The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services fiscal year runs from October 1 through September 30, and it is the clock that governs almost every numerical limit, filing window, and deadline in the immigration system. Green card caps, H-1B allocations, the diversity visa lottery, and USCIS’s own performance data are all counted on this cycle rather than the calendar year. If you are waiting for a visa number, planning a filing, or watching a deadline, the date that matters is usually tied to October 1 or September 30, not January 1.
What Resets on October 1
Congress sets annual caps on several major immigration benefits, and those caps refill when the new fiscal year begins. Family-sponsored preference visas are capped at a minimum of 226,000 per year, and employment-based preference visas at a minimum of 140,000 per year.1USCIS. USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 7, Part A, Chapter 62USCIS. H-1B Cap Season3U.S. Department of State. Diversity Visa Instructions Each of these limits resets on October 1.
When demand exceeds supply during a fiscal year, a category becomes oversubscribed. The Department of State responds by setting cut-off dates in the monthly Visa Bulletin, so that only applicants with priority dates earlier than the cut-off can proceed. If pressure builds enough, a category may be marked “Unavailable,” which halts new approvals until the next fiscal year.4USCIS. Visa Availability and Priority Dates This backward movement of dates is called visa retrogression.
The October Visa Bulletin is the most closely watched of the year because the fresh allocation typically lets cut-off dates advance or return to their pre-retrogression positions, though that does not always happen.4USCIS. Visa Availability and Priority Dates Each month, USCIS announces which chart adjustment-of-status applicants may use: the Final Action Dates chart, or the more permissive Dates for Filing chart. USCIS permits use of the Dates for Filing chart when it determines that more immigrant visas are available for the fiscal year than there are known applicants.5USCIS. Adjustment of Status Filing Charts From the Visa Bulletin That call is made fresh each month based on remaining supply and pending demand.
Deadlines That End With the Fiscal Year
Some benefits do not simply pause when the fiscal year ends. They expire.
The diversity visa program is the strictest example. Selected applicants must complete the entire visa process and either receive their visa abroad or have their adjustment of status approved before September 30 of the relevant fiscal year. For DV-2026, that deadline is September 30, 2026.3U.S. Department of State. Diversity Visa Instructions Once October 1 arrives, USCIS must deny any remaining DV adjustment application from the prior fiscal year, even if a visa number had previously been allocated. Neither the agency nor a court has authority to grant an adjustment after the fiscal year closes.6USCIS. USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 7, Part G, Chapter 4 The 55,000-visa cap can also be exhausted globally or regionally before September 30, which is why USCIS urges selectees to file as soon as they become eligible.
The H-2B seasonal worker program carries a similar hard stop for its supplemental allocations. For FY 2026, the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Labor authorized up to 64,716 additional H-2B nonimmigrant visas beyond the regular statutory cap, split into three time-based allocations, each with its own filing window. The first allocation of 18,490 returning-worker visas hit its cap on February 6, 2026.7USCIS. Temporary Increase in H-2B Nonimmigrant Visas for FY 2026 Petitions that are not approved before October 1, 2026 are automatically denied.
H-1B Cap Season
The H-1B program shows how tightly the fiscal year controls a filing opportunity. Each spring, employers submit electronic registrations for workers they want to sponsor for the upcoming fiscal year’s cap allocation. For FY 2026, USCIS received registrations for 336,153 unique beneficiaries and selected approximately 118,660, a selection rate of roughly 35%. That was up from roughly 29% in FY 2025, when 423,028 unique beneficiaries competed. USCIS announced on July 18, 2025 that both the 65,000 regular cap and the 20,000 master’s cap for FY 2026 had been reached.8USCIS. USCIS Reaches Fiscal Year 2026 H-1B Cap Once the cap is met, USCIS stops accepting new cap-subject petitions but continues to process extensions, employer changes, and other cap-exempt filings for current H-1B holders.
