On July 18, 2025, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it has received enough H-1B petitions to reach the congressionally mandated cap of 85,000 new H-1B filings for Fiscal Year 2026 (FY2026). As a result, USCIS will not conduct a second lottery selection for H-1B cap–subject petitions this year.
Any H-1B registration not selected in the draw that was conducted in March 2025 will not be eligible to file an H-1B cap petition for FY2026. The next opportunity to sponsor an individual under the H-1B cap will be in March 2026 for the FY2027 cap.
USCIS received approximately 336,153 unique beneficiary registrations for FY2026 and selected 118,660 of them, representing a 35.3% selection rate. Employers had until June 30, 2025 to submit petitions for selected beneficiaries. Because USCIS received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to fill the FY2026 mandate, there will be no second lottery this year. This contrasts with the last H-1B cap registration season, when USCIS did not receive a sufficient number of filed petitions and selected additional H-1B registrations in a subsequent lottery.
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