year as immigration patterns shift, so check the current instructions before assuming your country’s status.

Cross-Chargeability Through a Spouse

If your spouse was born in an eligible country, you can submit an entry using your spouse’s chargeability, provided the marriage existed before you submitted the entry. Both of you must apply together and receive your visas or adjust status at the same time. You cannot claim a spouse’s birth country and then immigrate alone.⁴

Cross-Chargeability Through a Parent

If you were born in an ineligible country but neither of your parents was born there or was a resident there at the time of your birth, you can charge your entry to a parent’s eligible birth country.⁴ This tends to come up when parents were temporarily working abroad when their child was born.

Education or Work Experience

Every entrant must meet one of two qualification standards, and this is checked at the visa interview rather than at entry. Failing this check will end your case no matter how good your case number was.

The first path is a high school education or its equivalent, defined as a 12-year course of elementary and secondary education comparable to what a U.S. student completes.⁵ You will need to produce the diploma or an equivalent certificate at your interview.

The second path is qualifying work experience: at least two years within the five years before you apply, in an occupation that itself requires two or more years of training or experience. The Department of State evaluates occupations against the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*NET OnLine database, and only jobs classified as Job Zone 4 or 5 with a Specific Vocational Preparation rating of 7.0 or higher count.⁶ Most unskilled and semi-skilled jobs sit below that threshold. Look your occupation up on O*NET before you enter — discovering at the interview that it doesn’t qualify wastes years of processing time.

How to Submit Your Entry

Entries are submitted electronically through the Department of State’s portal at dvprogram.state.gov. The entry form is called the DS-5501, and it asks for basic biographical information: your full legal name as it appears on your passport, gender, date and city of birth, and contact details.³ This is the only legitimate site. Any other website offering to file for you is either unnecessary or fraudulent.

You must list your spouse and every unmarried child under 21, even if they don’t live with you and even if they have no plans to immigrate. The instructions are strict: omitting an eligible family member, or listing someone who isn’t actually your dependent, can disqualify you entirely. If a consular officer discovers an unlisted child or spouse during your interview, your case and your family’s derivative cases will likely be terminated.³ The only exception is a spouse from whom you are legally separated by court order.

Photo Specifications

Each person listed on the entry needs a recent digital photo that meets strict specifications. It must be JPEG format, no larger than 240 kilobytes, with square dimensions between 600 by 600 pixels and 1,200 by 1,200 pixels. Your head must take up between 50% and 69% of the image height, measured from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head. The background must be plain white or off-white with no shadows, and eyeglasses are not allowed.⁷ The system automatically rejects photos that fall outside these parameters, so get this right before the window opens.

Registration Window and the One-Entry Rule

The submission window is short, typically about five weeks from early October through early November. For DV-2026, registration ran from October 2, 2024, through November 7, 2024.⁸

Each person is allowed exactly one entry per registration period. The Department of State uses duplicate-detection technology, and submitting more than one entry disqualifies every entry under your name.⁹ Married couples can each submit a separate entry as long as each entry lists the other spouse, which effectively doubles a couple’s chances. If either spouse is selected, the other can immigrate as a derivative.

After you submit, the confirmation screen displays a unique confirmation number. Save it immediately by screenshot, on paper, and in an email to yourself. It’s the only way to check your results later, and the Department of State cannot retrieve it for you.

The $1 Registration Fee (Starting DV-2027)

Beginning with the DV-2027 cycle, the Department of State added a $1 electronic registration fee payable at the time of submission. The rule was published in September 2025 and took effect 30 days later.¹⁰ This is separate from the $330 per-person application fee that selectees pay later at their visa interview.

What Selection Actually Means

Being selected in the drawing does not mean you have won a green card. The Department of State deliberately selects far more people than there are visas available, because many selectees will fail the education or work check, miss deadlines, or be found inadmissible during the interview. Your case number determines your place in line, and if visas run out before your number is reached, your selection expires with nothing.¹¹ No single country can receive more than 7% of the total diversity visas in any fiscal year.¹²

Starting in May of the year after you submitted, you can check whether you were selected by logging into the Entrant Status Check at dvprogram.state.gov with your confirmation number. This is the only way the Department of State notifies anyone. The government does not send emails, letters, or phone calls telling you that you won, and any message claiming otherwise is a scam.¹³

The September 30 Deadline

Every DV case has a hard expiration date: September 30 of the fiscal year for which the drawing was held. If you were selected for DV-2026, you must receive your visa or complete adjustment of status by September 30, 2026. After that date, your selection is permanently void. Entries do not carry over, and there is no extension, exception, or appeal.⁴

This deadline is the single biggest reason people lose diversity visas they rightfully won. Gathering documents, completing the required medical exam with a panel physician, and waiting for an interview appointment can eat months. If your case number is high, your interview may not be scheduled until summer, leaving little margin for complications. If you are selected, file the DS-260 immigrant visa application the same day and start assembling your documents right away.¹¹

1
U.S. Department of State. 9 FAM 502.6 – Diversity Immigrant Visas
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1153 – Allocation of Immigrant Visas
3
U.S. Department of State. Instructions for the 2026 Diversity Immigrant Visa Program
4
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Policy Manual Volume 7 Part G Chapter 2 – Eligibility Requirements
5
eCFR. 22 CFR 42.33 – Diversity Immigrants
6
U.S. Department of State. Confirm Your Qualifications
7
U.S. Department of State. Digital Image Requirements
8
USAGov. Find Out If You Are Eligible for the Diversity Visa DV Lottery and How to Register
9
U.S. Department of State. Diversity Visa Program – Entry
10
Federal Register. Schedule of Fees for Consular Services, Department of State and Overseas Embassies
11
U.S. Department of State. If Selected
12
U.S. Department of State. Update on Diversity Visa DV Program 2025 – Close to Reaching 7 Percent Cap for Egypt
13
U.S. Department of State. Fraud Warning