A major change takes effect for FY 2027. Under a final rule published December 29, 2025 and effective February 27, 2026, USCIS is replacing the random lottery with a wage-weighted selection. Registrations will be entered into the selection pool multiple times based on the offered wage level relative to Bureau of Labor Statistics data: a Level IV wage earns four entries, Level III earns three, Level II earns two, and Level I earns one.9USCIS. H-1B Weighted Selection Small Entity Compliance Guide10USCIS. DHS Changes Process for Awarding H-1B Work Visas Each unique beneficiary is still counted only once toward the numerical limit, regardless of how many times their registration appears in the pool.
Spillover, Per-Country Caps, and “Lost” Visas
Not every visa number allocated for a fiscal year gets used, and Congress has built in mechanisms to reallocate the leftovers. Unused family-sponsored numbers from the prior fiscal year are added to the current year’s employment-based limit, and vice versa. Within the employment-based categories, unused visas flow in a specific sequence: unused EB-4 and unreserved EB-5 numbers go to EB-1, unused EB-1 numbers flow to EB-2, and unused EB-2 numbers flow to EB-3.11USCIS. Fiscal Year 2023 Employment-Based Adjustment of Status FAQs There is no statutory pathway for unused EB-3 visas to flow anywhere else.
A quirk in the statutory formula produces what advocates call the “lost visa” problem. The family-based limit is calculated as 480,000 minus the number of immediate relatives admitted the prior year, plus any unused employment-based numbers. Because immediate relative admissions have stayed high, the family-based limit has effectively been stuck at the 226,000 statutory floor for roughly two decades, and unused employment-based numbers added to that calculation are absorbed rather than recovered. Congress has intervened before, recapturing about 130,000 unused EB visas from FY 1999–2000 in the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act, and 50,000 designated for nurses in the REAL ID Act of 2005, but no similar legislation has passed since.12FWD.us. Green Card Recapture
Per-country limits also apply on a fiscal-year basis. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, natives of any single country are limited to 7% of the total number of family-sponsored and employment-based visas made available in a given fiscal year.11USCIS. Fiscal Year 2023 Employment-Based Adjustment of Status FAQs This cap is the main reason applicants born in India and China face multi-year backlogs even when overall visa supply is not exhausted.
Fees and Fiscal-Year Adjustments
USCIS is roughly 96% fee-funded, and its fee schedule was overhauled for the first time since 2016 in a final rule effective April 1, 2024, projected to generate about $4.42 billion annually. The rule introduced a $600 Asylum Program Fee for employers filing certain worker petitions, eliminated the separate biometric fee for most applicants, and offered a $50 discount for online filings.13USCIS. Frequently Asked Questions on the USCIS Fee Rule
A separate set of fees came from H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed July 4, 2025. It created new fees for asylum applications ($100), annual asylum maintenance ($100 per year on pending cases), parole ($1,000 for most parolees), and special immigrant juvenile petitions ($250), among others, and it required annual inflation adjustments starting in FY 2026.14Federal Register. Inflation Adjustment to HR 1 Immigration Fees The first inflation-adjusted amounts, reflecting a 2.70% CPI increase, took effect January 1, 2026.15USCIS. USCIS Announces FY 2026 Inflation Increase for Certain Immigration-Related Fees Because these adjustments run on the fiscal year, expect a new figure each fall.
Where to Find Fiscal-Year Data on Your Case Type
USCIS organizes its operational data into fiscal-year quarters: Q1 covers October through December, Q2 January through March, Q3 April through June, and Q4 July through September. The agency publishes receipts, approvals, denials, and pending caseloads by form type each quarter. FY 2026 Q1 data, covering October through December 2025, was published June 12, 2026, along with full-year data for FY 2025 and earlier years going back to FY 2016.16USCIS. Immigration and Citizenship Data Processing times are published separately by form and field office, also on a fiscal-year basis.17USCIS. Historical National Median Processing Time If your case type has an annual cap or a September 30 cutoff, those datasets will tell you how quickly numbers or slots have been used in past cycles, and how much time you have this cycle.