What Is the H-1B Visa Lottery and How Does It Work?

The H-1B visa lottery is the selection process U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services runs each spring when employer registrations for new H-1B workers exceed the 85,000 slots Congress makes available for the coming fiscal year.¹ Starting with the FY 2027 cap season, that selection is no longer a purely random draw. USCIS now uses a weighted process that gives registrations tied to higher-wage positions a better chance of being picked, while still leaving every eligible registration in the pool.² The final rule took effect on February 27, 2026.

Why There Is a Lottery at All

Federal law caps the number of new H-1B workers who can begin employment in a given fiscal year. The regular cap is 65,000 visas. A separate 20,000 are reserved for workers holding a master’s degree or higher from a U.S. institution of higher education.³ Together, that’s 85,000 cap-subject positions a year. Only Congress can change those numbers.

Demand routinely runs well past supply. When that happens, USCIS cannot process every registration, so it selects enough to fill the two pools and sets the rest aside. That selection is the lottery.

How the Weighted Selection Works

The FY 2027 process runs in two rounds. In the first round, USCIS draws from the full pool of properly submitted registrations, including those eligible for the advanced degree exemption, to fill the 65,000 regular cap slots. In the second round, USCIS looks only at the remaining unselected registrations whose workers hold a qualifying U.S. master’s degree or higher, and draws enough of them to fill the 20,000 advanced-degree slots.¹ The structure gives workers with U.S. advanced degrees effectively two chances at selection.²

What changed for FY 2027 is inside each round. Rather than treating every registration as one equal ticket, USCIS weights the draw so higher-wage offers get better odds. Lower-wage registrations still have a chance, just a smaller one.²

Who Can Enter

To be entered in the lottery, a worker must have a job offer from a U.S. employer for a specialty occupation. A specialty occupation is a role requiring the practical application of specialized knowledge and at least a bachelor’s degree (or its foreign equivalent) in a directly related field.⁴ Engineering, computer science, medicine, architecture, and accounting are common qualifying fields, but the specific position, not just the field, has to demand degree-level expertise.

Workers cannot register themselves. Only a U.S. employer can, and the employer must be prepared to show that the job genuinely requires a degree-holding professional. Documentation of the worker’s credentials should be ready before the registration window opens.⁵

A four-year bachelor’s degree is the baseline, but workers without a formal degree can still qualify by combining education and experience. Federal regulations use a 3-for-1 formula: three years of specialized work experience count as one year of college-level study.⁵ Someone with a two-year degree and six years of progressive, directly related experience could meet the bachelor’s requirement that way.

Not Every H-1B Job Goes Through the Lottery

Some employers are cap-exempt and can hire H-1B workers at any time of year without registering. These include institutions of higher education and their affiliated or related nonprofit entities, nonprofit research organizations, and government research organizations.⁶ If your job offer is from one of these, the lottery does not apply to you at all.

How Registration Works

Every cap-subject employer registers each prospective worker electronically through the USCIS online account system. Registration takes the worker’s legal name, date of birth, gender, country of birth, country of citizenship, and a valid passport number. All of it must match travel documents exactly; small discrepancies can lead to denial.¹

The registration fee is $215 per beneficiary, non-refundable, due at submission. Registrations without the fee or with missing information are automatically excluded.¹

One Entry Per Worker

USCIS ties entries to the worker, not the employer. Each worker gets one chance in the lottery regardless of how many employers register them. If two or more different employers register the same person, only one entry goes into the pool; if that entry is selected, each registering employer is notified and may file a petition.⁷

A single employer submitting more than one registration for the same worker faces real consequences. If the duplicate is caught before the window closes, the employer can delete it (no refund). If it’s caught after the window closes, USCIS removes all of that employer’s registrations for that worker, with no refund and no appeal. Employers must also attest under penalty of perjury that they have not coordinated with other registrants to inflate a worker’s chances. USCIS can deny or revoke petitions and refer cases for criminal investigation if that attestation turns out to be false.¹

