H-1B Registration Opens
The FY 2027 H-1B cap registration period will open at noon ET on March 4, 2026, and will close at noon ET on March 19, 2026. Employers must submit all cap registrations online during this period. Each sponsoring employer must maintain a USCIS organization account, even if immigration counsel will be submitting registrations on its behalf. An employee authorized to sign immigration petitions and applications for the organization must serve as the account administrator.
Employers must pay the associated $215 H-1B registration fee for each registration submitted during the registration window.
Process
As in the past two years, USCIS will use a beneficiary-centric registration system, whereby the lottery will select unique foreign national beneficiaries rather than individual employer registrations. Under this system, a foreign national’s passport or valid travel document is required to submit an H-1B cap registration. The passport or travel document information serves as the beneficiary’s unique identifier and will be used to select entries in the H-1B cap lottery. Beneficiaries must use the same passport or travel document for all registrations submitted on their behalf; if different documents are provided to different sponsors, all registrations may be invalidated.
After March 19, 2026, when registration closes, USCIS will conduct the FY 2027 H-1B cap selection and notify all sponsoring employers of selected beneficiaries.
Selection Criteria
For the first time this year, USCIS will implement a new wage-based weighted selection system that will favor higher-wage candidates. The Department of Homeland Security is moving away from the longstanding purely random cap lottery and introducing a system where the likelihood of selection increases based on the offered salary’s position within the Department of Labor’s four-tier Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) prevailing wage framework.
Beginning with FY 2027 cap registrations, employers will be required to indicate the OEWS wage level that corresponds to the offered salary for the relevant occupation and work location. The selection process will then assign multiple entries in the lottery pool depending on the wage tier. Beneficiaries offered a Level 4 wage, the highest tier, will be entered four times, while Level 3 beneficiaries will be entered three times, Level 2 beneficiaries twice, and Level 1 beneficiaries once.
This change is expected to significantly increase the odds of selection for foreign nationals offered higher salaries. Employers should therefore work closely with experienced immigration counsel to determine the appropriate wage level and ensure that the cap registration strategy is aligned with both compliance requirements and selection advantage.
Quota
The annual H-1B cap remains 85,000, consisting of a regular cap of 65,000 and an additional 20,000 slots reserved for U.S. advanced-degree holders. At the end of the registration period, USCIS will conduct two lotteries to select enough beneficiaries to meet the annual quota. The first lottery will include all registered beneficiaries and will select enough to meet the regular cap. The second lottery will include registered U.S. advanced-degree holders who were not selected in the first lottery and will select enough to meet the advanced-degree exemption.
If USCIS does not receive registrations for enough unique beneficiaries to meet the annual quota, it will select all properly submitted registrations in the initial registration period. However, USCIS is expected to receive more registrations than needed, in which case it will conduct a weighted selection among properly submitted unique beneficiaries.
Filing
USCIS is expected to begin accepting H-1B cap-subject petitions on April 1, 2026. The petition filing period is expected to remain open for at least 90 days. Employers may file petitions at any time during this window, but some cases may require earlier filing. For example, an F-1 student whose OPT employment authorization expires before the end of the filing period must have the H-1B petition filed before the OPT EAD expiration date to preserve cap-gap work authorization through the start date of the H-1B petition or April 1, 2027, whichever is earlier. Employers should work with counsel to identify beneficiaries with time-sensitive filing needs.
The $ 100,000 Fee
Employers must also be mindful of a new $100,000 fee that may apply at the petition stage in certain cases. Additionally, the fee will apply if a foreign national is selected in the lottery, but a change-of-status request cannot be approved—for example, from F-1 or L-1 to H-1B—and the petition can only be approved for consular notification. The employer can apply for a national interest exception on a case-by-case basis, and if granted, this fee need not be paid.
Further, although this fee does not affect lottery registration eligibility, employers may wish to assess potential exposure before registering a candidate.