DV Lottery Requirements: Country, Education, and Entry Rules

To enter the diversity visa lottery, the DV lottery requirements are straightforward on paper: you must have been born in an eligible country, you must meet either an education or a work experience standard, and you must submit one properly completed electronic entry through the official State Department site during the annual registration window. Beginning with DV-2027, you also need a valid passport at the entry stage, and a $1 registration fee applies as of 2026. Everything else — selection, interviews, the visa itself — comes later and only if your entry is picked in the random drawing.

Who Qualifies by Country of Birth

Eligibility starts with where you were born, not where you live or hold citizenship. The Department of State looks at U.S. immigration data from the previous five years and excludes any country that sent more than 50,000 immigrants during that period.¹ People born in those high-admission countries cannot enter. The list is republished each cycle, so check the current instructions before registering.

For DV-2026, excluded countries were Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (including Hong Kong), Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Venezuela, and Vietnam. Expect a similar but not identical list for DV-2027.

Cross-Chargeability if Your Birth Country Is Excluded

Being born in an excluded country isn’t always the end. Two exceptions let you claim a different country of chargeability:²

You can use your spouse’s country of birth if that country is eligible. The marriage must have existed before you submitted your entry, and both of you must apply together.
You can claim a parent’s country of birth if neither of your parents was born in, or legally resided in, your birth country at the time you were born.

You pick your country of chargeability when you submit, and you cannot change it after the registration period closes. A wrong choice leads to disqualification at the interview stage.

The Education or Work Experience Requirement

Every applicant must meet one of two qualification paths. The first is a high school diploma or its equivalent, meaning the successful completion of a 12-year course of elementary and secondary education comparable to what a U.S. high school graduate receives.³ A GED or other equivalency certificate can count. Partial completion does not.

The alternative is two years of qualifying work experience within the past five years, and not just any job counts. The State Department uses the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*NET Online database, and your occupation must fall within Job Zone 4 or 5 with a Specific Vocational Preparation rating of 7.0 or higher.³ In practice, the job must require at least two years of specialized training or experience. Many common roles in retail sales, food service, and general labor do not qualify. Look up your specific occupation on O*NET before you rely on this path.

You don’t have to prove your qualifications at the time of registration. If you’re selected, though, the consular officer will ask for documentation, and showing up without it means denial with no appeal.

What You Submit With Your Entry

The electronic entry form collects biographical data for you and every immediate family member: full legal name, gender, date of birth, city and country of birth, and highest education level. You must list your spouse and every unmarried child under 21, including stepchildren and adopted children.² Leaving out a qualifying family member disqualifies your entire entry, even when that person has no intention of immigrating with you.

Photograph Specifications

Each person listed on the entry needs a digital photograph meeting the State Department’s exact specifications:⁴

JPEG format only
240 kilobytes or smaller
Square aspect ratio, between 600×600 and 1,200×1,200 pixels
Full face, front view, plain light background, no eyeglasses

An invalid photo for any listed family member rejects the whole submission. The State Department offers a free validation tool, and running each image through it before submitting is worth the two minutes.

The New Passport Requirement for DV-2027

Starting with the DV-2027 registration cycle, you must provide information from a valid, unexpired passport and upload a JPEG scan of the biographic and signature page when you submit your entry.⁵ The scan must be 5 MB or smaller, and PDFs are not accepted. This is a significant change from earlier cycles, when no passport was required at registration.

Limited exemptions apply for stateless individuals, nationals of certain communist-controlled countries who cannot obtain passports from their governments, and people granted individual waivers by the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.⁵ If you don’t already have a passport, begin that process well before the registration window opens.

Rules for the Entry Itself

The only way to enter is through the official State Department site at dvprogram.state.gov during the annual registration window.⁶ Registration typically opens in early October and runs roughly 30 to 35 days. The State Department announces exact dates each year. The form must be completed in English using the Roman alphabet.

As of 2026, the State Department charges a $1 registration fee, collected through an authorized government payment portal at the moment of submission.⁷ Beyond that dollar, any site asking you to pay to enter the lottery is a scam. Official U.S. government sites end in .gov.⁶

One Entry per Person

You get exactly one entry per registration period. The State Department detects duplicates and disqualifies all of them.⁶ This is the single most common way people sabotage their own chances. If you and your spouse are both from eligible countries, each of you can submit a separate entry listing the other as a derivative, which effectively doubles your household’s odds without breaking the rule.

Save Your Confirmation Number

After you submit, the system shows a confirmation page with your name and a unique confirmation number. Save it immediately. Screenshot it, email it to yourself, write it down. The State Department does not send letters or emails announcing selection.⁶ The only way to check your results is to enter that number into the Entrant Status Check tool on the E-DV site, which typically updates around May of the following year.⁸ Lose the confirmation number and you have no way to find out whether you were selected.

Selection Isn’t the Same as a Visa

The State Department selects roughly 125,000 entries for approximately 50,000 available visas, expecting that many selectees won’t complete the process or won’t qualify.⁹ Being selected means you can now apply for an immigrant visa. You still have to prove you meet every requirement, pass background checks, complete a medical exam by an embassy-approved panel physician, and sit for a consular interview.¹⁰ The application fee is $330 per person.⁷

Every diversity visa case must be completed by September 30 of the fiscal year it belongs to. Unused visas do not carry over.⁹ This is a hard cutoff with no exceptions and no extensions. A late interview, delayed documents, or unfinished medical results at that point end the case entirely.

Things That Can Disqualify You

Meeting the country, education, and entry requirements doesn’t guarantee a visa if you’re found inadmissible under U.S. immigration law. The consular officer evaluates every applicant against a broad set of disqualifying conditions. The categories that most often trip up DV applicants:¹¹

Criminal history, including any conviction for a crime involving moral turpitude, any drug-related offense, or two or more convictions with combined sentences of five years or more.
Health-related grounds, including communicable diseases of public health significance, failure to show required vaccinations, or a determination of drug abuse or addiction.
Prior immigration violations, such as overstays on a previous U.S. visa, prior deportation orders, or fraud in a previous immigration application.
Public charge concerns, based on age, health, income, education, and family size.

Waivers exist for some grounds of inadmissibility, but the waiver process takes time and isn’t guaranteed. With the September 30 deadline in play, a waiver request that drags on can effectively end a case even if it would eventually be approved. If you have any potential red flags in your background, talk to an immigration attorney before entering, not after selection.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1153 – Allocation of Immigrant Visas
2
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Policy Manual Volume 7 Part G Chapter 2 – Eligibility Requirements
3
U.S. Department of State. Confirm Your Qualifications
4
U.S. Department of State. Digital Image Requirements
5
Federal Register. Visas: Enhancing Vetting and Combatting Fraud in the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program
6
U.S. Department of State. Diversity Visa Program – Submit an Entry
7
Federal Register. Schedule of Fees for Consular Services, Department of State and Overseas Embassies
8
USAGov. Check the Diversity Visa Lottery Results and What to Do if You Were Selected
9
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Green Card Through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program
10
U.S. Department of State. Diversity Visa Program – If Selected
11
U.S. Department of State. Ineligibilities and Waivers: Laws