Key Dates for FY 2027

The FY 2027 cap season runs on this schedule:¹

March 4, 2026 (noon Eastern): Registration period opens
March 19, 2026 (noon Eastern): Registration period closes
March 31, 2026: USCIS intends to notify selected registrants by this date
April 1, 2026: Earliest date selected employers may file H-1B cap-subject petitions
October 1, 2026: Earliest date approved H-1B workers may begin employment

Selected registrants get notice through their USCIS online account, and that notice opens a 90-day filing window. Petitions must list an employment start date of October 1, 2026 or later.⁷

What Happens If You’re Selected

Selection isn’t approval. It’s permission to file. Once selected, the employer has 90 days to submit a complete H-1B petition, and that involves two main steps.⁷

Labor Condition Application

First, the employer must get a certified Labor Condition Application (Form ETA-9035) from the Department of Labor.⁸ By filing it, the employer certifies that it will pay at least the prevailing wage for the occupation in the work location and that hiring the H-1B worker will not harm similarly employed U.S. workers. The Department of Labor sets the prevailing wage based on the occupation, its complexity, and the geographic area.

Employers also have to notify their existing workforce about the filing. The notice must go out to U.S. workers on or within 30 days before the LCA is filed.⁹ After certification, the employer keeps a public access file at its principal U.S. office containing the certified LCA, wage documentation, and proof of the worker notification, available for public inspection within one working day of the LCA filing.¹⁰

Form I-129 Petition

With the certified LCA in hand, the employer files Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker, with supporting evidence of the worker’s qualifications and of the role’s degree-level demands.¹¹ USCIS issues a receipt notice with a tracking number, and may issue a Request for Evidence if it needs more information. A petition rejected for being filed at the wrong service center can be refiled at the correct location as long as the 90-day window has not closed.⁷

What the Petition Costs

The $215 registration fee is only the entry ticket. On top of the I-129 base filing fee, mandatory government fees include:

Fraud Prevention and Detection Fee of $500 on initial H-1B petitions and petitions to employ an H-1B worker currently at another company¹²
ACWIA Training Fee of $750 for employers with 25 or fewer full-time workers, or $1,500 for employers with 26 or more¹²
Asylum Program Fee of $300 for employers with 1–25 employees, or $600 for employers with 26 or more

Employers who want faster adjudication can file Form I-907 for premium processing, which guarantees USCIS action (approval, denial, Request for Evidence, or notice of intent to deny) within a set number of business days. The premium processing fee for H-1B petitions is $2,965 as of March 1, 2026.¹³ Federal law prohibits employers from passing certain mandatory filing fees on to the worker.

What Happens If You’re Not Selected

Not being picked in the initial round doesn’t end things for the year. USCIS occasionally runs additional selection rounds later in the fiscal year if it determines that earlier draws will not fill the caps, and previously unselected registrations are reconsidered when that happens.

Beyond waiting for a possible second draw, the practical options are:

Re-register the following cap season. There is no limit on how many years a worker can enter the lottery.
Keep working under existing authorization. F-1 students on OPT or STEM OPT extensions can continue on those permits while waiting for a future selection.
Look at cap-exempt employment. A position with a qualifying university, nonprofit research organization, or government research organization can be filed at any time and does not go through the lottery.⁶
Consider other nonimmigrant categories. Depending on the worker’s background, options like O-1 for individuals with extraordinary ability or L-1 for intracompany transferees may be available without a lottery.

1
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. H-1B Electronic Registration Process
2
Federal Register. Weighted Selection Process for Registrants and Petitioners Seeking To File Cap-Subject H-1B Petitions
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1184 – Admission of Nonimmigrants
4
Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual. 9 FAM 402.10 – Temporary Workers and Trainees – H Visas
5
eCFR. 8 CFR Part 214 – Nonimmigrant Classes
6
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. H-1B Specialty Occupations
7
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. H-1B Cap Season
8
U.S. Department of Labor. Form ETA-9035 – Labor Condition Application for Nonimmigrant Workers
9
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 62M – What Are an H-1B Employers Notification Requirements
10
eCFR. 20 CFR 655.760 – What Records Are To Be Made Available to the Public
11
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker
12
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Form G-1055 Fee Schedule
13
Federal Register. Adjustment to Premium Processing Fees